At least five large U.S. property insurers — including Allstate, American Family, Nationwide, Erie Insurance Group and Berkshire Hathaway — have told regulators that extreme weather patterns caused by climate change have led them to stop writing coverages in some regions, exclude protections from various weather events and raise monthly premiums and deductibles.
Major insurers say they will cut out damage caused by hurricanes, wind and hail from policies underwriting property along coastlines and in wildfire country, according to a voluntary survey conducted by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, a group of state officials who regulate rates and policy forms.
Insurance providers are also more willing to drop existing policies in some locales as they become more vulnerable to natural disasters. Most home insurance coverages are annual terms, so providers are not bound to them for more than one year.
That means individuals and families in places once considered safe from natural catastrophes could lose crucial insurance protections while their natural disaster exposure expands or intensifies as global temperatures rise.
“The same risks that are making insurance more important are making it harder to get,” Carolyn Kousky, associate vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund and nonresident scholar at the Insurance Information Institute, told The Washington Post.
The companies mentioned those policy changes as part of previously unreported responses to the regulatory group’s survey. The survey was distributed in 2022 by 15 states and received responses — some sent as recently as last month — from companies covering 80 percent of the U.S. insurance market.
Allstate said its climate risk mitigation strategy would include “limiting new [auto and property] business … in areas most exposed to hurricanes” and “implementing tropical cyclone and/or wind/hail deductibles or exclusions where appropriate.”
Oscilloscope Laboratories has landed “Canary,” a documentary about a climate scientist who been referred to as “the closest living thing to Indiana Jones.”
Danny O’Malley, a producer on “Chef’s Table,” directed the film with MIT-trained Neuroscientist Alex Rivest, PhD. It’s set to open in limited release on Sept. 15 followed by a one-night-only special nationwide screening on Sept. 20.
The subject of the film is Doctor Lonnie Thompson, who, in a press release, is referred to as an explorer “who went where no scientist had gone before and transformed our idea of what is possible.” He’s been globally recognized for his drilling an analysis of ice cores from various regions of the world in the hopes of better understanding the Earth’s climate.
The announcement goes on to describe the documentary’s mission like so: “Daring to seek Earth’s history contained in glaciers atop the tallest mountains in the world, Lonnie found himself on the frontlines of climate change—his life’s work evolving into a salvage mission to recover these priceless historical records before they disappear forever.”
“‘Canary’ is a thrilling story featuring a real-life superhero working against all odds to make a better future for everyone,” said Oscilloscope’s Dan Berger. “It’s adventurous, thrilling, and pulls at your heart strings. Devin Whetstone’s gorgeous cinematography captures Lonnie’s personal story while setting it against the epic nature of the Peruvian Andes. We’re excited to bring this to theaters so audiences can have the opportunity to witness it in all its glory, big and loud.”
The filmmakers, who were seeking to change the way that science stories are told, say they endured many challenges in making this documentary.
“When we told people we wanted to take a ‘Chef’s Table’ camera crew up an 18,000-ft mountain in the middle of nowhere, people thought we were crazy,” O’Malley said.
Rivest added, “At that elevation, we had half the oxygen that there is at sea level, shooting this film was the hardest thing we’ve done in our lives. We pushed ourselves to the limit to tell this unbelievable story, and with Oscilloscope’s support the world is about to find out why. There is nobody on earth like Lonnie Thompson.”
First professional grade news reports coming out of Burning Man. Things look dicey. On the plus side, this is an opportunity for rich white folks to experience what people in the developing world are going thru – massive unprecedented weather events leaving them with little outside assistance or hope for escape.
One thing wise people always tell you about raising your consciousness, is that you are not going to like a lot of what you see. Welcome to Our Shared Reality, where the woke wake up.
Larger context of the event is that heavy rains are impacting across the Nevada desert region, including in Las Vegas, where less cosmically aware revelers are hearing the same alarm. I heard a little New Orleans wisdom from Wynton Marsalis that applies. “There’s a board for every behind.”
I think we can all agree that Burning Man is a once-cool idea way past its sell-by date.
70,000 people trapped in a desert by extreme rain, running out of food, with rumors of disease spreading, and porta-johns overflowing – but determined to keep the party going, is such a great metaphor for our civilization right now.
CNN: Tens of thousands of people attending the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert are being told to conserve food, water and fuel as they shelter in place in the Black Rock Desert after a heavy rainstorm pummeled the area, festival organizers said.
Attendees were surrounded by thick, ankle-deep mud and organizers halted vehicles from traveling in or out of the festival after heavy rains started saturating the area Friday evening.
Hannah Burhorn, a first-time attendee at the festival, told CNN in a phone interview Saturday the desert sand has turned into thick clay and puddles and mud are everywhere. People are wrapping trash bags and Ziploc bags around their shoes to avoid getting stuck, while others are walking around barefoot.
From Burning Man website
“It’s unavoidable at this point,” she said. “It’s in the bed of the truck, inside the truck. People who have tried to bike through it and have gotten stuck because it’s about ankle deep.”
The gate and airport into Black Rock City, a remote area in northwest Nevada, remain closed and no driving is allowed into or out of the city except for emergency vehicles, the organizers said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
“Do not travel to Black Rock City! Access to the city is closed for the remainder of the event, and you will be turned around,” one statement read.
Below, the festival was already a shit show, as climate protesters, angered by conspicuous consumption and habitat destruction at the festival, blocked an entrance road. The resulting melee reflected poorly on all involved.
Video below shows post-festival traffic jam from 2022.
“Florida’s Department of Education has approved the classroom use of material from the Prager University Foundation, a conservative group that produces videos that distort science, history, gender and other topics,” reported E&E News (August 7, 2023). Although the videos have been approved for use only in social studies classrooms for younger students, there is concern that climate-change-denial videos may harm climate change education in the state.
“Climate scientists long ago determined that fossil fuel use is driving rapid global warming and pushing the planet toward dangerous tipping points. Most states center their climate change curriculum around that consensus,” E&E News explained. “Only a small number of researchers with legitimate academic credentials doubt the consensus science, and PragerU videos feature many of them.”
NCSE Deputy Director Glenn Branch told E&E News that the state’s approval in effect publicizes the availability of the climate-change-denial videos to sympathetic teachers. Moreover, he added, even teachers who want to teach climate change accurately could feel coerced to do otherwise: with the state’s imprimatur of the PragerU videos, there’s a risk that “people are going to be pressuring [teachers] into using them.”
