Will states lead — or depart US communities to face catastrophe alone?
Revealed on August 21, 2025.
By Lindsey Jurca, Senior Communications Marketing campaign Specialist, Charles Slidders, Supervisor and Senior Lawyer, and Barnaby Tempo, Senior Researcher on the Middle for Worldwide Environmental Regulation.
A lethal storm has already claimed at the least 120 lives and precipitated widespread devastation in Texas. Hurricane Erin has now unleashed catastrophic flooding in North Carolina earlier than racing towards the Northeast — and hurricane season has solely simply begun. Storms are rising extra damaging, pushed by fossil fuels that heat our oceans and destabilize the local weather, whereas the weak petrochemical infrastructure of their path multiplies the hazard. Because the storms strengthen, US protections are unraveling, leaving hundreds of thousands uncovered.
Yearly, hurricanes develop extra intense — fueled by warming oceans and a quickly altering local weather pushed by fossil fuels. Nevertheless it’s not simply the storms changing into extra harmful. It’s the fossil gas infrastructure of their path. It’s the poisonous air pollution launched when storms strike. It’s the insurance coverage corporations abandoning communities within the aftermath. And it’s the US authorities retreating from its responsibility to guard.
The Gulf Coast — residence to greater than 84 % of US plastics’ manufacturing and to almost half of US petroleum refining capability — is bracing for greater than 5 main hurricanes predicted for the Atlantic Ocean this yr. With every hurricane comes the danger of fires, explosions, and poisonous releases — not only for these services, however for the encircling communities. Greater than 870 extremely hazardous chemical services are situated inside 50 miles of the hurricane-prone Gulf Coast, and greater than 4 million residents and 1,500 faculties sit inside a 1.5-mile radius of a high-risk chemical facility within the area.
Nationally, 39 % of the US inhabitants lives inside three miles of a high-risk chemical facility.
And but, as we brace for the subsequent lethal storm, Trump has axed important climate forecasting jobs and introduced plans to get rid of the Federal Emergency Administration Company (FEMA) altogether, leaving communities much more weak within the face of escalating catastrophe.
However the threats don’t cease there. The US authorities is systematically dismantling our first line of protection. Since Trump took workplace in 2024, the administration has:
Reduce workers at NOAA and the Nationwide Climate Service, weakening our capacity to forecast storms and warn the general public
Dismantled the Chemical Security Board, which investigates chemical disasters to stop future ones
Proposed rolling again the Danger Administration Program (RMP), which requires almost 12,000 high-risk chemical services to plan for disasters, shield employees, and inform communities
Warned they are going to part out FEMA, leaving frontline communities to climate storms and rebuild with out support
Deleted the RMP public information device, slicing off public entry to well being and security info
A Local weather of Injustice
Fossil gas infrastructure isn’t simply in danger throughout storms — it supercharges the storms themselves. The trade is a serious driver of world warming, accelerating the rising temperatures and warming oceans that exacerbate hurricanes. And whilst storms develop extra damaging, the trade is doubling down: 80 % of proposed new petrochemical tasks are sited inside 20 miles of a hurricane or tropical storm’s path over the previous decade. This implies whole corridors already battered by local weather disasters are being locked into even better hazard.
When catastrophe strikes, oil, fuel, and petrochemical services launch hazardous pollution into the air and water, compounding the disaster for close by communities, which are sometimes low-income and disproportionately Black, Brown, and Indigenous.
When Hurricane Katrina struck, it slammed into 466 services that deal with hazardous chemical compounds and petrochemicals. Greater than 200 onshore releases of hazardous chemical compounds, petroleum, or pure fuel have been reported. The storm precipitated at the least ten oil spills, releasing greater than 7.4 million gallons of oil into Gulf Coast waterways — greater than two-thirds the amount spilled through the Exxon Valdez catastrophe, one of many worst in US historical past. Collectively, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, only a month aside, shut down almost 1 / 4 of the nation’s refining capability.
And through Hurricane Harvey, Houston’s petrochemical crops and refineries launched hundreds of thousands of kilos of pollution. Flooding on the Arkema Petrochemical plant disabled the plant’s refrigeration system, triggering a large explosion that despatched black plumes and poisonous fumes into the skies and compelled evacuations throughout a neighborhood already on edge. An investigation by the Chemical Security Board — not too long ago dismantled by the Trump Administration — decided that necessities of the EPA’s Danger Administration Program — presently being rolled again by the EPA — may have prevented this very catastrophe.
A Rigged System
As excessive climate occasions surge, so do insurance coverage premiums — whereas protection vanishes for these dwelling in hurt’s approach.
For a lot of climate-vulnerable communities, residence insurance coverage is now not inexpensive — or out there. Since 2019, US residence insurance coverage charges have jumped almost 38 %. Louisiana, Texas, and Pennsylvania — all main fossil gas corridors — rank among the many prime six most costly states to insure a house. Residence insurance coverage premiums rose by 10 % or extra throughout forty states from 2021 to 2024. Renters aren’t immune as landlords go alongside skyrocketing insurance coverage prices.
Insurers declare payouts from local weather disasters are driving up prices. The reality is, insurers are investing within the very industries making these disasters worse — and raking in income. In Louisiana, insurance coverage corporations are making $55 in income for each $1 in underwriting losses. This profitability just isn’t distinctive: NAIC information reveals the property and casualty sector made an all-time excessive of $167 billion income in 2024 — up 91% from 2023, and 330% from 2022.
On the identical time, the US insurance coverage trade continues to bankroll fossil fuels, holding greater than $500 billion in fossil fuel-related property as of 2019 (the newest information set out there); a sample of investing that’s unlikely to have considerably modified since. Whereas refusing to insure owners in climate-exposed communities, many insurers are concurrently underwriting new fossil gas infrastructure. No less than 35 insurance coverage corporations are backing methane fuel (LNG) export terminals throughout the Gulf South — a number of the exact same corporations, together with AIG, Chubb, and Liberty Mutual, which are elevating premiums or pulling out of the housing market in weak areas solely.Insurance coverage math: Communities dealing with hurricanes, flooding, and fires? Too dangerous to insure. Firms driving the disasters? Protection and money.
Relatively than confronting the disaster, insurance coverage corporations are fueling it — defending income and abandoning folks. This isn’t simply hypocrisy, it’s a enterprise mannequin, one constructed on extraction and shifting prices onto the general public.
The system is rigged. These most accountable are rewarded, whereas these most weak are left to undergo the storms alone.
Lead Now or Pay Later: States Should Determine
All of us deserve someplace secure to reside — free from the dread of the subsequent hurricane, the subsequent explosion, or the subsequent rollback of fundamental protections. However fossil gas polluters — and the insurance coverage corporations cashing in on their hurt — are robbing us.
We is not going to settle for this countless cycle of disaster. We deserve security, particularly from the governments whose responsibility it’s to guard us. We deserve security from storms and from poisonous spills. We deserve a authorities that protects its folks — and companies that do their jobs: defending public well being and the surroundings, not doing the bidding of polluters.
With the federal authorities abdicating its accountability, state and native leaders should step up. They’ve the ability and responsibility to behave. It’s time for states, particularly these within the eye of the storm, to steer the place the federal authorities is failing. States should:
Implement robust petrochemical security guidelines
Cease new fossil gas growth in at-risk communities
Maintain polluters accountable for the harms they trigger
Refuse to let insurance coverage corporations cherry-pick who will get coated whereas abandoning these most in want
When Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana, it left behind a $170 billion invoice. The federal authorities stepped in for $120 billion. However with FEMA on the chopping block, that type of aid could by no means come once more. If federal protections vanish, the monetary and human value of the subsequent catastrophe will fall squarely on states — and the individuals who reside in them.
The local weather disaster isn’t ready. The storms are right here. Will our leaders meet the second — or depart us to climate the catastrophe alone?
