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Climate

AM Briefing: Why Insurers Are 'Quiet Quitting'

On insurance woes, green shipping, and an Arctic Hail Mary

AM Briefing: Why Insurers Are 'Quiet Quitting'
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Parts of Arizona received more than a foot of snow over the weekend • Heavy rainfall caused flash floods in Argentina • A coastal flood watch is in effect for Washington, D.C., where Congress is back in session.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Insurance companies are ‘quiet quitting’ in extreme weather regions

Insurance companies are “quiet quitting” in certain high-risk areas of the United States, as extreme weather disasters become more frequent and more costly, reportsThe Wall Street Journal. Insurance agents and analysts tell the paper that, rather than face public backlash from officially abandoning states like Florida or California, carriers are resorting to more subtle – but equally effective – tactics to “choke off” new business. These include closing local offices or making it difficult for homeowners to even get a quote unless they fight through layers of red tape. “Most of the carriers have just flat out said, we are not accepting new business right now [in California]. But that statement is made to insurance agencies, not the public,” says Timothy Gaspar, head of a Los Angeles-based insurance agency. “Or they’re making it next to impossible to get a new policy.”

2. Winter storm leaves nearly 2,000 homes flooded in England

The devastating firsthand effects of the climate crisis are playing out in real time in England, where flooding from storm Henk left several villages under water and nearly 2,000 homes damaged. While the storm has passed, more than 160 flood warnings remained in effect through the weekend and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces mounting pressure to do more to protect vulnerable areas. The government announced on Saturday that households and businesses affected by flooding can now apply for grants to fund repairs and improve resilience. Farmers, too, may be eligible for funding.

Extreme flooding in England from storm Henk. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The country’s Environment Agency (EA) didn’t mince words, blaming the deluge squarely on climate change. Climate scientists have warned for years that rising global temperatures will translate into wetter winters for the U.K. “We will unfortunately experience more winters like this one in the future,” says Dr. Linda Speight, a hydrometeorologist at the University of Oxford. Henk was the U.K.’s third major storm this winter.

3. COP29 host Azerbaijan to boost fossil fuel production

Azerbaijan, the host country for COP29, plans to increase its production of fossil fuels – and specifically natural gas – by a third over the next 10 years, The Guardianreports. The country, which owns the Shah Deniz gas field in the Caspian Sea, gets two-thirds of its revenue from oil and gas and plans to double its gas exports to Europe by 2027. It will be the third consecutive petrostate to host the annual United Nations climate summit. “It is also even more repressive and authoritarian than the United Arab Emirates,” reportsHeatmap’s Jeva Lange. Last week the country appointed Mukhtar Babayev, a veteran of the oil industry, as the summit’s president.

4. Shipowners reluctant to upgrade to greener vessels

The global shipping fleet is getting old. A report from the Financial Times finds shipowners are resisting growing pressure to order newer, greener vessels and decarbonize the sector, opting instead to hold on to older ships. The average age of the global container shipping fleet is now 14.3 years, and the average age of tankers is 12.9 years. Why are owners keeping their aging vessels? One reason is they’re not confident in the availability of new energy sources like green fuel. Another is the soaring resale value of second-hand ships, which are being bought up by a “shadow fleet” transporting Russian oil. The United Nations International Maritime Organization (IMO) recently set a 2050 net zero target for global shipping, but no legally binding measures have been set to facilitate the goal. International shipping produced about 2% of the world’s energy-related carbon emissions in 2022.

5. Researchers want to use seawater to ‘refreeze’ Arctic ice

This week a team of British researchers will embark on a mission to learn if pumping seawater on top of sea ice can “refreeze” the Arctic, reports the Times of London. As global temperatures rise, sea ice is rapidly shrinking, decimating habitats for wildlife and exacerbating a global warming feedback loop: Less ice means more water to absorb the sun’s energy. The scientists plan to cut a hole in the ice and pump seawater on top of it, which they hope will freeze, “speeding up the natural freezing process underneath the ice,” the Times explains.

Pumping sea water on top of Arctic sea iceReal Ice

There are some big unknowns, one being whether using salty seawater could actually make the melting worse. Another is whether powering the project could even be feasible. This particular trial is being powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, but reversing ice loss trends would require about 10 million pumps. As one researcher put it: “That’s a lot of pumps.” This is one of several engineering methods being floated as potential solutions to the rapidly worsening sea ice problem, the Times reports. Another wild idea is to sprinkle glass powder on the ice to reflect the sun’s rays.

THE KICKER

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by 50% last year, but the Cerrado savanna, a national biodiversity hotspot, lost more than 2 million acres of native vegetation.

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Economy

AM Briefing: Liberation Day

On trade turbulence, special election results, and HHS cuts

Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs Loom
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: A rare wildfire alert has been issued for London this week due to strong winds and unseasonably high temperatures • Schools are closed on the Greek islands of Mykonos and Paros after a storm caused intense flooding • Nearly 50 million people in the central U.S. are at risk of tornadoes, hail, and historic levels of rain today as a severe weather system barrels across the country.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump to roll out broad new tariffs

President Trump today will outline sweeping new tariffs on foreign imports during a “Liberation Day” speech in the White House Rose Garden scheduled for 4 p.m. EST. Details on the levies remain scarce. Trump has floated the idea that they will be “reciprocal” against countries that impose fees on U.S. goods, though the predominant rumor is that he could impose an across-the-board 20% tariff. The tariffs will be in addition to those already announced on Chinese goods, steel and aluminum, energy imports from Canada, and a 25% fee on imported vehicles, the latter of which comes into effect Thursday. “The tariffs are expected to disrupt the global trade in clean technologies, from electric cars to the materials used to build wind turbines,” explained Josh Gabbatiss at Carbon Brief. “And as clean technology becomes more expensive to manufacture in the U.S., other nations – particularly China – are likely to step up to fill in any gaps.” The trade turbulence will also disrupt the U.S. natural gas market, with domestic supply expected to tighten, and utility prices to rise. This could “accelerate the uptake of coal instead of gas, and result in a swell in U.S. power emissions that could accelerate climate change,” Reutersreported.

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Podcast

The Least-Noticed Climate Scandal of the Trump Administration

Rob and Jesse catch up on the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund with former White House official Kristina Costa.

Lee Zeldin.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Inflation Reduction Act dedicated $27 billion to build a new kind of climate institution in America — a network of national green banks that could lend money to companies, states, schools, churches, and housing developers to build more clean energy and deploy more next-generation energy technology around the country.

It was an innovative and untested program. And the Trump administration is desperately trying to block it. Since February, Trump’s criminal justice appointees — led by Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia — have tried to use criminal law to undo the program. After failing to get the FBI and Justice Department to block the flow of funds, Trump officials have successfully gotten the program’s bank partner to freeze relevant money. The new green banks have sued to gain access to the money.

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Adaptation

Funding Cuts Are Killing Small Farmers’ Trust in Climate Policy

That trust was hard won — and it won’t be easily regained.

A barn.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Spring — as even children know — is the season for planting. But across the country, tens of thousands of farmers who bought seeds with the help of Department of Agriculture grants are hesitating over whether or not to put them in the ground. Their contractually owed payments, processed through programs created under the Biden administration, have been put on pause by the Trump administration, leaving the farmers anxious about how to proceed.

Also anxious are staff at the sustainability and conservation-focused nonprofits that provided technical support and enrollment assistance for these grants, many of whom worry that the USDA grant pause could undermine the trust they’ve carefully built with farmers over years of outreach. Though enrollment in the programs was voluntary, the grants were formulated to serve the Biden administration’s Justice40 priority of investing in underserved and minority communities. Those same communities tend to be wary of collaborating with the USDA due to its history of overlooking small and family farms, which make up 90% of the farms in the U.S. and are more likely to be women- or minority-owned, in favor of large operations, as well as its pattern of disproportionately denying loans to Black farmers. The Biden administration had counted on nonprofits to leverage their relationships with farmers in order to bring them onto the projects.

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Green