The insurance industry is the climate crisis’s canary in the coal mine. As disasters become more frequent and intense, insurers have responded by increasing prices, dropping policies, and withdrawing from states and regions entirely. State-funded insurance programs have been created to cover the gap, but mounting losses threaten their viability as well. Insurance commissioner Dave Jones puts it bluntly:
Insurers in all states will be overrun by the increased risk and losses resulting from rising global temperatures. Unless we transition away from fossil fuels that continue to drive up global temperatures, we will continue to march - at an increasing pace - toward an uninsurable future.
In this post, we’ll be taking a look at insurance nonrenewals, or instances of insurers refusing to renew home insurance policies. This is a critical factor, as insurance is a requirement for a mortgage; when insurers withdraw, vulnerable regions may experience a mass exodus as homeowners sell or default on their loans.
In 2024, the Senate Budget Committee released a report titled Next to Fall: The Climate-Driven Insurance Crisis is Here – And Getting Worse. The report analyzed 249 million insurance policies from 2018 through 2023, and found that over 1.9 million homeowners have been dropped from their policies over that time period.
“The climate crisis is not just about polar bears, and it’s not just about green jobs,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said during a hearing on the investigation’s findings. “It actually is coming through your mail slot, in the form of insurance cancellations, insurance nonrenewals and dramatic increases in insurance costs.”
We’ve mapped that data so you can see which parts of America have been most affected.
