When moderators at the presidential debate asked the candidates about plans to fight climate change, Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted a problem quietly accelerating across the country: homeowners are losing their insurance.
Harris said the costs of inaction on global warming are already having an impact: homeowners nationwide face soaring insurance costs — or the loss of coverage altogether — as extreme weather like storms and wildfires becomes more extreme.
Climate change is “very real,” Harris said. “You ask anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences who now is either being denied home insurance or it’s being jacked up; you ask anybody who has been the victim of what that means in terms of losing their home, having nowhere to go.”
It’s an issue the Harris campaign seems to have zeroed in on. The day before the debate, Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was in Nevada near the Davis Fire, where he talked to first responders about rising insurance costs.
“We’re seeing a lot of our residents losing their fire insurance and/or premiums are going up, you know, 1,000%, so [Walz] was very cognizant of that issue,” said Adam Mayberry, a spokesperson for Truckee Meadows Fire and Rescue.
A lot of the turmoil has been concentrated in states like California and Colorado that face the threat of wildfires, and in coastal states like Louisiana and Florida where storms inflict billions in damage.
In a recent report, the Federal Reserve said low- and moderate-income homeowners in the middle of the country are buying insurance with less coverage as premiums increase, and that some low-income households are dropping insurance in an area that covers Texas and parts of Louisiana and New Mexico.
The shrinking of home insurance options comes at a time when most American families have little in savings, and many can't get a loan to repair a house that's damaged or destroyed. So, when people can't get home insurance, or have inadequate coverage, the consequences can be profound.
In addition to the threats posed by climate change, insurance markets are under pressure because the cost of disasters is going up. People keep moving to coastal regions vulnerable to hurricanes and to rural, forested areas that are prone to wildfires. When homes get destroyed, inflation has made it more expensive to rebuild.
Harris was also asked at the debate about her position on the oil and gas drilling technique known as fracking. When she ran for president in 2019, Harris supported a fracking ban, but she has reversed course since then.
“I will not ban fracking,” Harris said, adding that the country needs diverse sources of energy to “reduce our reliance on foreign oil.”
Despite the focus of the Biden-Harris administration on limiting climate change, the U.S. has produced and exported a record amount of oil.
Pennsylvania, the site of Tuesday’s debate and a battleground state that’s seen as key to the race for the White House, is a major natural gas producer. But the clean energy industry is also a big employer in the commonwealth.
Trump didn’t say at the debate what, if anything, he would do to limit global warming. The former president for years has cast doubt on the scientific consensus that the Earth is getting hotter mainly because of burning fossil fuels. Trump’s campaign has said he would try to boost fossil fuel production in a second term.
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