Another summer, another round of devastation: homes lost, communities evacuated, lives upended. Just days after hundreds of homes were destroyed and tens of thousands of livestock died in Victoria's bushfires, across the state hundreds more people were evacuated and multiple cars washed out to sea due to flash flooding following an intense storm.

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Fossil fuel companies cause the climate change that turbocharges extreme weather events, but ordinary Australians are paying the price. It's time that changed.

Global warming means extreme weather events like storms, floods, and bushfires are more frequent and more intense. But these disasters are still too often framed as tragic but unavoidable acts of nature, rather than the inevitable consequence of Australia being the third largest exporter of fossil fuels on Earth.

Gas, oil, and coal companies are let off the hook, while the true costs of climate-fueled disasters keep landing on the wrong people, again and again. It's well past time Australia implemented a climate disaster levy on fossil fuel companies.

Because the costs of climate-fueled disasters are enormous. Homes and properties are destroyed. Businesses shut down. Cattle dead. Farms damaged. Local infrastructure - roads, power, water - wiped out in a matter of hours.

Following a string of major floods across the east coast of Australia in 2022, Australians claimed more than seven billion dollars on their home insurance - almost double the previous record.

In response, home insurance premium rose by at least 14% on average, the biggest rise in a decade. Australia Institute research shows climate change is driving an enormous increase in the cost of insurance, making it unaffordable for many Australians.

While the federal government keeps approving new fossil fuel projects, and the Liberal and National parties don't seem to accept climate change is a real and present threat, your insurance company sure does. Insurers are not activists. They price risk. And what they are telling us - loudly - is that........

© Canberra Times