A Washington Post (WaPo) article, titled “Insuring your home has never been harder. Here’s how to do it,” claims that climate change is making home insurance more expensive and harder to obtain in many areas. This is false. While it is true that insurance has become more expensive in recent years, along with most other goods and services, an increase in extreme weather cannot be the cause because it is simply not happening. Higher insurance rates largely reflect the increased amount and value of the properties and goods being insured.
WaPo writes that premiums are being driven up by a “combination of broad economic trends — labor shortages, inflation, higher reinsurance and rebuilding costs — and more costly and uncertain extreme weather events,” which is only partially true. Economic issues are certainly a major part of why insurance costs are so high in many areas, as well as government subsidizing insurance for homes in disaster-prone areas.
The weather, however, has neither become more unpredictable nor more extreme. Looking at the weather-related events referred to in the story – wildfires, hurricanes, and floods—data show that these events have not become more extreme or frequent. Wildfires are only slightly up since the 1980s in the United States, but are still much less frequent and extreme than they were earlier in the 20th century, as shown by long term historic wildfire data. (See figure below)
The available hurricane data show an even less alarming picture. As discussed by Climate Realism in dozens of posts, data show hurricanes are not becoming more powerful or frequent. Nor are serious floods becoming more common, and in fact data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that U.S. flood damage as a proportion of GDP has significantly declined over the past hundred-plus years. (See figure below)
Therefore, the explanation for rising insurance cannot be a rise in extreme weather. Oddly, although WaPo tries to wedge climate change into the discussion, they also admit to the biggest factor in weather-related disaster costs, which is that “costs from extreme weather events have been rising, in part because Americans have continued to move into areas that are more vulnerable to severe storms.”
This is true. Weather risk is not increasing in disaster-prone areas, but the number of people, structures, and infrastructure, homes, and businesses located in disaster prone areas have increased. Population and development growth cannot be overstated in coastal areas. This is often referred to as the “expanding bullseye effect.” As meteorologist Anthony Watts explains in the Climate Realism post “No, CNBC, Insurance Premiums Are Not Increasing Due to Climate Change,” the population along our coastlines has been exploding since the 1970s. Watts writes:
“People like to live by the ocean. The population of coastal counties in the United States has been growing, increasing by 40.5 million people, or about 46%, from 1970 to 2020. This is despite the fact that coastal counties make up less than 10% of the total land area, but account for 39% of the total population. The population is projected to increase by over 10 million people, or 8+% into the 2020s.”
Insurance companies have incentives to try to pass blame for rising policy costs on to a nebulous boogeyman like climate change. It is far easier to falsely claim that it is just that the weather is getting worse, than it is to address the real problems, which are inflation, government subsidies, the expanding bullseye effect, and more complicated economic conditions. The Washington Post should not be toeing the line for insurance companies and allowing them to essentially pass the blame onto the consumer for using fossil fuels. This false narrative should not be tolerated.
