Critics Warn Media Outlets Failing to Explain Climate Cause Behind Los Angeles Fires

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Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

An aerial view of repair vehicles at sunset passing near beachfront homes that burned in the Palisades Fire on January 15, 2025 in Malibu, California. (Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

“Too much of the coverage has simply ignored the climate crisis altogether, an inexcusable failure when the scientific link between such megafires and a hotter, dryer planet is unequivocal,” wrote the founders of Covering Climate Now.

Covering the who, what, when, where, and why is journalism 101. So why are too few media outlets explaining the role that the climate crisis plays in the “why” behind the fires ravaging the Los Angeles region?

That’s the central question posed in an opinion piece published in The Guardian and elsewhere on Thursday authored by Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope, the founders of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of over 500 news outlets aimed at improving climate coverage, of which Common Dreams is a part.

Hertsgaard and Pope wrote that “too much of the coverage has simply ignored the climate crisis altogether, an inexcusable failure when the scientific link between such megafires and a hotter, dryer planet is unequivocal.”

They added: “Too many stories have framed the fires as a political spat between U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and California elected officials instead of a horrifying preview of what lies ahead if humans don’t rapidly phase out fossil fuels. Too often, bad-faith disinformation has been repeated instead of debunked.”

Misinformation, in many instances stemming from right-leaning sources, have proliferated since the blazes broke out last week. Trump in a social media post appeared to point the finger at California’s statewide water management plans for fire hydrants running dry as firefighters fought the blazes last week. Southern California does have plenty water stored, but the city’s infrastructure was not designed to respond to a fire as the large as the ones that broke out, experts told PBS. Another user on the platform X falsely claimed that California turned away fire trucks from Oregon because of their emission levels, according to KQED.

Hertsgaard and Pope also called for outlets to name names. “Rarely have stories named the ultimate authors of this disaster: ExxonMobil, Chevron, and other fossil fuel companies that have made gargantuan amounts of money even as they knowingly lied about their products dangerously overheating the planet,” they wrote.

While the fires are still burning, researchers are already drawing the links between climate change and the blazes. In a thread on Bluesky, the climate scientist Daniel Swain explained the concept of climate “hydroclimate whiplash”—which southern California experienced in 2024—and how this can create ideal conditions for fires to spread.

The authors of the opinion piece noted that there have been bright spots when it comes to covering the fires with an eye toward the climate emergency and debunking false and misleading claims about the fires. The duo highlight a Time story that is titled “The LA fires show the reality of living in a world with 1.5C of warming” and a column written by the Los Angeles Times’ Sammy Roth, which began: “Los Angeles is burning. Fossil fuel companies laid the kindling.”

Hertsgaard and Pope wrote, “When a house is on fire, by all means let journalism show us the flames.”

“But tell us why the house is burning, too,” they added.

Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Continue ReadingCritics Warn Media Outlets Failing to Explain Climate Cause Behind Los Angeles Fires

Nigel Farage Helps to Launch U.S. Climate Denial Group in UK

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Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage speaking at the Heartland Institute’s 40th anniversary fundraiser in September 2024. Credit: Heartland Institute / YouTube

The Heartland Institute, which questions human-made climate change, has established a new branch in London.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage was the “special guest of honour” at the launch of the Heartland Institute’s new European offshoot on Tuesday (17 December). 

The Heartland Institute – one of the organisations involved in the radical Project 2025 agenda for a second Donald Trump term – has been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change, and received at least $676,000 between 1998 and 2007 from U.S. oil major ExxonMobil. 

Heartland is known “for its persistent questioning of climate science”, according to Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, and it has received tens of thousands in donations from foundations linked to the owners of Koch Industries – a fossil fuel behemoth and a leading sponsor of climate science denial.

A Union of Concerned Scientists report in 2007 alleged that nearly 40 percent of the total funds received by Heartland Institute from ExxonMobil since 1998 were designated for climate change projects.

In a press release announcing its new UK-EU branch, based in London, Heartland boasted that it is “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting skepticism about man-made climate change”. 

Heartland Institute president James Taylor added that, “During recent years, a growing number of policymakers in the UK and continental Europe have requested Heartland establish a satellite office to provide resources to conservative policymakers throughout Europe”.

This has included Farage, who spoke at the Heartland Institute’s 40th anniversary fundraising event in September and called for the group to open an offshoot in Europe. “Give us your wisdom, give us your guidance, give us your discipline. I’d love to see Heartland on the other side of the pond,” he said.

Reform UK has called for the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target to be scrapped, and Farage’s Heartland speech urged the U.S. to re-elect Trump and “drill baby drill” for more oil and gas. 

DeSmog revealed in June that – between the 2019 election and the beginning of the 2024 campaign – Reform UK received 92 percent of its funding (£2.3 million) from oil and gas interests, highly polluting industries, and climate science deniers.

Heartland’s European branch will be run by Lois Perry, a climate science denier who has said it’s her “personal belief” that climate change “is happening” but “is not man made”. Perry followed in Farage’s footsteps earlier this year by becoming the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), though stood down after just 34 days. 

Perry formerly ran the anti-net zero pressure group CAR26, which has claimed that carbon dioxide is “essential to all life” and that its “welcome growth has greened our planet saving countless human and other lives”.

She told DeSmog that Heartland is “advocating for a balanced, evidence-based approach to climate policy, not the one-size-fits-all alarmism that seems to make headlines.” 

Perry added: “As for my past with UKIP and CAR26, I wear those roles with pride. I’ve always been upfront about my views: climate change happens, but the hysteria around human causation is, frankly, a bit of a stretch. CO2 is indeed vital for life, turning our planet into a blooming, green paradise rather than a barren wasteland.”

In reality, authors working for the world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have said that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.

The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought” – all of which “will put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.”

Farage and Project 2025

Farage’s views on climate change appear to reflect those of Perry and the Heartland Institute. 

Although two thirds of his constituents are concerned about climate change, Farage stated in an interview with climate science denier Jordan Peterson in July that: “I do find it extraordinary that people call carbon dioxide a pollutant, because as I understand it, plants don’t grow without carbon dioxide.”

In his speech to the Heartland Institute in September, Farage also claimed that the UK’s efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions doesn’t “make any bloody difference at all”, due to the emissions produced by larger countries like China. 

He also repeated the misleading claim that “man-made carbon dioxide is only about 3 percent of global, annual production of carbon dioxide”. In fact, human activity has raised the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50 percent in less than 200 years, according to NASA.

Farage has been attempting to cultivate ties between Reform UK and senior figures associated with Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and is expected to once again pull the U.S. out of the flagship 2015 Paris Agreement. 

Farage this week met with key Trump ally and donor Elon Musk, who invested at least $277 million in the Republican’s re-election campaign, and said that he would seek to “negotiate” a donation from Musk to Reform UK.

“The threat of U.S. interference in our democracy isn’t just contained to Elon Musk’s touted $100 million donation to Reform,” said Hannah Greer, Good Law Project campaigns manager. “Farage has now helped a fossil-fuel-funded American climate science denial think tank to set up shop in the UK.

“Having the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Net Zero Watch around to pollute our politics is bad enough already; now it seems they will have some competition. But is there enough floorspace left at 55 Tufton Street for them all to share?”

During the recent presidential campaign, Democrats highlighted that Trump’s second term agenda was being drafted by another radical right-wing think tank, the Heritage Foundation, under the banner Project 2025. 

The document proposes a range of radical anti-climate policies, including slashing restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, scrapping investment in renewable energy, and gutting the Environmental Protection Agency. 

Project 2025 – heavily funded by just six family fortunes – has been accused of being “extreme” and “authoritarian” for setting out a plan to rapidly “reform” the U.S. government by shuttering bureaus and offices, overturning regulations, and replacing thousands of public sector employees with hand-picked political allies of Trump. The agenda also proposes radical tax cuts, and a crackdown on reproductive rights. 

Farage has been heavily criticised for venturing regularly to the U.S. since his election in July, rather than spending time in his constituency of Clacton. The Reform UK leader has made six trips to the U.S. as an MP, often meeting with avowed climate deniers, despite his coastal constituency being at risk of flooding due to global warming. 

Reform UK and the Heartland Institute were approached for comment. 

Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog

Continue ReadingNigel Farage Helps to Launch U.S. Climate Denial Group in UK

ExxonMobil Plans to Keep an Entire Generation on the Hook for Its Climate Destruction

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Original article by Allie Lindstrom republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods sits during testimony before the U.S House Committee on Oversight and Reform on October 28, 2021.  (Photo: Screenshot/C-SPAN)

Public pensions must exit Exxon to protect workers’ savings and retirement.

It is no secret that ExxonMobil poses some of the most powerful opposition to climate action at every level of government. Environmentalists have long pointed out that Exxon Knew about climate change, and instead of pivoting their business model to a more sustainable energy future, buried the evidence and began a decades-long disinformation campaign.

Leaders across the country have wisened up to the oil major’s dirty politics, which is why the House Oversight Committee has been investigating Exxon and its peers, and state attorneys general have sued the company for damages. Most recently, California AG Rob Bonta, alongside environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, sued the company for lying to the public about the recyclability of plastics.

If the tide is turning against Exxon, why haven’t investors caught on?

Unrestricted funding for companies engaged in fossil fuel expansion threatens workers’ right to dignified retirement safety, a right that unions have fought hard to win.

ExxonMobil sparked headlines and investor outrage this spring when the company sued its own shareholders over a climate-related shareholder resolution. Public pensions representing trillions in worker savings across the country pushed back and mounted a vote-no effort against CEO Darren Woods and Director Joseph Hooley, but Wall Street asset managers watered down their efforts instead offering unwavering support of Exxon.

To add insult to injury, Woods made an appearance at the Council of Institutional Investors—a nonprofit dedicated to advocating for the investor rights of public, union, and private employee benefit funds—in September. There, he promised to continue to crack down on “extreme” investors who are concerned that the company’s business model has loaded the economy with systemic financial risks and instability. Never mind that such a definition of extreme would describe many of the institutions present, which represent over 15 million workers and $5 trillion in assets under management.

But perhaps most indicative of ExxonMobil’s commitment to business-as-usual pollution is the bonds they’ve issued this fall, with a maturity date of 2074.

These long-dated bonds represent unrestricted funds for ExxonMobil to continue to pursue fossil fuel expansion and plastic pollution well past most of the world’s—and investors’—Net Zero by 2050 goals. This is an especially risky gamble for investors with long-term obligations, including public pension funds that manage millions of workers’ retirement savings.

Not only is the future of oil and gas uncertain, but prolonged pollution wrought by disinformation and investor cash increases economy-wide systemic risks. Investors—and the everyday people who rely on institutions to manage their savings—will be left holding the purse strings as climate change wreaks havoc. Moreover, bond ownership does not come with the shareholder rights investors hope to use to influence company behavior. This gives Exxon complete freedom to use the funds however it wishes, even if that’s out of alignment with investor interests.

This increasing risk is why we joined California Common Good and pension beneficiaries to testify during a recent CalPERS Board meeting to ask CalPERS to issue a moratorium on purchasing Exxon bonds.

The Sierra Club represents millions of members, many of whom are saving for retirement in the face of an uncertain future and working tirelessly to protect the communities and places they love. Whether relying on a public pension plan or a private asset manager, our members rely on investment professionals to keep their futures in mind. Unrestricted funding for companies engaged in fossil fuel expansion threatens workers’ right to dignified retirement safety, a right that unions have fought hard to win. That’s why we call on investors, particularly public pension funds, to refuse to participate in Exxon’s bond issuances.

Original article by Allie Lindstrom republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
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Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels. Second version, corrected text.
Continue ReadingExxonMobil Plans to Keep an Entire Generation on the Hook for Its Climate Destruction

Taxing Big Oil would grow UN climate loss & damage fund twentyfold, analysis finds

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A small tax on just seven of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies could grow the UN Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage by more than 2000% and help address the costs of extreme weather events, according to new analysis published today by Greenpeace International and Stamp Out Poverty. The organisations are calling for a long term global tax on fossil fuel extraction, with year-on-year increases, combined with taxes on excess profits and other levies.

A ‘Climate Damages Tax’ would put a cost on every tonne of carbon emitted by the coal, oil and gas extracted – starting at $5 per tonne and rising each year thereafter. If it was imposed on ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, TotalEnergies, BP, Equinor and ENI it could raise $15 billion in the first year alone to help the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries pay for the escalating cost of damage caused by climate change. Currently, just $702 million has been pledged to the loss and damage fund, while the combined profits of those fossil fuel companies exceeds $148 billion.

Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London.
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)

Earlier this month, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, French President Emmanuel Macron and Kenyan President William Ruto stated their support for a Climate Damages Tax.

The briefing also highlights the financial costs of some of this year’s worst weather events that have been attributed to climate change, totalling over $64bn. These include Hurricane Beryl, Hurricane Helene, the heatwave in India in May, Typhoon Carina/Gaemi, the floods in Brazil in May, and the floods in Kenya and Tanzania in April. The costs of damage from the disasters surveyed range from US$2.9bn (Typhoon Carina) to US$ 25bn (heatwaves in India), and present just a fraction of the total cost of loss and damage globally over the last year. 

A Climate Damages Tax imposed only on wealthy OECD countries could play an essential role in helping the poorest and most vulnerable to rebuild after climate-related disasters. Increasing annually by US$5 per tonne of CO2-equivalent based on the volumes of oil and gas extracted, the tax could raise an estimated US$900 billion by 2030 to support governments and communities around the world as they face growing climate impacts.

“While oil and gas giants keep raking in grotesque levels of profit from exploiting resources, the damages resulting from the industry’s operations are disproportionately borne by people who did not cause the crisis,” said David Hillman, Director of Stamp Out Poverty. “A climate damages tax – along with other levies on fossil fuels and high-emitting sectors – will make polluters pay for the cost of climate impacts, as well as supporting workers and affected communities in the transition to clean energy, jobs, and transport.”

“Who should pay? This is fundamentally an issue of climate justice and it is time to shift the financial burden for the climate crisis from its victims to the polluters behind it,” said Abdoulaye Diallo, Co-Head of Greenpeace International’s Stop Drilling Start Paying campaign. “Our analysis lays bare the scale of the challenge posed by climate loss and damage and the urgent need for innovative solutions to raise the funds to meet it. We reject Big Oil’s assault on people and democracy and call on governments worldwide to adopt the Climate Damages Tax and other mechanisms to extract revenue from the oil and gas industry.” 

The Loss and Damage Fund was announced at COP27 in Egypt to help developing countries pay for impacts of natural disasters caused by climate change. Recently renamed the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), it currently has US$702 million in pledged funds. According to Greenpeace International and Stamp Out Poverty’s calculations, a Climate Damages Tax levied on seven major international oil and gas companies would add in the first year alone US$15.02 billion, corresponding to over 21 times what is currently pledged to the fund. 

Paying the price: The economic impacts of seven extreme weather events in 2024 make the case for why climate polluters should pay”.

Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards

Continue ReadingTaxing Big Oil would grow UN climate loss & damage fund twentyfold, analysis finds

‘The Insurance Industry Is the Fossil Fuel Industry’: 

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Original article by Janine Jackson republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

CounterSpin interview with Derek Seidman on insurance and climate

Janine Jackson interviewed writer/researcher Derek Seidman about insurance and climate  for the October 4, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Janine Jackson: As we watch images of devastation from Hurricane Helene, it’s hard not to hold—alongside sadness at the obvious loss—anger at the knowledge that things didn’t have to be this way. Steps could have been, still could be taken, to mitigate the impact of climate change, and making weather events more extreme, and steps could be taken that help people recover from the disastrous effects of the choices made.

As our guest explains, another key player in the slow-motion trainwreck that is US climate policy—along with fossil fuel companies and the politicians that abet them—is the insurance industry, whose role is not often talked about.

Washington Post (9/3/24)

Derek Seidman is a writer, researcher and historian. He contributes regularly to Truthout and to LittleSis. He joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Derek Seidman.

Derek Seidman: Hey, thank you. Great to be here.

JJ: In your super helpful piece for Truthout, you cite a Washington Post story from last September. Here’s the headline and subhead:

Home Insurers Cut Natural Disasters From Policies as Climate Risks Grow:

Some of the largest US insurance companies say extreme weather has led them to end certain coverages, exclude natural disaster protections and raise premiums.

I think that drops us right into the heart of the problem you outline in that piece. What’s going on, and why do you call it the insurance industry’s “self-induced crisis”?

DS: Thank you. Well, certainly there is a growing crisis. The insurance industry is pulling back from certain markets and regions and states, because the costs of insuring homes and other properties are becoming too expensive to remain profitable, with the rise of extreme weather. And so we’ve seen a lot of coverage in the past few months over this growing crisis in the insurance industry.

Derek Seidman: “The insurance industry itself is a main actor in driving the rise of extreme weather, through its very close relationship to the fossil fuel industry.”

But one of the critical things that’s left out of this is that the insurance industry itself is a main actor in driving the rise of extreme weather, through its very close relationship to the fossil fuel industry. And in this narrative in the corporate media, the insurance industry on the one hand and extreme weather on the other hand, are often treated like they’re completely separate things, and they’re just sort of coming together, and this “crisis” is being created, and it’s a real problem that the connections aren’t being made there.

So I guess a couple things that should be said, first, are that the insurance industry is the fossil fuel industry, and its operations could not exist without the insurance industry.

We can look at that relationship in two ways. So first, of course, is through insurance. The insurance giants, AIG, Liberty Mutual and so on and so on, they collectively rake in billions of dollars every year in insuring fossil fuel industry infrastructure, whether that’s pipelines or offshore oil rigs or liquified natural gas export terminals. This fossil fuel infrastructure and its continued expansion, this simply could not exist without underwriting by the insurance industry. It would not get its permit approvals, it would just not be able to operate, it couldn’t attract investors and so on. So that’s one way.

Another way is that, and this is something a lot of people might not be aware of, but the insurance industry is an enormous investor in the fossil fuel industry. Basically, one of the ways the insurance industry makes money is it takes the premiums, and it pools a chunk of it and invests those. So it’s a major investor. And the insurance industry, across the board, has tens of billions of dollars invested in the fossil fuel industry.

And this is actually stuff that anybody can go and look up, because some of it’s public. So, for example, the insurance giant AIG, because it’s a big investor, it has to disclose its investments with the SEC. And earlier this year, AIG disclosed that, for example, it had $117 million invested in ExxonMobil, $83 million invested in Chevron, $46 million in Conoco Phillips, and so on and so on.

Jacobin (2/7/22)

So, on the one hand, you have this hypocritical cycle where the insurance industry is saying to ordinary homeowners, who are quite desperate, we need to jack up the price on your premiums, or we need to pull away altogether, we can’t insure you anymore—while, on the other hand, it’s driving and enabling and profiting from the very operations, fossil fuel operations, that are causing this extreme weather in the first place, that the insurance industry is then using to justify pulling back from insuring just regular homeowners.

JJ: This is a structural problem, clearly, that you’re pointing to, and you don’t want to be too conspiratorial about it. But these folks do literally have dinner with one another, these insurance executives and the fossil fuel companies. And then I want to add, you complicate it even further by talking about knock-on effects, that include making homes uninsurable. When that happens, well, then, that contributes to this thing where banks and hedge funds buy up homes. So it’s part of an even bigger cycle that folks probably have heard about.

DS: Yeah, absolutely. This whole scenario, it’s horrible, because it impacts homeowners and renters. If you talk to landlords, they say that the rising costs of insurance are their biggest expense, and they are, in part, taking that out on tenants by raising rents, right?

But it also really threatens this global financial stability. I mean, with the rise of extreme weather, and homes becoming more expensive to insure, or even uninsurable, home values can really collapse. And when they collapse, aside from the horrific human drama of all that, banks are reacquiring foreclosed homes that, in turn, are unsellable because of extreme weather, and they can’t be insured.

The big picture of all this is that it leads to banks acquiring a growing amount of risky properties, and it can create a lot of financial instability. And we saw what happened after 2008, as you mentioned, with private equity coming in and scooping up homes. And so, yeah, it creates a lot of systemic financial instability, opens the door for financial predators like private equity and hedge funds to come in.

JJ: And it seems to require an encompassing response, a response that acknowledges the various moving pieces of this. I wonder, finally, is there responsive law or policy, either on the table now or just maybe in our imagination, that would address these concerns?

DS: There are organizers that are definitely starting to do something about it, and there are some members of Congress that are also starting to do something about it.

For this story, I interviewed some really fantastic groups. One of them is Insure Our Future, and this is sort of a broader campaign that is working with different groups around the country, and really demanding that insurers stop insuring new fossil fuel build-out, that they phase out their insurance coverage for existing fossil fuels, for all the reasons that we’ve been talking about today.

At the state level, there’s groups that are doing really important and interesting things. So one of the groups that I interviewed was called Connecticut Citizen Action Group, and they’ve been working hard, in coalition with other groups in Connecticut, to introduce and pass a state bill that would create a climate fund to support residents that are impacted by extreme weather. (Connecticut has seen its fair share of extreme weather.) And this fund would be financed by taxing insurance policies in the state that are connected to fossil fuel projects. So it’s also a disincentive to invest in fossil fuels.

In New York, a coalition of groups and lawmakers just introduced something called the Insure Our Communities bill. And this would ban insurers from underwriting new fossil fuel projects, and it would set up new protections for homeowners that are facing extreme weather disasters.

I spoke to organizers in Freeport, Texas, with a group called Better Brazoria, and these are people that are on the Gulf Coast, really on the front lines. And Better Brazoria is just one of a number of frontline groups along the Gulf Coast that are organizing around the insurance industry, and they’re trying to meet with insurance giants, and say to them, “Look, what you’re doing is, we’re losing our homeowner insurance while you’re insuring these risky LNG plants that are getting hit by hurricanes, and fires are starting,” and trying to make the case to them that this is just not even good business for them.

And then, more recently, you’ve seen Bernie Sanders and others start to hold the insurance industry’s feet to the fire a little more, opening up investigations into their connection to the fossil fuel industry, and how this is creating financial instability.

Truthout (9/27/24)

So I think this is becoming more and more of an issue that people are seeing is a real problem for the financial system, and it’s something that we should absolutely think about when we think about the climate crisis, and the broader infrastructure that’s enabling the fossil fuel industry to exist, and continue its polluting operations that are causing the climate crisis and extreme weather. So I think we’re going to see only more of this going forward.

JJ: All right, then, we’ll end it there for now.

We’ve been speaking with Derek Seidman. You can find his article, “As Florida Floods, Insurance Industry Reaps What It Sowed Backing Fossil Fuels,” on Truthout.org. Thank you so much, Derek Seidman, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

DS: Thank you.

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Original article by Janine Jackson republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Continue Reading‘The Insurance Industry Is the Fossil Fuel Industry’: