Archives
Credit Downgrades Imminent for Cities Unprepared for Climate Impacts
Many U.S. coastal communities, unprepared for flooding and other effects of global warming-driven sea level rise, are heading toward an imminent downgrade of their credit unless they act quickly, a new report says. Read the entire article at Climate Liability News. The report warns that federal subsidies for rebuilding flooded properties, coupled with the […]
The Future of U. S. Flood Insurance
2017’s hurricane season revealed an astounding lack of resiliency in the U.S. on many levels. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria laid bare fundamental inadequacies of the current flood insurance program. Too few homeowners had flood insurance in place. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood maps inadequately represent actual flood risks and, even more importantly, outreach programs […]
A Broke, and Broken, Flood Insurance Program
An unusual coalition of insurers, environmentalists and fiscal conservatives is seeking major changes in the National Flood Insurance Program. Read the entire article at the New York Times. Congress must decide by Dec. 8 whether to keep the program going. An unusual coalition of insurers, environmentalists and fiscal conservatives has joined the Trump administration in calling […]
Why Coastal Insurance Costs are Rising
Read the entire article at Yale Climate Connections. The insurance system has been strained by huge payouts after devastating storms. So many American homeowners in flood-prone areas are facing more expensive insurance premiums. Filer: “Particularly post-Katrina and post-Sandy, now, insurers are going back in and reevaluating the risk and that’s why we’re starting […]
How Rising Seas and Coastal Storms Drowned the U.S. Flood Insurance Program
Read the entire article at YaleEnvironment360. Sea level rise and more severe storms are overwhelming U.S. coastal communities, causing billions of dollars in damage and essentially bankrupting the federal flood insurance program. Yet rebuilding continues, despite warnings that far more properties will soon be underwater. The federal insurance program has subsidized thousands […]
When Rising Seas Transform Risk into Certainty
When Elisa Staton found a small house a block from the water in Larchmont-Edgewater in 2005, she was thinking of the neighborhood’s grand trees and Tudor-style houses, of the elementary school she hoped to send her kids to, once she had them. She wasn’t thinking much about flooding, though she knew the house was in […]
