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Insurance companies are feeling the heat of climate crisis
To understand how bad the problem of climate change has become, it helps to follow the money.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer breaks down the impact of climate change on property insurance premiums, which effectively quantifies the growing risk of catastrophic weather events. Last year alone, extreme weather damage cost the world a staggering $165 billion. Formerly once-in-a-generation weather events like the California wildfires of 2017 or Hurricane Harvey in 2018 are becoming more and more common, leading to devastating financial consequences for homeowners and hikes in insurance premiums.
Insurance companies are raising rates in high-risk areas like California, warning that soon, the state may be impossible to insure altogether. It’s another reminder that even though climate change has become a political issue, those with a financial interest in the impact of extreme weather can’t afford to be complacent. Sometimes, the coolest head in the room is the one stuck in the sand.
Watch the full interview on GZERO World: Climate change: are we overreacting?
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
- Hard Numbers: Greece’s wildfire tragedy, Pakistan’s cable car nightmare, Japan’s radioactive water, Sudan’s hungry children ›
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- The Graphic Truth: The rising (insurance) costs of climate change ›
- The global water crisis and the path to a sustainable future - GZERO Media ›
Libya’s death toll keeps rising
The death toll continues to rise in Libya, where at least 6,000 are now dead after two dams in the eastern part of the country burst due to torrential flooding. Most of the carnage is in the Mediterranean city of Derna.
The statistics are grim. The UN says that as many as 30,000 have been displaced, while other observers estimate that the death toll could rise to a staggering 20,000 as bodies continue to wash up on shore.
So far, the rescue effort has been grueling Debris and mud are hindering access to hard-hit communities. Meanwhile, destroyed roads and bridges are also compounding shortages of food and water.
Making matters worse, Libya has been mired in civil war for a decade, and political factionalism is further complicating rescue efforts.(More on that here.)
As chances of finding victims alive diminish, attention is shifting to how this part of the country became such a deathtrap. Analysts say that the dams had not been maintained by warring authorities for years, and never had any hope of suppressing heavy waters.After a summer from hell, will voters embrace climate action?
Pierre Poilievre, leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, is having a pretty good summer. He’s holding well-attended “Axe the tax” rallies across the country, promising to get rid of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his unpopular carbon tax, which is hitting drivers at the pumps.
This week, though, Poilievre had to postpone rallies in British Columbia and the Yukon because of wildfires that have forced tens of thousands to flee their homes and burned 15 million hectares of bush, leaving an area the size of Illinois in ashes. Since the carbon tax was designed to reduce the emissions that contributed to these catastrophic fires, it was bitterly ironic that Poilievre’s campaign against the tax was interrupted by the fires, but he is not changing course.
In both Canada and the United States, this has been a hellish summer, with so much climate-related extreme weather that it is hard to keep track. The summer started with wildfires and floods in typically temperate Nova Scotia. Heat records have fallen in Arizona. Ocean water the temperature of a hot tub has killed coral in the turquoise waters of the Florida Keys. A deadly fire laid waste to tropical Maui. A hurricane hit L.A.
Have voters been listening?
For decades, climate scientists have been warning these disasters would come if we don’t reduce the emissions that are warming the planet. Now that the disasters have started, will people recognize the urgency of the problem?
“That is the multi-trillion dollar question,” says Shari Friedman, Eurasia Group’s managing director for climate and sustainability, who has been working on climate since the 1990s.
“When I started on climate change, the assumption was that people weren't believing this, but that when people saw the effects, they would start to see it .. Now, I think the question is a little bit different because we're seeing the effects – it's pretty clear. And the question now is, what is going to change these trajectories?”
Climate scientists have done heroic work on a massive scale to understand and describe the processes that are causing extreme weather. But this has failed to convince voters to do what is necessary to bring down the emissions that are causing ecosystems to dissipate heat in ways that threaten human existence.
People are not wising up. The Pew Research Center, which tracks attitudes toward climate around the world, has observed a decline in the number of Americans who consider it a major threat, from 59% in 2018 to 54% in 2022.
The role of disinformation
Canadian pollster Frank Graves, of EKOS Research Associates, observed the same decline in Canada over the last three years, which he attributes to online disinformation. To many people, he says, climate change “is fake news. This is made up. This is a plot by the woke left to collect their useless carbon tax.”
In his most recent poll of Canadians, this month, while wildfires were top of mind, Graves observed that a growing number of people — mostly conservatives — blame arson, not extreme weather, for the blazes. (This is a pattern of misinformation found wherever there are wildfires.) Voters who believe fires are caused by arson, not a warming globe, will not support policies to reduce emissions.
“The patterns of who gets this disinformation are very, very similar in Canada and the United States,” Graves says, “because they are emanating from the same sources. And those sources are now telling people climate change is a hoax, and these forest fires are either just bad luck or, more pointedly, they are being produced by arsonists, saboteurs, activists.”
The issue, in both countries, is divided along partisan lines, with conservatives less willing than liberals to accept the views of climate scientists.
Riley Dunlap, emeritus professor at Oklahoma State University, has been studying American attitudes about environmentalism since the first Earth Day in 1970. He watched as the issue, which used to be of concern across partisan lines, became polarized in the 2000s. Now, he notes, opposing climate policy is an identity issue for Republicans – it’s up there with “God, guns, gays, and abortion.”
He has watched with dismay as opinions got harder, with Trump followers going against anything liberals support. Some 40% of Americans do not believe humans are causing climate change.
Researchers at American universities have found that attitudes about personal experiences of extreme events appear “socially constructed and interpreted through ideological lenses, rather than driven by individuals’ objective experiences of changes in weather and climate.”
Researchers found that hot, dry days — as opposed to sudden, extreme weather events — seem to convince some people that climate change is real.
“So far, actual experience doesn't seem to have had a significant effect,” Dunlap said. “But I'm open to the possibility that personal experiences and media coverage could be really shaking people up.”
If you thought this summer was bad …
Gerald Butts, vice chairman of Eurasia Group, who helped Trudeau implement Canada’s carbon tax, points out that researchers will have more opportunities to carefully study the effect of extreme weather on public opinion.
“This is the hottest summer of your life, but it's going to be one of the coolest of the rest of your life. Sure it's weird that the remnants of a hurricane are flooding the California desert while the northern part of the continent is burning. But we're going to see versions of that in every northern hemisphere summer for the rest of our lives.
“I think the deeper question is — because human beings are nothing if not adaptable — and part of that adaptation mechanism is, how do we tune out the things we don't want to see or hear? I mean, as these things get weirder and weirder, what is the new normal for what people can absorb, or will absorb, and react to?”
Hard Numbers: Small step for gay rights in South Korea, floods in Brazil, Botswana’s endangered rhinos, India’s heat warning, Roald Dahl rewrites
1: For the first time, a South Korean court recognized the rights of a gay couple after the Health Insurance Service denied the two men spousal coverage. A lower court originally ruled against the couple, but an appellate judge determined that denying the couple coverage was discriminatory despite the fact that South Korea does not recognize same-sex marriage. The case could now be heard by the Supreme Court.
44: The death toll from devastating floods in southeastern Brazil rose to 44 on Wednesday after President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva visited the state of São Paulo. Shoddy infrastructure in Brazil makes homes particularly vulnerable to severe flooding and landslides. Search and rescue efforts continue as dozens remain missing.
33: Botswana says it has seen a surge in poaching in recent years, with one third – 33% – of the endangered species having been wiped out over the past five years alone. Authorities attribute this to a demand for rhino horns in East Africa and say there are fewer than 400 of the animals left in the country.
37: India’s meteorologists issued their first heat warning of the season in recent days as parts of western India are set to reach 37 degrees celsius (98.6 Fahrenheit). Many Indians are extremely anxious after last spring's wet bulb weather brought one of the country’s worst heat waves in over a century and led to scores of deaths.
59: Is children’s author Roald Dahl the latest victim of the culture wars? Puffin, the publishing house with rights to Dahl’s classics, is making a slew of alterations to his books, with journalists finding 59 changes to “The Witches” alone. Oompa-Loompas, the beloved characters from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," will now be dubbed "small people,” not "small men.” Dare we ask: What do you think of the move? Please drop us a note with your thoughts."We are destroying our planet and we are not paying attention," says UN chief António Guterres
A year ago, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told Ian Bremmer on GZERO World that the world was on the edge of an abyss in dealing with climate change.
Since then, we haven't fallen off, but unfortunately he says climate has become a "second-rate issue."
That doesn't mean, of course, that the problem has gone away. Russia may be at war with Ukraine, but we're at war with the planet, and the planet is striking back — as we've seen with the recent floods in Pakistan.
Still, some countries are trying address the issue. For Guterres, a good example is the US Inflation Reduction Act, which is a good contribution "but we need to do much more."
Watch the GZERO World episode: How a war-distracted world staves off irreversible damage
More than 40,000 people in Malaysian relief centres as floods ravage east coast states
KUALA LUMPUR - More than 40,000 people took shelter at dozens of relief centres in Malaysia's east coast states on Thursday (Jan 6) as heavy flooding continued to inundate villages and block roads.
Floods worsen in Malaysia's east coast
Flooding in three Malaysian east coast states has worsened, with more than 21,000 people sheltering in flood relief centres and parts of the East Coast Expressway (ECE) closed to traffic, the authorities said yesterday.
Found: Body of man swept away in car after saving wife from flood
KLUANG • As strong floodwater currents took hold of their Proton Waja, a worried husband broke the car window to let his wife out - where she was later rescued by passers-by.