Floods like the one in Baie-Saint-Paul, about 90 kilometres northeast of Quebec City, helped drive up insurance claims from extreme weather in 2023 to the fourth-highest total on record, according to a new report by the Insurance Bureau of Canada.
In total, insured losses from extreme weather events exceeded $3 billion in Canada for the second straight year.
The report underscores concerns about the growing economic cost of weather-related disasters made more frequent and severe by climate change — and the rising cost of insurance coverage for homeowners.
In some cases, homeowners are struggling to get coverage at all.
I don’t know if this is related, but occasionally I get some new insurance quotes just to make sure I’m not missing out on any deals, and this year I’m being asked for all sorts of details I’ve never been asked before. I’ve been asked for pictures inside and out, documentation from the county, information about my pets, specifics about my roof material, letters from past insurers.
I’ve been with three different insurance companies in the past and it was always just basics like square footage, distance to fire hall. I get the feeling these companies don’t really want my business, but they also don’t want to tell me no, so they just send me on irritating errands to get strange info for them.
Let insurance companies go after oil companies to recoup costs!
meanwhile in the US:
Affordable home insurance is getting increasingly hard to find in wildfire-prone areas in the West. Climate change, along with flammable fuel buildup, is causing bigger, more frequent and more destructive wildfires, putting more and more homes at risk. Meanwhile, climate change is also driving other costly disasters, such as hurricanes and flooding. https://www.hcn.org/issues/56.1/wildfire-homeowners-insurance-is-going-up-in-smoke
Florida’s state run insurance company just became it’s single largest insurer last year because all the for-profit companies are fleeing, they tripled the number of properties they covered between 2020 and 2023. The average house insurance in the state is something like $6000 USD at this point, and still rising.
climate change is like pressure building in a bottle. You can only cork it for so long before there’s some kind of structural failure and the champagne is all over the floor with broken glass everywhere.
And the quicker it pops, the less collateral damage there will be, metaphorically speaking.
The insurance industry needs to fail sooner rather than later.
Sounds like it won’t be long now…
CNN - The US Senate Budget Committee is launching an investigation into whether Florida’s state-backed home and property insurance company has enough money in the bank to withstand future disasters, as scientists warn warming oceans and sea level rise are making storms more destructive.
Citizens Property Insurance Corporation exists as a so-called insurer of last resort - if owners cannot convince a private insurance company to cover their property, Citizens will step in. It insures about 1.3 million policyholders in the state, who typically pay more money for a policy that covers less.
But as coastlines disappear and storms get wetter and more dangerous, risk is through the roof for many of the properties Citizens insures, putting intense financial pressure on the state-backed company. During a March press conference, Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “I think most people know Citizens has not been solvent.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/30/business/florida-insurance-senate-investigation-climate/index.html
There’s a stupid idea… Ignoring professionals who spend their lives trying to identify and mitigate risk… It’s the same reason you never co-sign a loan for anything – if the bank says someone is at a high risk of default, don’t fucking ignore them, and don’t sign the paperwork.
Developer: “Hey, there’s a lot of waterfront land people would like to build their homes and cottages on.”
Town: “Yeah, we don’t build there because it flooded a hundred years ago.”
Developer: “Pfft. A hundred years? Think of all the property taxes you’ll be able to collect on these modern luxury waterfront homes.”
Town: “Well, since you put it that way…”
If you’re building anything under 100m above sea level, you’re fucking crazy. My place is around 120m above sea level, and I’m considering selling and moving up to the 250m-500m level.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“It’s important to note these losses are coming from not any one single type of event,” said Craig Stewart, the group’s vice-president of climate change and federal issues.
Stewart’s group has been pressing the federal government to put in place a national flood insurance program that would provide coverage in high-risk areas.
Joanna Kanga, a spokesperson for the minister of Emergency Preparedness, said the federal government “continues to engage provinces and territories, industry stakeholders and Indigenous representatives on the development and implementation of the low-cost flood insurance program.”
A federal government plan is necessary to ensure property owners have coverage, but Canadians need to take precautions themselves, said Anabela Bonada, a research associate at the University of Waterloo’s Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation.
Insured losses reflect just a small part of the damage caused by extreme weather and highlight the need for governments to put more money into adaptation measures, said Ryan Ness, a research director with the Canadian Climate Institute.
A report by the institute estimated that every dollar invested in climate adaptation, such as designing roads to make them more resilient to flooding, will return $13 to $15 in avoided costs.
The original article contains 798 words, the summary contains 192 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
