Major Insurers Abandoning CA, TX, FL - Senate Dems Want To Know The Next States & Areas To Lose Coverage

[hatrack]

Faced with growing losses from hurricanes, floods and wildfires, major insurance companies are pulling out of California, Florida and Louisiana — a shift that threatens to undermine the economies of those states. Now Senate Democrats are demanding that insurers tell them which places could be next.

On Wednesday, the Senate Budget Committee sent letters to 40 insurance companies, seeking documents that show where in the country those insurers have begun dropping customers, or are considering it. The committee, which has subpoena power, has given the companies until Nov. 17 to respond. “Climate-caused uninsurability has the potential to trigger cascading failures that undermine our entire economy,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island and the committee chairman, said in a statement. “With this investigation, we are seeking information about where the dominoes may fall next.”

Banks typically require insurance when writing a mortgage. If insurance becomes unavailable in a particular community, it becomes hard for most potential buyers to purchase a home, leading to a drop in real estate values. Mr. Whitehouse compared the accelerating withdrawal of insurance companies with the 2008 housing crash, saying a broad insurer pullback “will have similarly grave economic effects.”

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But Mr. Whitehouse also wants to highlight the financial consequences of global warming, to put pressure on elected officials who oppose steps to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are heating the planet and causing more frequent and extreme disasters. Republicans in Congress have generally opposed legislation aimed at reducing emissions, and former president Donald J. Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental rules. Officials who have opposed climate action “should be forced to reckon with hard evidence of what their inaction has wrought,” Mr. Whitehouse said.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/climate/climate-insurance-disasters-senate.html

[Think. Again.]

1. I hope these Senators...

...are also asking the climate scientists where the severe effects of climate change are predicted to happen next.

Insurance companies are reactive to these severe occurances after they begin happening in certain areas, and might not be looking at areas where no signs have begun yet, while the climatologists will have a better understanding of what, when, and where these events will unfold in the coming seasons.