Laurel Duggan
Daily Caller News Foundation
State Farm will no longer take new homeowner insurance applications in California, a move the state government is blaming on climate change.
The insurance company cited the high cost of construction in the state and the growing threat of catastrophes including wildfires in its Friday announcement. The California Department of Insurance (CDI) told Axios climate change was driving the issue, making it beyond the state’s control.
WND is now on Trump's Truth Social! Follow us @WNDNews
“The factors driving State Farm’s decision are beyond our control, including climate change, reinsurance costs affecting the entire insurance industry, and global inflation,” CDI spokesperson Michael Soller told the outlet. “We have been here before after major wildfires. What’s different is the actions that we are taking with the first-ever insurance discount program for wildfire safety and unprecedented wildfire mitigation investments from the Legislature and Governor.”
The cost of building multifamily homes in California rose 25% per square foot from 2010 to 2020 after adjusting for inflation, according to the Terner Center for Housing Innovation, and wildfires continue to pose a major risk to homes in the state. State Farm’s announcement recognized California’s efforts to mitigate fires and pledged to work with the state’s insurance department to make it possible to provide coverage again.
Wildfires have destroyed about 25,000 California homes and other buildings in the last five years and severely damaged thousands more, according to The Washington Post. The California Department of Insurance Assessment predicts a 77% increase in annual burnt acreage by 2100.
Experts have blamed California’s wildfire problem on its lack of controlled burns. California conducts far fewer prescribed burns than Florida, which is half the size; by August 2021 Florida had conducted 1.6 million acres of controlled burns compared to California’s 35,000 that year, according to NPR.
State Farm did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
IMPORTANT NOTE: “Election denier!” “Science denier!” “Climate-change denier!” “Conspiracy theorist!” And then there’s “hate speech,” “fake news,” “disinformation,” “misinformation,” even something called “MALinformation.” A bizarre new lexicon has been conjured up by America’s elites, the SOLE PURPOSE of which is to discredit and ridicule – and if at all possible, CENSOR ENTIRELY – speech that doesn’t support their increasingly dark and deranged agenda. Tucker Carlson is just the latest.
In the greatest imaginable irony, the nation once boasting the most robust culture of freedom of speech and the press – undergirded by the strongest constitutional protections for those rights – is now ground zero for a total war on free expression.
How could this possibly happen in the United States of America? It’s all explained as never before in the sensational new issue of WND’s critically acclaimed WHISTLEBLOWER magazine, titled “THE ELITES’ ALL-OUT WAR ON FREE SPEECH.” WHISTLEBLOWER is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.
SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!
The post California blames climate change for insurer's decision to withdraw from state appeared first on WND.
