Main Topic: The ability of emergency systems and infrastructure to handle increasingly frequent and severe disasters in a warming world.
Key Points:
1. Climate change is intensifying wildfires, storms, droughts, heat waves, and floods, challenging the idea of how to stay safe from extreme events.
2. Recent disasters, such as the wildfires in Maui and heavy rains in California and New York City, have exposed the limitations of existing resilience systems.
3. Building climate resilience requires considering the convergence of multiple hazards, involving diverse experts, and including at-risk communities in decision-making processes.
Hurricane Idalia may become the costliest climate disaster in the US this year, with potential damages estimated between $9.36bn and $20bn, highlighting the increasing frequency and severity of weather-related events that are impacting the insurance and risk management industries.
The United States has already experienced 23 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in 2021, surpassing the previous record of 22 events in 2020, with a total cost of $57.6 billion and the potential for more to come.
Hurricane Idalia became the 23rd billion-dollar weather disaster in the United States this year, surpassing the previous record set in 2020, highlighting the increasing frequency and cost of such catastrophes, which experts attribute to factors including climate change and ongoing development in disaster-prone areas.
Climate change is causing insurance costs to rise and insurers to leave at-risk areas, potentially leading to a collapse in US home values, according to a study from First Street Foundation, which estimates that 39 million homes are still insured at prices that do not match the climate risks they face.
A climate-risk intelligence firm has warned that some of the most overvalued housing markets in the US, particularly in California and Florida, are at high risk of climate-related damage from extreme weather events, leading to potential losses of $1.3 trillion to $2.2 trillion in a market rationalization.
Insurers are struggling to make a profit in parts of the US due to climate change exacerbating the losses caused by disasters such as fires and floods.
Most economic models predict that climate change will have a minor impact on global GDP, but this is a failure of the models as they cannot adequately capture the upheavals that climate change could cause in fundamental markets such as agriculture and trading to escape food shortages.
The damage caused by extreme weather due to the climate crisis has resulted in a cost of $16 million per hour over the past two decades, with storms, floods, heatwaves, and droughts becoming more frequent and intense due to global heating, according to a study that estimates average annual costs of $140 billion, though the figures are likely underestimated due to lack of data.
China has suffered economic losses of $42 billion over the first nine months of 2023 due to natural disasters, including torrential rains, landslides, hailstorms, and typhoons, which have caused deaths, massive flooding, and crop damage.
Global economic losses could reach $5 trillion due to extreme weather events linked to climate change, causing crop failures and food and water shortages, according to research by Lloyd's of London and the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies.