should the flood insurance program continue?

Setting for NFIP Debate

In early October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

(IPCC) issued a new report.

Who is this group?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the

international body for assessing the science related to climate

change. The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological

Organization (WMO) and United Nations Environment

Programme (UNEP) to provide policymakers with regular

assessments of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts

and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation.

IPCC (n.d.) IPCC Fact Sheet. Accessed at

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/FS_what_ipcc.pdf

As summarized in The Atlantic

More than a quarter century ago, the countries of the world hammered

out the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. In language

signed by President George H. W. Bush and ratified by the Senate, that

document—which later gave rise to both the IPCC’s reports and the

Paris Agreement—laid out the goal for all of the UN’s future work on

climate change. “The ultimate objective,” it said, was to cut

greenhouse-gas emissions so as to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic

interference with the climate system.”

“Climate scientists have made it abundantly clear, over the past few

years, that we’ve already passed that goal. We’ve already dangerously

interfered,” says Christopher Field, the director of the Stanford Woods

Institute for the Environment, who has worked on previous UN reports

but was not involved in this one.

The new report confirms his contention. It finds that the world has

already warmed by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1 degree Celsius, since

humans began sending industrial pollution into the atmosphere. The

costs of this warmth can be seen around the world: This decade alone,

sweltering heat waves have killed thousands; engorged floods have

ravaged cities from Houston to North Carolina; and half of the coral in

the Great Barrier Reef has died.

Meyer, Robinson. (2018, October 9). How to Understand the UN’s Dire New

Climate Report: It Tries to Find Hope Against a Backdrop of Failure. The

Atlantic. Retrieved from

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/10/how-to-understand-

the-uns-dire-new-climate-report/572356/

The idea that weather events are changing is becoming widespread.

Last summer an Allstate insurance ad had this statement: