Concern over the climate crisis may evaporate in the White House from January, but its financial costs are now starkly apparent to Americans in the form of soaring home insurance premiums with those in the riskiest areas for floods, storms and wildfires suffering the steepest rises of all. A mounting toll of severe hurricanes, floods, fires and other extreme events has caused average premiums to leap since 2020, with parts of the US most prone to disasters bearing the brunt.
You can deny climate change for whatever motivations you have but when insurance is going up because you live in a risky area, that's hard to deny. Heightened disaster risk now results in a $500 jump in premiums, on average, for households, Keys's paper finds.
The cost of living in harm's way has gone up disproportionately, said Keys. We are seeing the first big wave of the financial impact of climate change reaching households, making it impossible to ignore the economic ramifications of environmental changes.
A climate crisis is starting to stir an insurance crisis. Across all US counties, those in the top fifth for climate-driven disaster risk saw home premiums leap by 22% in just three years to 2023, compared to an overall average of a 13% rise in real terms.
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