- By Shaimaa Khalil and Tiffanie Turnbull from Brisbane
- BBC News
May 19, 2022
Updated 6 hours ago
Credit, Sam Bowstead
caption,
Sam Bowstead’s Brisbane home was under thousands of floods on Friday
“It’s devastating. You put a lot of time and effort into your house and then watch it sink under the water.”
Sam Bowstead is an architect who specializes in preparing homes for natural disasters. But when floods hit his own home in Brisbane in February, he felt helpless.
“I’ve worked with people who have been in similar situations. Now that’s what happened to me,” he says.
“I was shocked at how quick it was [a água] rose… more than a meter in a couple of hours. I’ve gone from worrying about our property to worrying about our safety.”
In the end, a boat was the only way out.
Bowstead’s experience has become increasingly common for Australians.
In the past three years, record wildfires and floods have killed more than 500 people and billions of animals. Droughts, hurricanes and floods devastate communities.
Climate change is a key concern for who will vote in Australia’s general election on Saturday, as is the cost of living and these issues are converging like never before.
insurance crisis
According to a report by the Climate Council, Australia is facing an “insurability crisis” with one in 25 households becoming ineligible for insurance by 2030. And one in 11 is at risk of being underinsured.
Insurance for the highestrisk homes will be prohibitively expensive or rejected by providers, says the Climate Council, which has created an interactive map for Australians to research.
“Climate change is happening here in real time and many Australians are now finding it impossible to insure their homes and businesses,” says the organization’s chief executive, Amanda McKenzie.
Australia’s most exposed state
The biggest problem is in Queensland, a state where nearly 40% of its 500,000 households will soon be uninsured.
Flooding has hit Queensland in recent months. In February, the state capital, Brisbane, received more than 70% of its average annual rainfall in just three days.
“I still feel pretty traumatized when it rains a lot,” says Michelle Vine, whose East Brisbane home was destroyed along with decades of her artwork.
“We had to move out of the house, it became uninhabitable.”
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Michelle Vine has lost a decade of artwork
Insurers say the floods, which also hit New South Wales, will become Australia’s costliest weather event. But even before this year, insurance costs skyrocketed.
While rising house prices are a factor, Australia’s insurance industry governing body is pointing the finger at climate change.
The Insurance Board of Australia says no part of the country is currently uninsured but there are “clear concerns about accessibility and availability”.
In the last decade, the amount insurers pay for losses from natural catastrophes has almost doubled.
On average, consumers are paying almost four times more for home insurance premiums today than they were in 2004.
In northern Australia these figures are even more extreme in some cases ten times higher than elsewhere.
More and more Australians are being forced to underinsure buy cheaper policies that cover very little or go without insurance altogether.
“This is probably Australia’s most important cost of living issue,” Antonia Settle, a political economist at the University of Melbourne, told BBC News.
“Family without insurance run the risk of losing their most important asset.”
bargain
Buying and renting real estate in highrisk areas is becoming increasingly cheaper, often attracting people who are less able to afford adequate insurance, compounding the financial impact of disasters.
“People are not moving away from climatesensitive places in Australia. In fact, they’re probably going to move there,” says demographer Liz Allen of the Australian National University.
“Australia’s housing affordability problem is so bad… that people are almost looking at the climate catastrophe as a bargain, as a way to ensure they have a place to call their own.”
“The phenomenon can also exacerbate social inequality and create ‘climate ghettos,'” says Climate Valuation, a risk analysis firm.
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Sam Bowstead moved to affluent areas because of high real estate prices elsewhere
Vine is an example of this. She says she was lured into vulnerable territory by the price. At the time, she felt as if she had “won the lottery”. Bowstead made a similar choice.
And once in a risky area, it is almost impossible for many to get out, as is the case with Gary Godley in the town of Grantham, west of Brisbane.
Given Grantham’s horrific flooding history 12 people died there in 2011 there are no buyers for her home.
“We want out. We just can’t afford it,” says Godley. “We can not do anything.”
So what can you do?
The Government has pledged billions to help insurers ‘reinsure’ against large losses as a result of disasters, arguing it will halve premiums for people in northern Australia.
But it’s a risky policy and not something Australia’s Insurance Board or the country’s Industrial Inspectorate wanted.
Critics have pointed out that disasters in areas outside northern Australia not covered by the directive are now often devastating.
Instead, they are calling on the government to limit residential development in highrisk areas, consider buying property from some owners, or incentivize people to make their homes disasterproof.
But the obvious answer is to take the problem of climate change seriously, says Settle although this is something successive governments have been reluctant to do.
After the great bushfires of 2019 and 2020, Australians were told to prepare for an “alarming” future of simultaneous and increasingly severe disasters.
However, for a nation so vulnerable to climate change, Australia remains one of the world’s largest emitters per capita.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government has pledged to cut emissions by 26% by 2030. Labor under Anthony Albanese has promised a 43% cut.
Both targets are below the 50% recommended by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The coal problem
Most Australians want tougher climate action, but both the ruling party and Labor have been silent on the issue during this election campaign.
In the central Queensland town of Gladstone, the reason for this is obvious.
Coal is an important part of Gladstone’s economy. The product is shipped from the local port and has helped Australia become the second largest global exporter and has created thousands of jobs.
Phil Golby, a local official with the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, says “change is inevitable” but fears workers in the fossil fuel industry will be left behind.
“I’ve heard a lot of talk. I’ve heard a lot of presentations but I still haven’t seen a clear path,” says Golby.
“When a new industry comes along [para Gladstone]we need to make sure we train our staff… [e] that workers have a source of income. We can’t start to see people going back.”
Credit, Getty Images
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Between 2019 and 2020, more than 3000 homes were destroyed by fire
Coal is at the center of discussions about Australia’s prosperity, politics and environmental threats.
So, phasing out fossil fuels is a politically toxic issue that no major party wants to tackle headon, especially during an election.
This frustrates Bowstead. For him and for so many young people, there is real concern about the impact of climate change on how people in Australia will live in the near future.
“[Isso] won’t happen it’s already happening,” he says.
“It looks like we’re going to have to take responsibility and bear the brunt much longer than most of the people in power right now.”
Featuring graphics by Erwan Rivault, Paul Sargeant and Alison Trowsdale.
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