By Shaimaa Khalil and Tiffanie Turnbull in Brisbane
In the past three years, record-breaking bushfire and flood events have killed more than 500 people and billions of animals. Drought, cyclones and freak tides have gripped communities.
Climate change is a key concern for voters in Australia’s election on Saturday. So is the cost of living - and these issues are converging like never before.
Australia is facing an “insurability crisis” with one in 25 homes on track to be effectively uninsurable by 2030, according to a Climate Council report. Another one in 11 are at risk of being underinsured.
Insurance for the highest-risk homes will be prohibitively expensive or refused by providers, says the Climate Council, which created an interactive map for Australians to search.
Nowhere is this a bigger issue than in Queensland. It is home to almost 40% of the 500,000 homes projected to be effectively uninsurable.
Queensland has been ravaged by floods in recent months. In February, the state capital Brisbane had more than 70% of its average yearly rainfall in just three days.
Insurers say the floods - which also battered New South Wales - will become Australia’s most expensive flood event ever. But even before this year, insurance costs were skyrocketing.
Though rising property prices are one factor, Australia’s peak insurance industry body points the finger at climate change.
The Insurance Council of Australia says no parts of the country are currently uninsurable but there are “clearly affordability and availability concerns”.
Over the past decade, the amount paid out by insurers on damage claims from natural disasters has roughly doubled.
On average, consumers now pay almost four times for home insurance premiums than in 2004.
In northern Australia, these numbers are even more extreme - in some cases 10 times higher than elsewhere.
More Australians are being forced to underinsure - purchase cheaper policies that cover too little - or forgo insurance altogether.
The phenomenon could also exacerbate social inequality and create “climate ghettos”, says Climate Valuation, a risk analysis company.
Properties in higher-risk areas are becoming cheaper to buy and rent, often attracting people who are least able to afford adequate insurance, compounding the financial impact of disasters.
The government has promised billions to help “reinsure” insurers against major claims resulting from disasters, arguing it will essentially halve premiums for people in northern Australia.
But it is a risky policy, and not one either the Insurance Council of Australia or the country’s industry watchdog wanted.
Critics have pointed out that disasters are now frequently devastating areas outside northern Australia that won’t be covered by the policy. What about their premiums?
They’re instead calling for the government to limit development in high-risk areas, consider buying out some homeowners, or create incentives for people to make their properties disaster-resilient.
But the obvious answer is addressing climate change, Dr Settle says - though this is something successive governments have been reluctant to do.
After massive bushfires in 2019-20, Australians were warned to prepare for an “alarming” future of simultaneous and worsening disasters.
Yet for a nation so exposed to climate change, Australia remains one of the world’s biggest emitters per head of population.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government has promised to reduce emissions by 26% by 2030. Labor, under Anthony Albanese, has pledged a 43% cut.
Both are below the 50% recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Blimey, the situation seems dire … 
(There is much more in the article.)
Such a massive area, it’s hard to comprehend the sheer vastness of it all, and the damage it does to everything around it.