As President Joe Biden toured the damage from Hurricane Milton on Sunday, the unofficial death toll rose above twenty and more than a million Floridians were reportedly without power. The storm’s impact, while severe, was less severe than some meteorologists had feared. But with Milton coming in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which devastated parts of Florida, North Carolina and other states, the 2024 hurricane season represents something of a threshold crossing. Extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change have significant economic consequences and pose challenges to all levels of government – local, state and national level – face difficult challenges. And now right-wing conspiracy theorists are deliberately complicating efforts to address the problem.

One of these conspiracy theorists is the Republican presidential candidate. On October 3, at a rally in Michigan, Donald Trump spread a false claim that was widely shared on social media that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) ran out of money because it had diverted funds to migrants. “Kamala spent all of her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing illegal immigrants,” he said. Then others MAGA Republicans even claimed that the government itself was responsible for the storms. (“Yes, they can control the weather,” Marjorie Taylor Greene commented on X.)

As the cleanup progresses in Florida and further north, Congress must actually step up FEMAHowever, the organization’s main disaster fund is unrelated to the agency’s migrant programs, which are funded by a separate fund. The problem is that the disaster fund has already been partially depleted from dealing with previous disasters, including floods, tornadoes and wildfires. Since House Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to call the body he chairs back into session before the election, the necessary increase will not occur until November 5th.

In our degraded political environment it is important to ensure this FEMA Whether there is sufficient funding and whether effective policies are in place is by no means a trivial matter. More and more disaster relief Is If appropriated, we must ensure that it reaches those who need it most, particularly those who are marginalized or economically disadvantaged. “Much research shows that underserved communities and low-income households suffer disproportionately from disasters,” a group of researchers at the Brookings Institution noted in a paper published last year.

But ensuring the effectiveness of disaster relief, as important and challenging as it is, represents only a small part of the policy agenda necessary to address the realities facing the country as extreme weather events become more common. Another issue that requires urgent attention is the widening crisis in the home insurance industry, which is proving woefully unprepared for sea level rise and other impacts of climate change. In the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where the rains caused by Helene caused untold damage, the vast majority of homeowners did not have the flood insurance that the federal government offers through the National Flood Insurance Program. The uninsured person must now pay for all flood reconstruction costs that are not covered by insurance FEMA. (The agency offers grants of up to $42,500 for reconstruction to homeowners who make it through the lengthy application process. The actual costs can be much higher.)

Even in Florida, where hurricanes are common, and in many coastal areas, including Miami, that are threatened by sea level rise, more than four in five homeowners do not have flood insurance. Cost is a factor. The average price for flood insurance in the state is about $800 per year. Inertia also plays a role. Until recently, most homeowners who were not located directly on the coast did not consider it necessary to insure themselves against flooding.

But it’s not just flood risks that aren’t covered. As major insurers pull out of areas at high risk of a climate disaster — states like Florida, California and Colorado — affordable home insurance policies are becoming harder to find in many other places, too. According to the Consumer Federation of America, average premiums rose about forty percent faster than inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index from 2017 to 2022, and government figures show they have continued to rise rapidly since then. “As the impacts of climate change worsen, the associated risks and insurance issues are no longer just coastal — they affect everyone,” Doug Heller, insurance director at the Consumer Federation, told me.

As the insurance industry faces increasing criticism from injured homeowners and the politicians who represent them, some of the industry’s leading figures have highlighted what they believe is at the heart of the problem. “You’ll never find an insurer who says, ‘I don’t believe in climate change,'” said John Neal, the CEO of Lloyd’s of London, the insurance giant Financial Times a few months ago. “The frequency and severity of weather-related losses are exponential.” Eric Andersen, the president of Aon, the world’s largest reinsurance broker, told Congress last year: “Just as the U.S. economy was overexposed to mortgage risk in 2008, the economy is overexposed to climate risk today excessively exposed.”

Traditionally, home insurance providers such as State Farm, Allstate and Liberty Mutual reduced their potential liabilities by entering into “reinsurance contracts” with companies such as Swiss Re and Munich Re that specialize in covering catastrophic risks. When a disaster strikes—a hurricane, an earthquake, a devastating forest fire—reinsurers help insurance companies pay their customers’ claims. But as costs caused by extreme weather events have risen in recent years – in 2022, Hurricane Ian alone caused around sixty billion dollars in insured losses – reinsurers have sharply increased their premiums, having a major impact on insurers’ finances and behavior had. Last year, the insurance company Farmers announced that it would completely withdraw from Florida. This year, State Farm announced it would not renew tens of thousands of home policies in California.

With growing gaps in the home insurance market, government-sponsored policies of last resort, known as Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (JUST) plans played an increasingly important role. Colorado, for example, recently created its own company JUST plan, while California’s existing plan saw a dramatic increase in usage. Although such policies are clearly better than nothing, they are generally much more expensive and less comprehensive than regular policies. (For example, they sometimes don’t cover water damage.) At the same time, smaller, thinly capitalized private insurance companies have moved into some high-risk markets, offering coverage that they may not be able to provide in the event of a disaster. According to a study of the Florida market published last year by researchers at Columbia, Harvard and the Federal Reserve, “these new insurers cover the riskiest areas, are less diversified, have less capital, and 20 percent of them will default.”

As the crisis deepens, some observers are calling for a national solution. Heller, the Consumer Federation’s insurance director, is calling on Congress to create a federal reinsurance facility – a publicly run version of companies like Swiss Re – that would allow large companies like Allstate and Farmers to insure against natural disasters more cost-effectively. Under Heller’s proposal, federal reinsurers would charge premiums commensurate with risks, and private insurers would have to reenter the markets they abandoned and offer full coverage. The impact of Helene and Milton “makes it clear that we can’t just wait and hope that the market solves the problem,” he told me. “In order to stabilize the property insurance market, public support is needed.”