The Department of Financial Regulation has issued a report indicating that insurance rates for properties could be going up, and that concerns about global warming are the culprit.
“The report found that climate trends are making Vermont’s climate warmer and wetter which is also leading to an increase in severe weather more likely to cause greater property damage,” the department said in a statement this week. “Specifically, hailstorms accounted for the most property damage in terms of total loss, followed by gradient wind and thunderstorms. These types of weather events tend to increase in a warmer, wetter environment.”
Insurance companies are experiencing increased losses due to climate change, according to the department, and it has calculated 39 percent is due to increased hail storms, 31 percent from increased wind, and 13 percent from more thunderstorms.
BLAME CARBON: The Vermont Department of Financial Regulation says that future storms will cause insurance rates to go up.
The department forecasts that trends will go on for three decades, and increased severe weather and the subsequent property damages mean that Vermonters “could experience an indirect impact through rising homeowner and auto insurance rates.”
DFR Commissioner Michael Pieciak said financial regulators can play a part in fighting global warming using their clients’ money.
“Financial regulators have an important role to play in helping reduce and mitigate the impacts of climate change on Americans,” Pieciak said. “The financial entities we regulate collectively hold over $220 billion in assets that could both be vulnerable to climate risks and used to encourage greener practices that will reduce risk for consumers.”
DFR will do its part to ensure that public resources are committed to fighting off anticipated severe weather events. First, it will join the Sustainable Insurance Forum, which is “an international group of insurance regulators committed to sharing information and solutions that would help reduce and mitigate the impacts related to climate change.”
Other actions include that the department will support of “mandatory climate risk disclosures for publicly traded companies,” and they want each insurance company to fill out an “Insurer Climate Risk Disclosure Survey” to assess the systemic risk presented by climate change.
It continues that they want the companies to “encourage or require regulated insurance companies to evaluate potential climate-related financial exposure by conducting stress tests and scenario analyses, incorporate climate change into enterprise risk management processes, and assess and manage climate risk exposure in investments.”
Another action item is to “Encourage and promote the use of incentives for businesses, farms, and consumers to utilize energy-efficient building methods in both new construction and retrofitting existing structures, install energy-efficient appliances and air-handling systems, and transition to renewable energy.”
Finally, DFR will “provide written and electronic resources to Vermont consumers on climate-related risks and insurance policy limitations.”
Pieciak said that Vermont is currently at the low-end when it comes to national insurance rates.
“Vermont currently has some of the lowest home and auto insurance rates in the country and it is in the collective interest of industry and consumers to maintain that in the future,” he said.
Michael Bielawski is a reporter for True North. Send him news tips at bielawski82@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @TrueNorthMikeB.
When companies pay salaries like I received when I lived on Long Island, then I have no problem with paying a higher rate. As it stands now, my property insurance goes up a minimum of $50.00 a year, and that is only because I called and complained about the $70.00 they used to raise me. And when they turned me down after filing my first claim, I looked over my policy to see that it covers nothing. For everything they say they cover, they have a “but not if” attached to it.
Our gov’t is going to raise our rates for everything, using the excuse of “climate change” until they are beating a dead horse. I’m really sick of being abused like this.
Insurance companies do not have the luxury of being ideological.
If there is. as this article says, ” a 39% increase in losses from hail a 31% increase in losses due to wind damage and a 13% increase in losses due to thunder storms”, they either have to adjust or go belly up. They do not have the luxury of denial.
The question is how do we best adjust to and address the challenges of ever increasing extreme weather events. This is not something that impractical stand alone Vermont actions can solve and there is no question that there are those who use the issue of climate change for their own financial and political advantage.
The challenge is what practical actions, that do not adversely affect those least able to pay, can we take in response to the statistical hard evidence that insurance companies and all of us are facing.
John, I think you might want to look at Koonin’s book, ‘Unsettled.’ https://tinyurl.com/yfp7mzfx
I have the book but have not read it (but know quite a bit about where Koonin is coming from), but as I understand, it debunks the myth that there are more extreme weather events today. We measure more today, and we have more built environment along coastal areas, etc., that require insurance coverage and that suffer damage through adverse weather events. That doesn’t necessarily translate into ‘more extreme weather events are happening,’ and I used the word ‘necessarily’ in the philosophical sense, in that more cost to weather damage does not, without question, mean more extreme weather events are happening today. It could mean a lot of things, including, e.g., that we build more in coastal areas and have more valuable properties there. To take one set of causes (more valuable buildings subject to weather damage, or more buildings in historically fire-prone areas) and assign them to another cause (more insurance claims must mean more ‘global warming’) without critical examination is just plain bad science. Yet this happens all the time. It’s the new Lysenkoism.
Insurance Companies have to deal with reality not ideology. The reality is that insurance companies according this article have seen “an increase in losses of 39% due to hailstorms, 31% increase in losses due to wind, and 13% more due to thunderstorms”.
Insurance companies, as businesses do not have the luxury of denial about the damage of ever increasing extreme weather events. They have to adjust to reality or they will go belly up.
That is not to say that there are those who use the issue of climate change for their own financial or political benefit. The challenge is how do we best face this issue that is, by its very nature, is not a something that can be solved on a stand alone Vermont basis but needs reasonable action that does not rest unfairly on those least able to bear the burden.
At the table, at the time, determining the agenda… these are the ARCHITECTURAL OLIGARCHS of the agenda…qui bono?
So, the insurance companies are raising rates because of weather damage due to climate change? I thought it was because of all the destruction that happened during the ‘peaceful’ protests. Silly me.
Much of the societal stress has been engineered and promoted by government, e.g. Obama Balkanizing our society into mindless special interest groups and antagonizing them against one another. He set racial relations back by over a half century. The purpose, as expressed by Mussolini who stated that Fascism (Progressivism is our contemporary term) was not an ideology. It was a method, through propaganda, through use of naturally existing existing and government generated social upheavals and disruptions, to motivate the people democratically to demand centralized control by government to restore order and return civil function to normal. Like demonizing, persecuting and defunding police, promoting and protecting crime and violence, destroying our faith in elections, releasing criminals, opening borders… and, by generating a pervasive state of fear, uncertainty and sporadic mayhem, the Progressives justify repressive societal controls and the generation of a National Police Force – “to restore order” and to defeat the autonomy of states, their ability to nullify unconstitutional moves by Washington. National Feudalism, if you will. Government office is the playground of controlling personalities.
“concerns about global warming are the” – Excuse. Note that rates will be going up because of “concerns” about global warming, not because of global warming. Will the increases be based on statistics, on actuarial experience or the AGW predictions, which have proven reliably overstated? How did they handle this in the seventies when we were confronted by the impending ice age?
I didn’t even have to read this to understand that this is the great reset at work.
Make it more expensive for you to own your own home to help eliminate the middle class and create a slave class.
Is anyone paying attention? Bueller?? Bueller??
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/now-is-the-time-for-a-great-reset/
It’s written right in black and white:
“To achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a “Great Reset” of capitalism.”
All of that looks just like what’s happening now…
Exactly. This has likely been planned for quite some time; hence the pseudoscience of global warming (and the expansion of critical race theory), which will be the justification for ‘necessary’ measures to ‘stay safe’ and ensure justice. A conspiracy? Yes. Let’s not assume that globalists are incapable of long-term thinking and detailed planning. This is how you destroy free society and set up a society of monitored and managed individuals, made possible by massive advances in technology: the time is ripe and they can easily set their plans in motion so long as society is willing to ‘stay safe’ from the next bogeyman and follow the new philosophy of destroying ‘white’ society. They tell us what they plan to do, it’s no mystery at all. They absolutely didn’t want us to go back to normal– they came right out and said ‘you’re not going back to normal’– but luckily people and states are giving them a bit of a poke in the eye. How it ends depends on how many people can wake up and push back, and especially on how many people realize that global warming isn’t science at all, it’s consensus-driven Lysenkoism: you MUST NOT contradict it.