New CEI Report Explores Hurricanes, Warming

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.