Is The Republican Party On A Collision Course With Their Allies At Big Insurance Over Climate Change?

Since 1990, the Insurance Industry has contributed $306,387,653 in congressional races, almost two-thirds of it to Republicans. So far this year, they've doled out $17,600,207, again, most of it to Republicans. So far in the cycle they have carefully selected the incumbents who have been most willing-- in each house-- to put the special interests of the insurance industry ahead the interests of their own constituents and of the American people. No one on this list of the dozen topic recipients of insurance industry legalistic bribery is fit to serve in Congress:

This week Republican legislators in Oklahoma passed a bill to prevent science teachers tackling the question of Climate Change. But now there may be an interesting new "special interest" insurance companies may be taking into account: yes, Climate Change. Listen to this report from Marketplace from Wednesday afternoon about Farmers Insurance suing local governments for not taking climate change seriously enough to protect homeowners whose property was damaged by flooding:



This could put the insurance industry at serious odds with their conservative allies in Congress.

Illinois Farmers Insurance Co. is suing Chicago for failing to prevent flooding related to climate change in what experts say could be a landmark case that accelerates local efforts to grapple with the impacts of climbing temperatures.

The insurance company filed nine class-action lawsuits last month alleging that dozens of Chicago-area municipalities are responsible for the damage caused by a two-day downpour last year in April. The company claims that local officials are aware that climate change is causing heavier rainfalls but failed to prevent sewage backups in more than 600 homes by draining water from the region's system of tunnels and retention basins before the storm.

Farmers is asking to be reimbursed for the claims it paid to homeowners who sometimes saw geysers of sewage ruin basement walls, floors and furniture. The company says it also paid policyholders for lost income, the cost of evacuations and other damages related to declining property values. But some analysts say that Farmers likely has a bigger prize in mind.

The company, which is a subsidiary of global giant Zurich Insurance Group, could be positioning itself to avoid future losses nationwide from claims linked to floods, sea-level rise and even lawsuits against its corporate policyholders that emit greenhouse gases, said Andrew Logan, an insurance expert with Ceres.

In 2012, a different Zurich subsidiary, Steadfast Insurance Co., won another high-profile climate fight: Steadfast fought a claim submitted by its policyholder AES Corp., an electric utility, stemming from a lawsuit by Kivalina, Alaska, that accused AES of contributing to climate change by emitting carbon dioxide. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled that Steadfast wasn't liable for AES's pollution.

When viewed together, Zurich's two climate cases might represent a broader strategy to insulate itself from climate losses, Logan said. The company protected itself from corporate claims related to emissions with the Steadfast case; now it seems to be separating itself from municipal losses in Illinois.

"I guess if you're an insurer that's really worried about the scale of liability that you might face from climate change, this would be a pretty smart way to begin to put up some walls around yourself," Logan said. "The dollars at stake [in the Illinois case] are much smaller than the precedent that's being set."

…A book-length analysis of the legal challenges faced by insurers notes that the industry's climate expertise related to natural catastrophes, climate science and adaptation resembles its level of knowledge around asbestos. One of the authors is Lindene Patton, Zurich's climate expert in North America.

"This could lead to claims against insurers arising out of their particularized knowledge of any of these issues," says the book, titled Climate Change and Insurance.

Similarly, the lawsuit by Farmers uses the climate assertions by local officials to show that they knew about the risks of a warmer and wetter atmosphere but didn't do enough to avoid damage. The suit points to the Chicago Climate Action Plan as evidence that the city is aware of the dangers.

"The defendant knew or should have known that climate change in Cook County has resulted in greater rain fall [sic] volume, greater rainfall intensity and greater rainfall duration than pre-1970 rainfall history evidenced, resulting in greater stormwater runoff," the lawsuit says.

The Chicago Tribune is a very right-wing newspaper, a Republican bastion you would expect to support crackpot Republican tactics and strategies. An OpEd this week, however, did not support the crazy, unsubstantiated, theories expressed by Marco Rubio that fly in the face of climate change science, a science the Chicago region is well aware of-- as is Rubio's own Florida. "In an interview yesterday, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, a possible presidential candidate in 2016, took about as extreme a position on global warming as he possibly could. 'Our climate is always changing,' he said. 'I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.' In short, he thinks that if the climate is changing, it is not attributable to anything people have done."

Rubio's statement is not just meant to firm up support from the fringe Republican base who have been brainwashed by Fox and Hate Talk Radio, it is a public pledge to the Koch brothers, that even if climate change makes Orlando beachfront property and drowns his own Miami-Dade, his fealty to their cause is undying. So far, in his short time in Congress, Rubio has taken $464,470 from the insurance industry. The Chicago Tribune points out that his position "departs not only from the vast majority of climate scientists but even a skeptic as prominent as Patrick Michaels, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a fellow at the Cato Institute. In his book Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know, co-written with Robert Balling Jr., Michaels says, 'Humans are implicated in the planetary warming that began around 1975. Greenhouse gases are likely to be one cause, probably a considerable one.'"

So Rubio is repudiating even scientists who reject the scientific consensus, not to mention scientists who once were skeptical but changed their minds. He intends to defend the position that if any warming is underway, humans didn't cause it and humans can't contain it.

In 2012, Rick Santorum called global warming a "hoax." Mitt Romney originally acknowledged humans were causing the climate to heat up, but reversed course, saying, "I don’t know if it’s mostly caused by humans." That position is what primary voters demand. So expect the Republican Party to keep denying what is increasingly untenable to deny.

A congressman from Orlando, whose district would be beachfront property if numbskulls like Rubio are given a hand in formulating environmental and climate policy, is Alan Grayson. "It’s insane, " he told John Amato last week in regard to Rubio's statements about climate change, "but that’s what passes for political discourse these days. It’s a complete rejection of facts, evidence and logic-- the “Endarkenment.”

So far this cycle, the insurance industry has given Rubio, who is not up for reelection, $64,830. And Grayson, who is up for reelection? $750. Many in Florida want to see Grayson run against Rubio for the Florida Senate seat in 2016. Perhaps the Insurance Industry will stop funding Rubio by then… maybe not. But one thing is certain… Grayson will continue drawing his support from grassroots progressives, which is why we're asking DWT readers-- and insurance companies-- to consider sending money to GutsPAC right here-- to help avoid more endarkenment.


UPDATE: Getting Played… By Big Insurance

Mike Obermueller released this awesome TV spot today. I happen to be reading the part of Elizabeth Warren's book where she talks about the lobbyists barreling down the halls of Congress-- so sure of themselves and so positive that the weak and pathetic congressmembers would bend to their will (and wads of cash). This clip reminded me of how hard it is to fight that kind of force. The insurance industry has given John Kline $430,000-- and he's worked hard for their money… betraying his own constituents. Watch the ad: