Insuring a home is more expensive than ever. Some studies, like one from ICE Mortgage Technology, found that over the last five years home insurance rates have gone up by 70%.
Just this year alone, nearly half of the homeowners in the country have had their home insurance rates go up, according to J.D. Power. In a press release it wrote, that’s “the highest rate of insurer-initiated rate raises in more than a decade.”
This increase is felt by the majority of Americans, too.
A recent poll conducted by Yale and George Mason universities found that 82% of respondents recognized an increase in their home insurance costs. Some 66% said that their costs have gone up “a lot.”
The purpose of the Yale/George Mason poll, titled "Climate Change in the American Mind," was not to ascertain whether homeowners were aware of the increase, so much as to find out what causes they attributed those increases to.
“We wanted to find out, ‘OK, but what do they think are the reasons that these rates are going up?’” said Josh Ettinger, one of the study’s authors and a postdoctoral research fellow at George Mason. “So, we asked them about a few things.”
Inflation, increased property values, rising corporate profits and more natural disasters were among the causes. Ettinger and his colleagues found that most Americans agreed that some combination of those factors were to blame.
For natural disasters specifically, nearly 70% thought that events like wildfires, hurricanes and flash floods were the reason for rising rates, with 47% thinking those natural disasters had a large impact on insurance costs.
Is climate change real?
But as to whether natural disasters are due to climate change, only 48% thought the two were connected.
That number was very different when split out among political party lines.
“When we look at it politically, we see sharp divisions,” Ettinger said. “Among liberal Democrats, 71% of them say global warming is driving up these costs, but only 28% of conservative Republicans.”
Which is not necessarily a very surprising finding. During his remarks at the UN General Assembly this past Tuesday, President Donald Trump called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
But Ettinger and his team point out that in the scientific community, there is broad consensus that climate change is not a hoax. The Environmental Protection Agency states that “it is extremely likely (> 95%) that human activities have been the dominant cause of” global warming.
According to United Nation’s research, 80% of the world’s population wants more climate action taken by their governments. According to Pew Research, there are only three countries without a majority of the population perceiving climate change as a threat: Nigeria, Israel, and the United States.
Ettinger reiterated that a majority of Americans still recognize that changing weather is a very real and tangible part of day-to-day life, even if they are unclear about whether or not it is related to the buzzwords “climate change,” “global warming” or whatever new term is currently in vogue.
“We know from the (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and from scientists around the world that climate change is affecting extreme weather events — many different kinds — in different ways," Ettinger said.
“The key point to make (from the study) is that across all political parties, people do agree that disasters (and) extreme weather are raising costs,” he said.
“So, it’s really a communication opportunity to show people how climate change (and) global warming is affecting extreme weather events, and in turn, how much they have to pay the bills.”
More poll findings
In the poll, most Americans attributed multiple factors to their rising costs. Inflation was cited by 70%, which is a similar percentage of people to natural disasters.
Another 69% cited insurance companies increasing their profits as a cause, while 63% attributed it to higher property values.
The smallest percentage — again split differently along party lines — was given to global warming with 48% of Americans saying that affected their monthly costs.
Are natural disasters and climate change linked?
The answer has long been political, however, according to Ettinger’s previous research, Trump’s perspective that it is a “con” is one that is not widespread.
“Looking at our polling, which goes back 20 years, it is just 10% of Americans who say climate change driven by fossil fuels is absolutely not happening,” Ettinger said.
“Just 10%. We’ve got instead 30% who are alarmed, and everyone else is in the middle.”
Ettinger and his colleagues believe that by showing the middle ground — folks who are neither alarmed nor deny that climate change is real — that there’s a tangible, dollar-cost associated with a planet subject to intense natural disasters might help make clear the effects of climate change.
Those costs exist in both big, societal ways like massive wildfires or floods destroying whole communities, or relatively small ways like greater monthly costs for individuals.
For those that are not aware that there is broad scientific consensus linking human influenced climate change and extreme weather events, Ettinger said that just reiterating that fact might help people connect the dots between natural disasters around the globe and personal finance decisions.
“Basically 99% of climate scientists agree that fossil fuels are causing climate change — human-driven climate change. Studies show, repeatedly, that when we talk about that, a lot of people don’t know that there is such a strong scientific consensus,“ Ettinger said.
“Even in this age of distrust of science, we still know that communicating this fact is very important to show that scientists do agree on this.”