by Richard Morrison
June 5, 2009

Washington, D.C., June 5, 2009—A new report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute questions alarmist predictions of increased hurricane damage resulting from human-caused global warming. The report recommends that individuals, insurers, businesses, and governments confront global warming by changing insurance, building, and land use policies.

In the report “Hurricane Damage and Global Warming,” Daniel Sutter, a professor at the University of Texas Pan-American, argues that increased social vulnerability—the growing number of people living in hurricane-prone areas—does more to explain increased hurricane damage than does potential human-caused global climate change. 

“Existing public policies—including insurance regulation, government-subsidized flood insurance, improper mitigation, and faulty building code enforcement—contribute to unnecessarily risky and inefficient development along coastal areas by shifting the cost of hurricane damage ultimately onto third parties—mainly taxpayers,” writes Sutter.

The full report, “Hurricane Damage and Global Warming: How Bad Could It Get and What Can We Do About It Today?” is available at www.cei.org. 

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. For more information about CEI, please visit our website at www.cei.org.