• DISASTERSAs Wildfires Intensify, Utilities Want Liability Protections. But Then Who Pays?

    By Alex Brown

    As climate change drastically increases the frequency and severity of wildfires, power companies say they’re facing growing risk for payouts that could bankrupt them or require massive rate hikes on customers.

  • SCHOOL VIOLENCEStrengthening School Violence Prevention

    By Brian A. Jackson, et al.

    Violence by K-12 students is disturbingly common. Ensuring that schools have effective ways to identify and prevent such incidents is becoming increasingly important. Expanding intervention options and supporting K-12 school efforts in Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management (BTAM) would help.

  • DISASTER INSURANCEMississippi River Towns Pilot New Insurance Model to Help with Disaster Response

    By Delaney Dryfoos and Eric Schmid

    The pilot will test parametric insurance, which pays out quickly after agreed-upon “triggers”–such as wind speeds or river heights –reach a certain level.

  • DISASTER INSURANCEAs Trump Mulls His FEMA Pick, a Political Land Mine Awaits in Florida

    By Jake Bittle

    Florida may also present Trump with one of his thorniest political challenges: FEMA is hiking insurance rates and punishing flood-prone construction in the president-elect’s favorite state.

  • DISASTER-INSURANCE CRISISAmericans Face an Insurability Crisis as Climate Change Worsens Disasters – a Look at How Insurance Companies Set Rates and Coverage

    By Andrew J. Hoffman

    When home insurance averages $2,377 a year nationally, and $11,000 per year in Florida, this is a blow to many people. If affordability and relevance of insurance continue to degrade, real estate prices will start to decline in exposed locations. This will be the most tangible sign that climate change is driving an insurability crisis that disrupts wider financial stability.

  • WILDFIRES & INSURANCEIn Wildfire-Prone Areas, Homeowners Are Learning They’re Uninsurable

    By Lois Parshley

    Wildfires cause billions in home damage every year – and they are not only a problem in the U.S. West. Close to a quarter of the Americans now at risk of catastrophic wildfires live in the eastern half of the country, in places that may not be prepared to respond. Now, insurers no longer want to take on the risk.

  • CONSPIRACY THEORIESOur Brains Are Hardwired to Believe Lies and Conspiracy Theories, Research Shows

    A new book analyzes the speeches of dictators including Mussolini, Stalin, Putin and Hitler, as well as prominent hate groups and finds there is one thing they all have in common: they all use dehumanizing metaphors to instill and propagate hatred of others. With the rise of populist and far-right political movements in the 2010s, the use of dehumanizing metaphors to engender hatred of foreigners or of those who are different in some way has spread worldwide.

  • DISATSER INSURANCEFlorida’s Home Insurance Crisis Isn’t Going Away

    By Jake Bittle

    It’s hard to make money selling home insurance in Florida. For one thing, the state is very vulnerable to hurricanes, and those hurricanes are getting stronger thanks to climate change. A legal loophole has made the state a hotbed for fraudulent litigation over insurance claims, and companies lose even more money fighting those lawsuits. And reinsurers are charging insurance companies much higher fees owing to climate change-driven disaster losses.

  • DISASTER INSURANCEFor Beleaguered Homeowners and Their Insurers, the Fire Next Time Could Be a Flood

    By Felicity Barringer

    The data-driven insurance business is in trouble as climate-change-driven disasters arrive with greater fury and frequency. Catastrophic losses are something that insurance companies have long planned and budgeted for. But not this many.

  • DISASTERS’ COST2022 U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters in Historical Context

    By Adam B. Smith

    2022 was an intense year of costly disasters and extremes throughout much of the country. 2022 tied 2017 and 2011 for the third highest number of billion-dollar disasters. 2022 was also third highest in total costs (behind 2017 and 2005), with a price tag of at least $165.0 billion. This total annual cost may rise by several billion when we’ve fully accounted for the costs of the December 21-26 Central and Eastern winter storm/cold wave.

  • CLIMATE & DISASTER INSURANCECoughing Up Billions of Dollars to Save Florida’s Insurance Market

    By Jake Bittle

    In the three months since Hurricane Ian struck Florida, the state’s fragile property insurance market has been teetering on the brink of collapse. The historic storm caused over $50 billion in damage, and dealt a body blow to an industry that was already struggling to stay standing: Several insurance companies had already collapsed this year even before the hurricane, and major funders are now poised to abandon those that remain.

  • 2022 IN REVIEW: CLIMATE DISASTERS2022’s U.S. Climate Disasters: A Tale of Too Much Rain – and Too Little

    By Shuang-Ye Wu

    The year 2022 will be remembered across the U.S. for its devastating flooding and storms – and also for its extreme heat waves and droughts, including one so severe it briefly shut down traffic on the Mississippi River.

  • DISASTER INSURCANCEThe World’s Insurance Bill from Natural Disasters This Year: $115 Billion

    By Lylla Younes

    Extreme weather events have caused an estimated $115 billion in insured financial losses around the world this year according to Swiss Re, the Zurich-based reinsurance giant. That’s 42 percent higher than the 10-year average of $81 billion.

  • DISASTER INSURANCEWith Climate Impacts Growing, Insurance Companies Face Big Challenges

    By Renee Cho

    The impacts of climate change are all around us: sea level rise, severe heat waves, drought, extreme rainfall, more powerful storms. These impacts are making natural disasters more intense and more frequent. Losses from each disaster—drought and wildfires in the southwest, severe storms in the Midwest, flooding in Kentucky and Missouri, and hurricanes in the southeast—have exceeded $1 billion, with the cumulative cost of disasters over the last five years reaching $788.4 billion.

  • ARGUMENT: THE WAGNER GROUP AS FTOIt’s Time to Designate Wagner Group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization

    The international sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine have not targeted a key component in the Kremlin’s toolbox for international terror and coercion: the private military company (PMC) Wagner Group, which is owned by Vladimir Putin confidant Yevgeny Prigozhin. Wagner Group’s activities in Ukraine have been notorious since 2014, but they also have had a persistent presence in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic (CAR), and—most recently—Mali.