flood risk

An uninsurable future

October 31, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The U.S. home insurance industry is in turmoil. For years it has underestimated the risks posed by climate change intensified storms, wildfires, and other natural disasters. The increased costs associated with rising sea levels, powerful hurricanes, drenching rainstorms, massive wildfires, and more have pushed insurers to the limit.

According to the director of the Climate Risk Initiative at the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment at UC Berkeley, the world is marching toward an uninsurable future. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell predicts that in 10 or 15 years, there will be regions of the country where you can’t get a mortgage because home insurance is unavailable.

Dozens of insurance companies have collapsed or have been declared insolvent in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and California. In the period 2018-2023, insurers canceled nearly 2 million homeowner’s policies in response to rising climate risks. Premiums have skyrocketed in many places, making them unaffordable for many homeowners.

More than 30 states have created Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Plans, which are state-managed programs that provide a last resort homeowners insurance option. In these plans risks are distributed among multiple participating insurers.

Some analysts believe that the federal government may have to step in to prop up the precarious home insurance market, much as it did in 1968 when the National Flood Insurance Program was created. Now that the Trump administration is aggressively rolling back climate initiatives and encouraging more fossil fuel use, we are all going to have to foot the bill.

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How Climate Risks Are Putting Home Insurance Out of Reach

Photo, posted May 13, 2023, courtesy of Kevin Dooley via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Which Cities To Save From The Changing Climate

October 28, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

After several years of brutal flooding and hurricanes in the U.S., a distressing debate is emerging: if there is not enough money available to protect every coastal community from the effects of global warming, how do we decide which ones to save first.

Recent research looked at the costs involved in providing basic storm-surge protection in the form of sea walls for all coastal cities with more than 25,000 residents. That number was $42 billion. Expanding the list to include communities smaller than 25,000 people would increase that cost to more than $400 billion. Realistically, that is just not going to happen.

This particular study only looked at sea walls and no other methods for minimizing flood risk, such as moving homes and businesses away from the most flood-prone areas. It also didn’t look at additional and costlier actions that will be required even with sea walls, such as revamping sewers, storm water, and drinking water infrastructure.

The facts are that many cities, especially small ones, will not be able to meet the costs facing them. Those that can’t will depend on federal funding. But even optimistically large proposals for federal infrastructure spending are likely to fall far short of the vast need. Ultimately, the money will end up being spent where it can do the most good – even if it means that some places are left out.

But what criteria will be used to direct the money? Economic value? Historic significance? Population? Political influence?

This is a looming and massive issue whose chief obstacle may be that many officials refuse to acknowledge that it is happening. This is the next wave of climate denial – denying the costs that we are all facing.

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With More Storms and Rising Seas, Which U.S. Cities Should Be Saved First?

Photo, posted October 31, 2018, courtesy of Patrick Kinney via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Hundred-Year Floods Becoming One-Year Floods

September 26, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

By definition, 100-year floods are intense flooding events that historically tend to happen once every 100 years. Put another way, a 100-year flood has a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year.

According to new research published in the journal Nature Communications, rising global temperatures may turn 100-year floods into annual occurrences in parts of the United States. The increase in severe coastal flooding events by the end of this century will be a result of rising sea levels and stronger, more frequent tropical storms and hurricanes.

The study, led by researchers at Princeton University and MIT, examined flood risk for 171 counties along the US East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico. Their analysis concluded that 100-year floods will become annual events in New England. In the US Southeast and Gulf of Mexico, counties could experience such floods as often as every year up to as seldom as every 30 years.

Previously, most analysis of coastal flooding has looked only at the impact of sea level rise on flood risk. This new research combined the risk of rising seas with projected changes in coastal storms over the course of this century. Data from the Gulf of Mexico revealed that the effect of stronger storms is comparable with or even more significant than the effect of sea level change for 40% of the counties studied. So, neglecting the effects of storm climatology change is likely to significantly underestimate the impact of climate change in many places.

The hope is that more comprehensive flood risk data can be used to create more effective climate resiliency strategies all the way down to the county level.

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100-Year Floods Could Soon Happen Annually in Parts of U.S., Study Finds

Photo, posted August 31, 2017, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.