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union of concerned scientists
Helene's Catastrophic Potential Stokes Fear Amid Florida Insurance Crisis
Florida already has one of the nation's largest shares of homeowners "who don't have meaningful insurance."
Sep 26, 2024
Hurricane Helene continued barreling toward Florida on Thursday, highlighting the impacts of the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, including difficulties securing insurance coverage in regions most affected by extreme weather.
"The Air Force Hurricane Hunters found that the maximum sustained winds have increased to near 120 mph," the National Hurricane Center said Thursday afternoon. "This makes Helene a dangerous Category 3 major hurricane. Additional strengthening is expected before Helene makes landfall in the Florida Big Bend this evening."
Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell said during a White House briefing that forecasts suggest Helene will make a "dead-on hit to Tallahassee" and "this is going to be a multistate event with the potential for significant impacts from Florida all the way to Tennessee."
Although this Atlantic hurricane season hasn't yet been as intense as U.S. scientists expected, trends in extreme weather disasters have led some insurance companies to exit the Florida market in recent years. Farmers Insurance announced last year that it would stop covering property in the state, in an effort to "effectively manage risk exposure."
While the Insurance Information Institute, an industry trade group, said in May that "legislative reforms passed in 2022 and 2023 have created a pathway to a stable Florida market," reporting from this week shows that residents—who aren't ultrarich—are still struggling to get and keep coverage.
"Florida ranks sixth among states with the largest shares of homeowners who don't have meaningful insurance. About 18% of homeowners across the state—about 1 in 6—are without it," NBC Newsnoted Wednesday. "Nearly 20% of Florida homeowners pay $4,000 or more a year for homeowners insurance—the largest share in the country, according to the Census Bureau."
According toThe Palm Beach Post, the global reinsurance broker Gallagher Re said in a Wednesday analysis that "landfall in the Big Bend or Panhandle region of Florida as a major hurricane (Category 3, 4, or 5) has historically translated to insured losses in the low single-digit billions."
"But Helene is not a typical storm," the firm explained. "Given Helene's very large wind radius, this would still bring hurricane-force wind gusts and high storm surge to coastal areas in the heavily populated Tampa Bay area, tropical storm force winds across most of the Florida peninsula, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and southern Appalachia."
Gallagher Re suggested that "Helene's private insurance market losses should be expected to land in the range" of $3 billion to $6 billion, but if the hurricane "unexpectedly" moves toward Tampa, it could be over $10 billion.
Florida isn't the only state facing insurance trouble thanks to climate chaos. Voxreported last year that "insuring property in California has been a dicey proposition," pointing to torrential rainfall that "caused as much as $1.5 billion in insured losses" and "the costliest wildfires in U.S. history, including the 2018 Camp Fire, which led to more than $10 billion in losses."
Amid the intertwined climate and insurance crises, scientists, campaigners, and homeowners have demanded policy action—and elevated criticism of right-wing attacks on crucial programs.
In a June blog post, Rachel Cleetus, policy director with the Union of Concerned Scientists' Climate and Energy program, wrote that "Congress and regulators need to ensure more transparency in the insurance market on how companies are evaluating risks as they make decisions about premiums. There also needs to be better information on what kinds of incentives companies are providing for adaptation measures that would help reduce risks."
"Alongside the necessary but ultimately bounded role of insurance in a warming world, public and private decision-makers must also shift investments away from business-as-usual maladaptive and risky choices to more resilient ones," Cleetus continued. "The nation must scale up resources for climate resilience and ensure they are reaching communities in a just and equitable way. Funding for safe, affordable, and climate-resilient housing must be expanded."
The Climate & Community Institute on Wednesday also shared recommendations in a new report—Shared Fates: A Housing Resilience Policy Vision for the Home Insurance Crisis—using case studies from California, Florida, and Minnesota.
"We propose the creation of Housing Resilience Agencies (HRAs), either by states or the federal government," the institute said. These agencies would:
- Provide public disaster insurance that offers fair and equitable protections;
- Coordinate and oversee comprehensive, community-oriented disaster risk reduction;
- Address existing market failures by providing coverage for oft-neglected sectors such as multifamily housing providers, mobile home dwellers, and heirs properties; and
- Host public risk models, climate risk advisory councils, and diverse governing boards to inform decision-making in a transparent and democratic manner.
"In order to confront the growing housing safety and affordability crisis, we need to understand our fates as shared," the institute added. "We must reimagine our home insurance system for it to reduce risk and provide equitable and fair protection."
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Faith Leaders Chain Themselves to Citi HQ to Protest Fossil Fuel Financing
"We cannot profit off of death and destruction," one participant said. "We must love each other and the Earth."
Jul 30, 2024
Two dozen faith leaders and their supporters were arrested on Tuesday after chaining themselves to the doors of Citigroup's New York City headquarters to protest its financing of the climate emergency.
Around 50 people participated in the protest, which is part of the Summer of Heat series of actions demanding that Wall Street—and Citi in particular—stop funding oil, gas, and coal.
"I am here because I believe that there is a god in everyone and that calls us to take responsibility for destruction done in our name," Lina Blout of Earth Quaker Action Team said as she was being arrested. "We are all connected. We must live for the planet and each other, and not short-term profit."
Citi was the leading financier of fossil fuel expansion since the Paris agreement entered into force in 2016, spending $204 billion on the development of new oil, gas, and coal. It was also the second leading funder of fossil fuels over all, at nearly $400 billion. In addition to ditching climate-warming energy sources, participants in Summer of Heat want banks like Citi to "exponentially" up funding for renewables, respect the human rights of Indigenous and local communities, and contribute to a "climate reparations fund."
"We cannot profit off of death and destruction," Blout said. "We must love each other and the Earth."
Tuesday's action, led by GreenFaith, was part of the Summer of Heat's Faith Week, running from July 28 to August 3.
"We the people will not tolerate the bad practices of companies like Citi to fund and invest in oil companies who kill our world and it's future."
"Our faiths teach us that the Earth is a sacred trust and we are responsible for its care," GreenFaith wrote on social media. "Why is Citi continuing to violate that trust by giving hundreds of millions of dollars to oil and gas companies? We're here telling Citi: We can do better. We must do better!"
The faith leaders, dressed in white, converged on Citi at around 7:50 am Eastern Time. A total of eight people locked themselves to the doors, causing "chaos" as employees tried to enter for work. The blockade lasted for around half an hour.
"If you've got to walk through a gauntlet of protesters and cops to get to your job maybe you're working at the wrong place," nonprofit consultant Valerie Costa wrote in response to footage of the protest.
Among those arrested at the action were two frontline leaders from the U.S. Gulf Coast, which has been treated as a sacrifice zone by the oil and gas industry for decades.
"There is no future if we were to allow big oil and gas industries who produce death chemicals and products that will wipe out society," Debra Sullivan Ramirez, the president, CEO, and founder of Mossville Environmental Action Now, who was arrested Tuesday, told Common Dreams. "We the people will not tolerate the bad practices of companies like Citi to fund and invest in oil companies who kill our world and it's future."
In one incident, Citi security tried to force open a door while a protester was still chained to it, and then to yank him away from the door. When police joined in, the protester fell down.
"Police were contorting his legs behind the door," another demonstrator said, adding that "it looked painful."
Tuesday's protest brings the total number of arrests from Summer of Heat actions up to more than 450 since June 10, according to organizers.
It also follows a week that saw the four hottest days on record and comes as a heat dome is expected to descend upon much of the U.S., putting the Southwest, Southeast, and Great Plains at particular risk for potentially deadly heat, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) warned.
"Fossil-fuel driven climate change has increased the frequency and severity of extreme heat events over the last half century," UCS said.
The group urged local, state, and national authorities to take immediate measures to protect people such as implementing heat plans, ensuring access to cooling centers, and enshrining protections for outdoor workers.
"But ultimately," UCS said, "limiting the number of days of extreme heat in the long term necessitates that policymakers and decision-makers in all sectors of society do their part to cut heat-trapping emissions, halt the decades-long deception and obstruction by fossil fuel companies that has enabled runaway climate change, phase out fossil fuels, and accelerate the transition to a clean and just energy system."
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Hundreds of Scientists Urge Biden to Cancel $100 Billion Nuclear Weapons Boondoggle
"There is no sound technical or strategic rationale for spending tens of billions of dollars building new nuclear weapons," an expert said.
Jul 08, 2024
More than 700 scientists on Monday called for an end to the United States' land-based nuclear weapons program that's set to be replaced, following a Pentagon decision to approve the program despite soaring costs.
In an open letter to President Joe Biden and Congress, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) argued that the new intercontinental-range ballistic missile system, known as Sentinel, was "expensive, dangerous, and unnecessary."
The Department of Defense on Monday certified the continuation of the project, releasing the results of a review that was legally required when the cost estimate ballooned to "at least" $131 billion earlier this year, which drew the scrutiny of some Democrats in Congress, according toThe Hill.
The Defense review found that Sentinel was "essential to national security," but the scientists disagreed with the assessment.
"There is no sound technical or strategic rationale for spending tens of billions of dollars building new nuclear weapons," Tara Drozdenko, director of UCS' global security program, said in a statement.
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Barry Barish, a signatory to the letter, was also harshly critical of the Pentagon's approach.
"It is unconscionable to continue to develop nuclear weapons, like the Sentinel program," he said.
700+ scientists & experts are calling on President Biden & Congress to cancel the Sentinel program and retire the US land-based missile force. Doing so would save Americans more than $100 billion and make the world safer.
Learn more: https://t.co/5dQCOUKnQ3 pic.twitter.com/UxtHV9TSod
— Union of Concerned Scientists (@UCSUSA) July 8, 2024
The soaring costs of Sentinel, which is overseen by the defense contractor Northrup Grumman, have been the subject of media attention. The program will cost an estimated $214 million per missile, far more than originally expected, Bloombergreported on Friday.
However, the cost is hardly the only reason to cancel the program, UCS scientists argue. The silos that house the nuclear missiles, which are found in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska, are vulnerable to attack—in fact, they are designed to draw enemy weapons away other U.S. targets, according toScientific American. Such an attack would expose huge swaths of the American population to radioactive fallout.
Because they are a likely target, the siloed missiles are kept on "hair-trigger" alert so the U.S. president can launch them within minutes. This "increases the risk of nuclear war" that could start from false alarms, miscalculations, or misunderstandings, the UCS letter states.
The scientists further argue that there's no need for a land-based nuclear weapons system given the effectiveness of nuclear-armed submarines—one of the other parts of the nuclear triad, along with bomber jets. Such submarines are "hidden at sea" and "essentially invulnerable to attack," according to the letter. Moreover, the submarine missiles are just as accurate as land-based missiles, and already have "destructive capability than could ever be employed effectively," it states.
The submarine system is also being overhauled, as is the 'air' component of the nuclear triad. In total, the U.S. military plans to spend more than $1 trillion over 30 years on renewing the nuclear arsenal, according to the Arms Control Association.
The U.S. leads the way in a surge of global spending on nuclear arms, according to two studies published last month, one of which found that nearly $3,000 per second was spent in 2023.
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