Gregg Easterbrook explains Why hurricanes are causing more damage than they used to:
The insurance industry is “feeling the unmistakable economic impact of global warming,” Al Gore declares in his new movie, An Inconvenient Truth. Publications as diverse as USA Today and Mother Jones have similarly argued recently that rising weather-related insurance losses are evidence of an artificial greenhouse effect. Last year, hurricanes Katrina and Rita contributed to a record $50 billion in weather-related losses in the United States. Ceres, a public-interest organization that urges business to engage in environmental protection, recently estimated that weather-related insurance losses rose from an average of about $5 billion per year 20 years ago to an average of about $15 billion annually in the last decade. (All money figures in this article are stated in current dollars.) Like the former vice president and a lot of other people, Ceres attributes increased insurance losses to artificially triggered climate change.But maybe there’s another reason losses keep rising — namely, that property keeps becoming worth more. With each passing year, hurricanes that strike the United States are striking a nation of ever-more-affluent people who build ever-more properties in coastal areas. No wonder the destruction keeps getting worse. Every year there’s more to destroy!