The climate crisis is an insurance crisis.
In 2024, the United States experienced 27 weather and climate disasters that each cost $1 billion or more in damages.
These included Hurricane Helene, which wiped away entire communities in western North Carolina, and but not the unprecedented 2025 wildfires in California, with total costs of at least $250 billion.
Although our planet has always experienced fires, floods, storms, and droughts, climate change has made such extreme weather more common, more costly,and more dangerous -- and the nation’s largest insurance companies are taking note.
Over the past few years household names like State Farm, Farmers, Allstate, Geico, and Liberty Mutual have stopped renewing policies for people in climate-vulnerable areas.
Where they continue to offer property insurance, they have raised rates. The cost of homeowners insurance rose 35% between 2021 and 2023, according to Policygenius.
You don’t need to be a homeowner to be impacted. Where property insurance goes up, so too does the cost of rent – landlords simply fold additional insurance costs into monthly rents. These costs are not typically disclosed to tenants.
We are paying the price
Numerous recent reports tie the climate crisis to the worsening insurance crisis.
Climate-attributed losses now account for 38% of insurance payouts for weather losses, and are growing by 6.5% per year, according to Insure Our Future.
A Senate Budget Committee report finds that states and counties most exposed to climate risk are among those with the highest insurance non-renewal rates.
The Federal Insurance Office found the cost of property insurance is increasing 8.7% faster than inflation and 14.7% faster in climate-stressed areas.
In other words, property insurance is becoming an unregulated and unmanaged cost of the climate crisis levied on every one of us. Without government intervention, large swaths of the country could become virtually uninsurable.
What can you do?
Fortunately, there are alternatives to the largest insurance companies that are dropping customers and raising rates. Green America’s Climate Smart Insurance Directory lists local and regional insurance companies in all 50 states.
These companies have been quietly serving their communities for decades. They are not household names because they don’t have huge advertising budgets, but they are financially stable – and in many cases people can save hundreds of dollars by switching.