Insurance and The Climate Crisis

This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

Episode three, The Whole System, reveals how climate change is breaking insurance across every sector of American life, not just coastal property. Through the story of an Iowa farmer who lost crop insurance after five consecutive years of climate disasters, Miles Mercer exposes how health insurance, life insurance, agricultural insurance, and business insurance are all simultaneously under stress. Health insurers are paying billions for heat-related illnesses, wildfire smoke respiratory damage, expanding vector-borne diseases like Lyme and dengue, and climate-related mental health conditions including PTSD and climate anxiety. Agricultural insurance is collapsing as extreme weather whiplash makes farming unpredictable, creating agricultural collapse zones where multi-generational family farms are being abandoned. Small businesses face crushing premium increases for business interruption coverage while struggling with climate-related closures from smoke, heat, and supply chain disruptions. Life insurance companies are recalculating mortality tables as extreme heat becomes a mass killer and climate disasters create sudden death spikes. The episode demonstrates how all insurance sectors are interconnected, creating feedback loops that accelerate the crisis, and warns that current impacts are only the beginning as we're locked into additional warming regardless of future actions.This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

Episode two, Underwater Assets, examines how the property insurance crisis is destroying home values and creating economic devastation across America. Following coastal California communities where beautiful homes have lost half their value simply because insurance has disappeared, Miles Mercer reveals the death spiral engulfing Florida, California, and Louisiana as insurance companies go bankrupt or flee entirely. When State Farm, Allstate, and other major insurers stop writing policies, homeowners face an impossible situation: without insurance you can't get a mortgage, and without a mortgage potential buyers can't purchase homes, causing property values to collapse regardless of the home's condition. The episode exposes how state-backed insurers of last resort, designed as safety nets for a few thousand high-risk properties, now cover over a million homes and face insolvency if major disasters strike. Miles explores the ripple effects including economic segregation where only the wealthy can afford to self-insure and live in high-risk areas, the renovation trap where home improvements can trigger policy cancellations, and the politically explosive question of managed retreat. Some communities are already becoming uninhabitable, and society must decide which places deserve protection and which should be abandoned.Click here to browse handpicked Amazon finds inspired by this podcast series!https://amzn.to/42YoQGIThis content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

Episode one, The Canary in the Coal Mine, reveals how insurance companies are becoming the first major industry to abandon communities in the face of climate change. Through the story of a Florida homeowner who lost coverage after three hurricanes in five years, Miles Mercer explains why the insurance system, built on predictable risk, is collapsing as climate change makes the future fundamentally unpredictable. The episode explores how insurers are seeing data the public isn't, actuarial tables and catastrophe models showing accelerating losses, while paradoxically still investing in the fossil fuel companies driving the crisis. With premiums skyrocketing by forty percent or more, major insurers fleeing entire states, and millions of Americans becoming uninsured or underinsured, the episode demonstrates how insurance isn't just another bill, it's a warning system telling us which places are becoming uninhabitable and unsustainable. The affordability crisis is creating insurance deserts and geographic inequality, leaving vulnerable communities to bear risks they cannot absorb while the system that's supposed to protect them crumbles in real time.Click here to browse handpicked Amazon finds inspired by this podcast series!https://amzn.to/42YoQGIThis content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI