The $1 Trillion Climate Problem Republicans Are Ignoring
For all the panic in Washington about inflation, the federal deficit, and the mounting cost of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the United States has been quietly racking up exorbitant costs that the administration would prefer nobody tally. In the 12-month period ending on May 1, the U.S. spent an estimated $1 trillion on disaster recovery and other climate-related needs, according to a new analysis released on Wednesday by Bloomberg Intelligence.
Those costs aren’t just federal budget line items, but escalating monthly expenses borne by millions of people who may not have personally experienced weather disasters. Much of the burden comes from rising insurance premiums. Homeowners’ insurance rates have risen more than 40 percent in the last six years, according to a separate study published last week by the online lender LendingTree. While Florida and California tend to grab the most attention for their insurance troubles, the highest rates and increases have been in Midwestern states, which are racked by tornadoes, wind, and hailstorms. Rates in Nebraska have climbed by more than 70 percent, and homeowners there now pay an average of $5,912 for an annual policy—more than twice the national average and the second-highest average in the nation after Oklahoma. That’s thanks in large part to an uptick in weather disasters that are often exacerbated by climate change. Through the 1990s, Nebraska experienced just four weather-related disasters that cost more than $1 billion. In the last five years, there have been 17. (That data is compiled in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s tally of billion-dollar disasters, which the Trump administration has decided to end, along with a slew of other climate and weather–related research.)
This nationwide spike in insurance premiums—which rose by 11.4 percent last year, 11 percent in 2023, and 5.4 percent in 2022—has similarly come amid an onslaught of weather-related disasters. Insurers have pleaded with statewide regulators to allow them to raise rates because of larger than usual payouts, citing mounting losses from wildfires and hurricanes and in some cases threatening to even pull out of some states entirely. As they’ve raised premiums, though, U.S. property casualty insurers have quietly raked in record profits. Property casualty insurers earned a record $169 billion in profits last year—a 90 percent increase over 2023 profits and a 333 percent increase from 2022. According to the credit-rating agency AMBest, property casualty insurers collected more than $1 trillion in premiums for the first time ever in 2024, reflecting both rising home insurance and auto premiums, which rose by an average of 26 percent last year.
Insurance companies aren’t the only beneficiaries. Bloomberg Intelligence analysts identified 100 companies—including insurance companies, engineering firms, and building materials sellers—that stand to benefit from disaster-related spending and that collectively outperformed the S&P index by 7 percent in each of the last three years.
