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Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I think it is virtually undisputed, among people who are not on fossil fuel's payroll, that climate change is real. Earlier this year, I came to the floor, and I asked my colleagues if they could all agree on that simple, scientific fact. Well, unfortunately, they could not.

So I came back. I returned to the floor in hopes that my Republican colleagues could, at least, agree to some of the simple truths that make up the bigger picture of climate change. I asked if we could agree, for instance, that sea levels are rising due to carbon emissions--again, essentially zero dispute on that fact in the scientific community--but Republicans objected.

I asked if we could agree that oceans are warming. Oceans are warming by multiple zettajoules. That is a number with 21 zeros behind it. It is a massive, massive measured scientific fact. And yet Republicans sent someone to the floor to object.

Again, there is essentially no nonfossil fuel-funded science disputing any of this. And I have to put the fossil fuel-funded science in air quotes because it is not real science. It is just designed to look like science and tell a lie in scientific vocabulary.

So if the environmental realities are too much for the Senate to acknowledge, perhaps my colleagues will at least recognize the economic threats that are emerging.

So here is today's simple truth: Climate change is driving up the cost of homeowners insurance. Can we agree on that?

Well, let me break down why we should agree on that. Climate change drives extreme weather disasters, including hurricanes and floods and wildfires. Disasters like those destroy homes and destroy infrastructure, and all that destruction carries a heavy cost.

Before the Trump administration stopped the practice in 2025, NOAA-- the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration--actually used to track the costs of this destruction every year. Thanks to NOAA, we have all this data going back that shows that climate disasters and climate costs have been increasing--quite dramatically, actually.

This chart draws on NOAA data from before 2025 and other aggregated data since that, and it shows that the increase in climate change- driven weather has been very notable between 1980 and today--from here up to here.

Costs of the disasters spike in particular years, depending on the type of disasters and where the impacts occurred. Hurricanes Harvey, Maria, and Irma made 2017--here, that--the costliest year on record. But setting aside the spikes, the average cost is steadily increasing, along with the frequency of disasters.

And these costs fall first where? On the insurance companies.

In 2023, insurers lost money in 18 of 50 States. That is an increase from 12 States 5 years previously and 8 States in 2013--8 to 12 to 18. The losses to insurers are also increasing.

To offset these climate-driven losses, insurance companies raised their premiums. And, sure enough, from 2013 to 2022, home insurance premiums more than doubled, rising to be over 20 percent of mortgage payments, on average.

When a family starts with a pretty big payment like their home insurance payment and it then doubles, that is a big hit to the family's finances.

We know this increase isn't just inflation because insurance premiums are increasing 40 percent faster than inflation. We know that this cost increase is driven by climate change, and we know it because the numbers don't lie. You can look at the areas with the highest climate risk, and you see that the cost increases most in those counties, the ones at most risk from climate change. The largest increases in insurance rates between 2014 and 2023 happened in the highest climate risk areas--obvious and true.

In high-risk States like Florida and Louisiana, premiums are estimated to average more than $14,000 and $11,000 respectively. That is not by accident. That is because those low-lying States are being hammered by increasingly violent and wet storms and hurricanes, combined with rising sea levels. Both phenomena are driven by climate change.

Higher home insurance means less money to spend on household essentials like groceries and gas, which are already more expensive than ever.

But higher insurance rates are not actually a family's worst-case scenario. The worst-case home insurance scenario for a family is nonrenewal. More and more, in high climate risk counties across the country, insurance companies, unwilling to take on this additional risk, are refusing to insure homes at all. This is a nightmare for homeowners.

First of all, you have the enormous hassle of having to go out and find new insurance, which probably costs more and is worse. But also, most lenders won't approve a mortgage unless the borrower also purchases insurance. And if the home is uninsurable, guess what. The home is unmortgageable, and an unmortgageable home is almost inevitably an unsellable home.

When you lose your insurance, lenders may also force place a new home insurance policy on you to replace the policy that was canceled. Force- placed insurance obviously protects first the lender's interest, not the homeowner's property, and it almost always costs much, much more, and it covers less. And it is added to the mortgage payment, and that can be a huge financial blow to a family.

All of this added cost and risk means that climate change is dragging down home equity value, undermining the primary driver of wealth appreciation for America's middle class, and, by the way, reducing property tax revenue for things like schools and public safety and basic services provided by local government.

The bottom line here is that climate risk has moved from the science department to the economics department, and it has landed hard in home insurance, and Americans are paying the price.

So as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged, and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 554; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I would just point out briefly in response to my distinguished colleague that an entire industry understands that climate risk is driving homeowners insurance.

The home insurance industry is actually under both a business model requirement and a fiduciary legal obligation to do its very, very best to predict risk, figure out what is driving that risk, and act accordingly.

For that reason, we had the president of Aon testify in the Budget Committee about how climate risk is damaging insurance markets. We have an editorial by a board member of the biggest insurance company in the world, Allianz. We have warnings from the risk manager--former risk manager--of Goldman Sachs. We have warnings from the former head of the Bank of England, now the Prime Minister of Canada. We have warnings from the Home Mortgage Association. We have warnings from the international Financial Stability Board.

There is an enormous amount of very solid and responsible data that comes not out of the environmental community but out of the financial community warning about the looming great climate insurance collapse. And if we refuse to pay attention to it, we will fail in our duties.
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