Insur Companies drop coverage of customers but cover big oil

[Rideback]

The Senate and the IRS are looking into how it is that these 6 insurance giants are hypocritically dropping coverage for homeowners while simultaneously covering big oil's projects.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate- ... sil-fuels/

'“By underwriting and investing in new and expanded fossil fuel projects, U.S. insurers are helping Big Oil bring us closer to the worst runaway climate scenarios, which threaten lives, livelihoods, and the federal budget,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who chairs the Senate Budget Committee and co-launched the investigation with Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

“This information is especially relevant as some of these companies begin to pull out of certain markets because they see the coming catastrophic climate risks — despite continuing to provide services to the fossil fuel industry,” he added.

Insurance firms say that because of the significant economic impacts from extreme weather and disasters, they have needed to drastically raise premiums, drop policyholders, and stop offering new policies in or pull out of states including Florida, Louisiana, Texas and California. These choices have often left people scrambling to find new coverage and have put many others in financial difficulty.

At the same time, some of these companies have been insuring fossil fuel projects, such as oil and gas pipelines. They have also invested large amounts of money in an industry that in the view of environmentalists and many climate scientists is perpetuating the very risks the insurers say they cannot afford to take on.


State Farm, for example, recently announced that it would not write new policies in California because of “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure.” The company is the state’s largest homeowner insurer, and its decision will have wide impacts on people’s ability to obtain and afford coverage. State Farm invests more money in oil and gas ventures than any other insurance provider in the United States, according to the Senate Budget Committee. As of 2019, the company held at least $30.9 billion of fossil-fuel-related investments.

“It seems nonsensical at best — and complicit at worst — for State Farm to carefully factor climate risk from wildfires into its homeowner’s insurance policies, refusing in some cases to provide such policies at all, while apparently ignoring the heightened climate risk that its investment portfolio is helping to create,” the letter to the company said.'