climate risks News

As Insurers Pull Back from Australia’s Bushfire Zones, They Could Become Uninhabitable

Australian wildfires that have razed thousands of homes and blackened an area about the size of England may also create the nation’s first climate refugees. That’s the view of Michael Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, …

Bushfire-Ravaged Australians Face Choice in Era of Climate Change: Rebuild or Leave?

It took two years for Nigel Allison to build his mud-brick house on a sleepy southeastern tip of Australia, and just hours for it to be gutted by fire. The cherished three-bedroom home built in 1986 was one of several …

Australia Begins Clean Up From Bushfires with Insurance Claims Continuing to Rise

The New South Wales and Victorian state governments will coordinate the clean-up of insured and uninsured residential and commercial properties destroyed in the deadly wildfires. Under the plan, the states will appoint major contractors to do the work, which will …

Financial Services CEOs in Davos Complain They Can’t Save Planet Without Clients’ Help

As the financial industry comes under pressure to avoid funding dirty energy, the heads of Citigroup Inc. and Zurich Insurance Group AG said they need their clients to do more work too. “I say to our clients, ‘I don’t want …

Severe Storms Expected to Bring Relief, New Risks to Bushfire-Stricken Australia

Severe storms are expected to bring some relief in the coming days from huge bushfires scorching Australia but the heavy downpours could also carry the risk of landslides and water pollution, officials said on Wednesday. Australia is battling its worst …

World Economic Forum Sounds Alarms About Climate Change Risks

The World Economic Forum is sounding alarm bells on climate change, with environmental risks occupying the group’s top five long-term concerns for the first time on record. Extreme weather events, the failure of climate-change mitigation, major natural disasters, biodiversity loss …

Climate Scientists Warn that Australia’s Bushfires Could Become the New Normal

Bushfires ravaging Australia have provided a foretaste of the kinds of conditions that could become normal unless the world moves rapidly to curb emissions of the greenhouse gases driving global warming, scientists have warned. Although Australia’s government and parts of …

Australia’s Bushfires Could Surpass 2009’s Costly Season; Analysts, Insurers Comment

Australia’s bushfire season has months to run and could easily surpass the most costly fire season, 2009’s Black Saturday fires in Victoria, which had a price tag of an estimated A$4.4 billion (US$3 billion), according to Moody’s Analytics, in a …

Australians Evacuate Their Homes as Soaring Temperatures, Winds Fan Bushfires

Australia urged nearly a quarter of a million people to evacuate their homes on Friday and prepared military backup as authorities said the next few hours could be “very, very challenging” even as rain poured down in some parts. Defense …

Insurance Industry Calls for Action to Mitigate Climate Risk as Australia Bushfires Widen

As the devastation from Australia’s bushfires widens, the insurance industry is calling for concerted action to mitigate the impact of climate change. Months of out-of-control fires have burnt an area more than five times the size of Wales and industry-wide …