U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), the chair of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee (JEC), is calling for “bold investments” that address climate change following the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent report.
Released this week, the report said the climate crisis is more severe than previously thought and worsening more quickly than was understood just a few years ago.
“We’ve seen how increasingly severe wildfires are threatening entire communities while creating air pollution that stretches from coast to coast; heat waves are becoming more frequent and more intense, posing serious respiratory health risks; and warming ocean waters are making hurricanes more frequent and increasingly damaging, particularly to flood-prone areas. And we’ve seen time and again how low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately affected,” Beyer said.
In addition, climate change farms economic growth, responsible for lower overall productivity, decreased property values, reduced farm production, and declining local tax revenues.
“The answer is clear: To protect our lives and our planet, we must make bold investments that address climate change. As laid out in the reconciliation bill, alongside the infrastructure bill passed by the Senate, investments to expand clean energy, reduce emissions, and create green jobs are key to bolstering climate resilience and putting us on a path to solve the climate crisis,” Beyer said.
In related news, the Delaware Insurance Commissioner Trinidad Navarro said the state will participate in the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ Insurer Climate Risk Disclosure Survey. This survey is designed to assess how the impacts of climate change will reverberate across the insurance industry.
“In Delaware and across the country, residents are feeling the impacts of climate change and relying on insurers to respond to the heightened risk of damage to our properties, businesses, homes, and lives. As natural disasters occur more frequently and with more intensity, the industry must be prepared to provide rapid response,” Navarro said. “The issues of affordability and access seen as a result of wildfires in the west and hurricanes in the south have served as ominous forewarnings of what may be to come in our own region, and through participating in the Climate Risk Disclosure Survey, we can better understand how prepared Delaware insurers are for these events and what opportunities we have to protect residents from these effects.”
Over 1,200 insurers will complete the survey, representing more than 70 percent of the U.S. insurance market.