insurance industry
My Arrest at a NYC Insurance Protest—Why I Traveled from Texas to Fight Climate Injustice
Before being put in handcuffs, I knew there was no other place on Earth that I’d rather be than in that lobby and that I would proudly give up a few hours of freedom if it meant contributing to bending the long arc of history toward justice.
Earlier this month, I was arrested alongside four fellow Gulf South organizers because we chose to engage in a non-violent direct action inside Chubb’s towering building in New York City. I was not planning on breaking the law that day, but I’m glad I did and I want to explain why I’d do it again.
There are eight existing methane export terminals in the U.S., the second largest in the country is owned and operated by Cheniere near my hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas. Additionally, there are seven terminals under construction and 17 more terminals in the proposal phase in the U.S. Gulf Coast. Behind each of them is an insurance company. The pollution from the existing projects has already led to severe health issues and even deaths all while worsening climate change and extreme weather. The scorching heatwave that beat down on us during the protest was a stark reminder of that.
Insurers like Chubb have an integral role in securing a livable future. Everything oil and gas companies do needs insurance. Without insurance new projects would be all but impossible to build. We’ve repeatedly invited Chubb, AIG, and other insurers to our communities to show them the harm these projects are causing. We’ve shown them the documents—the explosions, shutdowns, and emission flarings—and have been met with silence, patronizing promises, or feet dragging.
Unified, determined, and honestly pissed off, over 200 of us marched down 6th Avenue to Chubb’s office. There I linked arms with fellow community members, two of whom were also from Corpus Christi and occupied the lobby. Originally, I was going to leave the group once the NYPD started to warn that they would begin arrests if we didn’t disperse. But as I sat there, I thought about the community that I love back home. I thought about the many heartbreaking conversations I’ve had with community members who are suffering the consequences of living so close to dozens of different poisonous facilities and having no direct avenue to holding the industry or those who insure it accountable.
I knew that this was my opportunity to use my body to demand justice on behalf of those who couldn’t be there with us in person. I was really scared, but I heard the chants outside coming from hundreds of my fellow Gulf South residents and I felt my good friends squeeze my hand tighter, letting me know that I wasn’t alone. I knew there was no other place on Earth that I’d rather be than in that lobby and that I would proudly give up a few hours of freedom if it meant contributing to bending the long arc of history toward justice.
Frontline activists, including the author (second from right) locking arms inside the Chubb headquarters during the direct action on June 26, 2024. (Photo Credit: Toben Dilworth/Rainforest Action Network)
As the arresting officer placed my hands behind my back and tightly zip-tied my hands together, I thought about the cruel irony inherent in arresting people who are working to protect our communities while those enabling the poisoning of our air and water are allowed to continue business as usual in their offices above us. It’s an apt encapsulation of the environmental and economic injustice we experience every day.
We traveled over 1,500 miles to New York to make sure these insurance executives understood the real-world consequences of their decisions. Our fight isn’t just about numbers; it’s about our lives, our homes, and our future. We won't stop disturbing their peace until they stop disturbing ours. Chubb, we’ll be back unless you stop insuring the destruction of our communities.
'Insure Our Survival': XR Launches Campaign at British Insurance Industry Awards Night
"We left the leading lights of the industry in no doubt about what they need to do: Stop insuring new oil, gas, and coal and focus on underwriting renewable energy," one activist said.
Key industry players arriving at London's Royal Albert Hall Wednesday night for the British Insurance Awards were met with a warning: Stop underwriting new oil, gas, and coal projects or face direct action from Extinction Rebellion.
Climate activists greeted the insurers with signs, photographs of extreme U.K. flooding, protest music, performance art, and business cards announcing XR's new "Insure Our Survival" campaign to pressure the industry away from backing fossil fuels.
"This is just the beginning," Insure Our Survival spokesperson Alex Penson said in a statement. "Thousands of XR activists stand ready to focus their nonviolent direct action energy on the insurance firms who are greenlighting the climate crisis by providing fossil fuel crooks with the insurance they need to dig and drill for oil, gas, and coal."
"It's time for insurers to use their superpower or be held responsible when all of our children face a future like the children in the photographs we showed at our protest,"
The insurance industry has emerged as a target of the climate movement in recent years, as advocates point out that new fossil fuel projects would not be able to move forward without it.
"The insurance industry has a superpower," Penson said. "At a stroke, it could stop the fossil fuel crooks in their tracks and save the lives of billions of people threatened from the worst-case climate scenarios that scientists are saying are increasingly possible."
However, to date the industry has not chosen to use that power. According to the most recent report from the global Insure Our Future campaign, not one of the 30 major insurance firms it analyzed in 2023 had policies in line with limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. The insurers included in the U.K.-based Lloyd's market were the leading fossil fuel insurers, Insure Our Future found, earning $1.6-2.2 billion in premiums from oil, gas, and coal in 2022.
"It's time for insurers to use their superpower or be held responsible when all of our children face a future like the children in the photographs we showed at our protest," Penson continued, "struggling to survive in barely habitable countries haunted by crop failures, malnutrition, deadly storms, floods, and heatwaves."
At Wednesday's event, XR activists held up photos taken by photographer Gideon Mendell, showing massive flooding in the U.K. that has been made worse by the climate emergency. They also held up signs reading, "Stop Insuring New Fossil Fuels" and "Insure Our Survival."
(Photo: Extinction Rebellion)
At the sound of a violin, XR's Oil Slickers—activists draped in black cloth to resemble an oil spill—glided around the insurance luminaries as they approached the hall for the industry's annual awards ceremony.
(Photo: Extinction Rebellion)
A choir also sang a song to the tune of "Imagine," including the line, "Imagine all insurers, fighting for us all."
"Last night we challenged insurers having a good time and congratulating each other on their good work at the Royal Albert Hall to face up to some uncomfortable truths—that some of their work leads to flooded homes and wrecked lives for their customers facing more and more climate crisis-driven extreme weather events," Penson said.
The activists also distributed business cards to the attendees warning them that, if they continued to back new fossil fuel projects, XR would target them with direct action designed to hurt both their reputations and their bottom line.
Pension said: "We left the leading lights of the industry in no doubt about what they need to do: Stop insuring new oil, gas, and coal and focus on underwriting renewable energy to speed a just transition to a low or no-carbon economy."
XR's U.K.-based Insure Our Survival campaign emerged from the global Insure Our Future campaign, and in particular an international week of action it organized in late February and early March, including events in London and around the U.K.
About a month after the protests, Zurich Insurance announced that it would no longer underwrite new oil and gas projects.
Sierra Signorelli, Zurich's chief executive of commercial insurance, said at the time that Zurich took the action in keeping with its goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.
"Further exploration and development of fossil fuels isn't required for the transition," Signorelli said. "We think it's the right time to evolve our position."
Insure Our Survival campaigner Lucy Porter said that since the spring, many insurance employees, in both senior and junior positions, had spoken to XR saying they supported a move away from backing climate-polluting projects.
"We intend to work with them to make insurance part of the climate solution, not part of the problem, and we invite other people in the industry to contact us and work with us," Porter said.
Porter continued, "To those who continue to put their profits before a livable planet we say: We will hold you accountable through an escalating campaign of nonviolent direct action across the country."
The Climate Crisis Is Also an Insurance Crisis
As another summer Danger Season gets underway, it’s time for policymakers and regulators to get serious about real solutions to address the insurance crisis.
If you own a home in a flood-prone community or in a wildfire-prone area, you’ve probably seen your flood or home insurance rates go up in the last year, or are worried that they soon will. You may even worry you’ll be dropped entirely by your insurance provider.
If you’re a renter, you too may be feeling the pinch as rising insurance premiums are also hurting the rental market for affordable housing. Accelerating risks from climate change are colliding with shortcomings in insurance markets—such as a lack of transparent information and affordability provisions—to create a perfect storm for people and communities on the front lines of floods, droughts, and wildfires. As climate scientist Michael Mann has said, “Uninsurability is the first stage of uninhabitability.”
An Insurance Market in Crisis
Last year, I wrote about the worsening risks of climate change for insurance, and since then the challenges have only grown and spread to more people and places. As another summer Danger Season gets underway with extreme floods in Texas and Florida, wildfires in California, and an above-average hurricane season predicted, it’s time for policymakers and regulators to get serious about real solutions to address the insurance crisis.
Having access to affordable home insurance is crucial to helping people safeguard what is likely to be their single biggest asset, and in turn protect their sense of well-being and stability. But we’ve all seen the news headlines of insurance companies withdrawing from states or announcing that they will stop issuing new property insurance policies, including in California, Florida, and Louisiana. Data show that insurers in many states are facing growing losses in the homeowner’s insurance part of their business, in large part due to the escalating impacts of extreme weather and climate.
Recent news stories also indicate that rapidly rising insurance costs are becoming a pain point for landlords and developers of affordable housing. Survey data show that this is quickly escalating into a crisis for the rental market for affordable housing. This has significant equity implications, given our nation’s long-standing under-investment in affordable housing and the huge housing affordability crisis we are already in.
One sobering reality is that the pace and magnitude of the physical risks from climate change in all too many places is outpacing the ability of insurance to provide protection.
Egregiously, even as climate-driven disasters leave communities reeling, private insurers are continuing to underwrite insurance for the expansion of massive new fossil fuel projects that are directly responsible for fueling the climate crisis—and show no sign of withdrawing from these markets!
As the global insurance market reacts to a worldwide increase in costly extreme disasters, major reinsurance companies (which provide insurance for primary customer-facing insurance companies) are also raising rates. And insurers are in turn trying to pass those rate hikes through to consumers. Rate hikes can be significant from one year to the next, an unexpected shock to many homeowners, especially those on low or fixed incomes. While the changes are most acute in highly exposed states (such as Florida), climate risks are now so widespread that the increase in insurance premiums is spilling into the broader market, even in places less exposed, and could also affect the mortgage market and taxpayers more broadly. These larger macroeconomic risks were highlighted in a recent National Academy of Sciences (NAS) workshop during a panel I chaired on insurance and climate risks.
How Climate Change Is Making Things Worse
The fossil fuel-driven increase in global average temperatures has induced a significant rise in extreme weather and climate events including extreme heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, and flooding. Last year the U.S. experienced a record-breaking 28 extreme weather and climate disasters whose costs each surpassed $1 billion. As a recent report from Moody’s shows, insurance costs have also been rising as disasters mount (see graph below). Many of these disasters bear the fingerprints of climate change. Continued development in high-risk areas is also increasing costs when disasters do strike. Insured losses are a big part of the costs measured but uninsured losses and incalculable losses—like loss of lives, and mental health impacts—are also mounting.
With the relentless rise in global average temperatures continuing, unfortunately, we can expect the trend of extreme weather and climate related disasters to continue. Today’s challenges in the insurance markets are likely just a taste of what’s to come.
Insurers of Last Resort
Florida has seen a number of private insurance companies go into receivership in the last few years, and Citizens Property Insurance, the state taxpayer-backed insurer of last resort, has taken on more policies as private insurers go out of business. The latest data show another uptick in Citizens policies in advance of what is expected to be an active hurricane season.
This trend of more and more policyholders moving from the private homeowners insurance market to state-backed insurance of “last resort”—called Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Plans—is also happening in other highly exposed states like California, Louisiana, and North Carolina. In California, the FAIR plan’s exposure to loss is getting increasingly unsustainable, putting it at risk of insolvency. Data from CA FAIR Plan show that “as of March 2024 (partial fiscal year), the FAIR Plan’s total exposure is $340 billion, reflecting a 20% year-over-year increase.” (See chart below)
A report from Milliman shows that:
- Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation grew by +277% between 2017 and 2022, resulting in $423 billion of in-force Total Insured Value (TIV) at the end of 2022.
- The Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corporation experienced the highest overall growth over the period, +414% resulting in $41 billion of 2022 in-force TIV.
- The Washington FAIR Plan (WA FAIR Plan) showed a five-year exposure increase of +226%, with about $70 million in TIV at the end of 2022.
Turmoil in Public and Private Insurance Markets
In both the public and private insurance markets, climate-driven risks are creating turmoil. The private homeowner’s insurance market—which covers insurance against wildfires—has seen major insurers like State Farm and Allstate cease to offer new insurance policies in California, and rates for others going up (as Travelers Insurance announced recently). Similar actions are also happening in parts of Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, which are also severely wildfire prone.
The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), administered by FEMA, is the primary source of flood insurance that isn’t covered by typical homeowners insurance. FEMA has also recently implemented changes to NFIP rates, with the intended aim of better reflecting current flood risk under the Risk Rating 2.0 program. Some of the steepest increases have come in states like Louisiana which are highly exposed to flooding; 10 states have sued FEMA to block the changes. And because Congress has long failed to enact affordability provisions—which the NAS, FEMA, and others have called for—these rate increases are causing significant hardship to many people with the least resources.
Much of the nation’s housing stock is also likely under-insured against flooding because only homes in FEMA’s high flood-risk zones with federally backed mortgages are required to carry flood insurance—and that insurance is likely inadequate given what the science shows about accelerating coastal flood risks, which are not captured by current FEMA flood maps.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has repeatedly called out the taxpayer-backed flood insurance program in its “High Risk Series” of reports on areas of exposure for the federal government. In its 2023 report, the GAO says: “The federal government needs to take additional actions to improve the long-term resilience of insured structures and crops. It also needs to address structural weaknesses in its insurance programs.”
The Role of Policymakers and Regulators
Last year, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) launched an investigation into the climate-driven insurance crisis and sent letters to 41 insurance companies requesting more information on how they are addressing this problem. Earlier this month, the Senate Budget Committee held a hearing on how climate change is challenging insurance markets. The hearing featured wrenching testimony from Deborah Wood, a Florida resident who has had to sell her home because of the unaffordability of insurance. Non-coastal states were also represented as Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) admitted in his opening statement that “Iowa had six property and casualty companies pull out of insuring Iowans.”
Private insurance—the category into which most homeowners’ insurance falls—is regulated at the state level by state insurance commissioners who are supposed to look out for the interests of consumers. However, their role can be different in different states, and even in the states with strong oversight, the power of regulators is somewhat limited. For example, California has tried to implement a moratorium on rate increases in the past, but that has only been possible on a temporary basis as wildfire impacts grow. Ultimately, some insurers are making the decision that it is unprofitable to operate in certain markets and are choosing to exit them.
Alongside the necessary but ultimately bounded role of insurance in a warming world, public and private decision makers must also shift investments away from business-as-usual maladaptive and risky choices to more resilient ones.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners have jointly issued a call for data to better understand the impacts of climate-driven risks on the homeowners insurance market, with a focus on affordability and availability of insurance. The first tranche of data is expected this month; however, some of the most climate-exposed states—including Florida, Texas, and Louisiana—will likely choose not to participate.
Having access to the latest data and science to understand not just today’s risks, but how those risks will change over the lifetime of a property, is crucial. Congress and regulators need to ensure more transparency in the insurance market on how companies are evaluating risks as they make decisions about premiums. There also needs to be better information on what kinds of incentives companies are providing for adaptation measures that would help reduce risks. Transparency will also help regulators look out for the interests of consumers and ensure that companies are not using climate risks as a cover for dropping less profitable lines of business—for example in less wealthy communities.
The Limits of Insurance—and the Need for Just Resilience Policies
One sobering reality is that the pace and magnitude of the physical risks from climate change in all too many places is outpacing the ability of insurance to provide protection. Former California insurance commissioner Dave Jones has said, “I believe we’re marching toward an uninsurable future,” in many places. That will have significant consequences for the many people, homes, and the trillions of dollars of infrastructure assets in harm’s way, and we need to plan for it now.
Alongside the necessary but ultimately bounded role of insurance in a warming world, public and private decision makers must also shift investments away from business-as-usual maladaptive and risky choices to more resilient ones. The nation must scale up resources for climate resilience and ensure they are reaching communities in a just and equitable way. Funding for safe, affordable, and climate-resilient housing must be expanded. Some places just won’t be possible to insure indefinitely, but people need options for fair pathways away from the risks.
And we’ve got to sharply curtail heat-trapping emissions and phase out fossil fuels to limit catastrophic climate impacts and help keep people safe in an increasingly perilous world.