Even if deniers don’t, insurers see the cost of climate change

Environmental writers often employ a banal parable to explain America’s disregard of an existential crisis: Drop a frog into a vat of boilingwater and the amphibian leaps to safety. Place the frog in tepidwater, gradually increase the heat to 212 degrees, and the creature stays put, oblivious, never grasping the peril.

It’s a lousy example. Toss a frog in scaldingwater, it dies. Might aswell add frog soup to the dinner menu.

Nor does the other optionmake sense. Not even a frog is idiot enough to hang around once conditions turn painful, no matter howgradual. The comparison is a downright insult to froggie intelligence. It’s the human species, not frogs, who’ve convinced themselves that the cascade of disastrous climate anomalies these last few years do not portend a cataclysm.

Insurers, however, are subjecting American disbelievers to an expensive jolt of reality, raising the cost of homeowner insurance to cover the escalating risks associated with climate change. Itmatters not a whit that a particular property owner refuses to believe that spewing 38 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year has disastrous consequences. Believe it. Deny it. Eitherway, the bill for living in a community vulnerable to the effects of global warming – especially coastal Florida – is coming due.

Nowadays, pretending the climate has not gone haywire requires a tenacious state of oblivion. Never mind that South Florida streets flood on sunny days; that the NationalHurricane Center has turned to the Greek alphabet to name this season’s

25-and-counting tropical storms; that this summer’s wildfires burned through four million acres of California’s droughtparchedwoodlands; that a strange and frightening 100-mph derecho windstorm devastated close to a million acres of Iowa cropland inAugust; that nine of the ten hottest years on record occurred in the last decade; that 2020, so far, has sweltered in the highest temperatures in recorded history.

Adeclaration signed last year by 15,364 scientists from184 countrieswarned, “Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out.”

Except it’s science that’s on the outs. Our climate-change-denier-in-chiefwould rather pretend nothing’s amiss. “It’ll start getting cooler. You justwatch,” President Trumpresponded to a question about climate change last month. Pay no attention to thewarnings fromclimate scientists, Trump insisted. “I don’t think science knows, actually.”

But when homeowner insurance bills come due, itwon’t matter thatwe have a luddite president whose disdain for climate science mirrors his disregard for epidemiology (plenty evident thisweek at his superspreader political rallies). Trump’s fevered supporters can disparage science like a 15th century rabble, but they can’t escape the costs of climate change.

Reinsurance companieswhounderwrite retail insurers simply can’t afford to ignore the link betweenwarming temperatures and ever-more-expensive, ever-morecostly catastrophes caused by superstorms, wildfires, inland and coastal flooding. Risks have increased, financial losses multiply, so up goes the price of reinsurance. The Sun Sentinel reported lastweek that 46 Florida property insurance companies suffered combined losses of about $400 million a year from2016 to 2019. The companies lost

$454 million in just the first six months of 2020 with an expectation of even more brutal numbers whenthe stormy third quarter results are calculated.

TheSun Sentinel reported that reinsurers had jacked up underwriting rates by20% to

30% earlier this year and plan another hefty jump in 2021. Consumers face increases of

30% to 40%, with no discounts for property ownerswhoembrace theTrumpian theory that climate change is a hoax.

Ernst Rauch, chief climatologist for MunichRe, theworld’s largest reinsurer, told The Guardian newspaper that given the increasing intensity of wildfires, flooding and storms, “The only sustainable optionwe have is to adjust our risk prices accordingly.”

In February, SwissRe, theworld’s second largest reinsurance firm, reported that global insurance losses “have been rising due to rapid development in areas exposed to severeweather andwarmer temperatures.”

SwissRewarned, “The processes of how a changing climate impacts the frequency and severity of natural catastrophes are not fully understood, but failure to act may lead to irreversible tipping points in climate systems.”

The implications for Florida, especially South Florida, are daunting. If the insurers abandon us, the effect will be devastating as a natural disaster. Climate deniers haven’t noticed, but pot has begun to boil.