Fox & Friends hosts laughingly dismiss that climate change is affecting insurance rates

Meanwhile in reality, climate change is driving up insurance prices. Even a Fox correspondent recently covered the phenomenon.

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

From the September 25, 2024, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

AINSLEY EARHARDT (FOX HOST): Think about the few speeches we have heard her give or interviews we have heard her give. She is not focusing on the environment anymore, climate.

STEVE DOOCY (HOST): Listen, and regarding costs of stuff. When she talks about how insurance — your insurance, your home insurance is going up, because of climate change, I have actually heard that from my insurance broker. They said okay. Your rates are going way up. I said why? Because of the weather. Because of climate change. So that is — that's somebody who is not a partisan.

AINSLEY EARHARDT: They just want to charge you more, It's the weather. El Nino.

STEVE DOOCY: Also why they are canceling people. That's why she is using that.

BRIAN KILMEADE (HOST): One more windmill and his insurance rates will go down. Fantastic. Get me those solar panels from China.

LAWRENCE JONES (HOST): Right.

As Media Matters recently documented:

During the August 28 edition of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, Fox Business correspondent Max Gordon reported on the skyrocketing cost of car insurance, another one of the “big issues coming up in the campaign” according to anchor Dana Perino. Gordon went on to connect this pocketbook issue to climate change, noting that the, “Increase in severe weather events has been one of the main drivers behind these increasing premiums. Climate events that cause a billion dollars or more in damage have been steadily on the rise, impacting how insurers set rates.”

Notably, the climate crisis is creating a housing insurance crisis as well. Climate change is making storms and wildfires more destructive. Last year, the U.S. experienced a record 28 disasters that cost more than a billion dollars each in damage. In response, some private insurers are raising premiums in areas frequently hit by extreme weather or pulling out of high-risk areas altogether, leaving homeowners uninsured.

Rising insurance costs are not the only economic impact of climate change. A study released early this year found that climate change is among the factors driving inflation which is “driving up the prices of food and other goods worldwide.” As Axios reported: “This is not the first study to note the economic toll of climate change, or even the inflationary pressures of increasing temperatures and extreme weather events."

Here is a recent CBS News segment on how climate change is affecting insurance rates: