[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 105 (Tuesday, June 23, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3050-S3052]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST--S. RES. 555

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, climate change is real. Earlier this 
year, I came to the floor and asked my colleagues if they could all 
agree to that simple scientific fact. Unsurprisingly, given the clout 
of fossil fuel in this arena, they could not.
  So I return to the floor in hopes that my Republican colleagues could 
at least agree to some of the simple truths that make up the bigger 
picture of climate change.
  I asked if we could agree that sea levels are rising due to fossil 
fuel emissions. Republicans objected.
  I asked that we could agree that oceans are warming due to fossil 
fuel emissions. Republicans objected. They are actually warming by the 
zettajoule, if you want to look up a really big number.
  So I changed tactics. I wanted to see if my Republican colleagues 
could at least acknowledge some of the realities. I asked if we could 
agree that climate change is driving up the cost of homeowners 
insurance, which is something that even homeowners insurers will tell 
you. But, again, Republicans objected.
  Well, I am not giving up. Here is today's simple truth: Climate 
change poses a threat to home values and the mortgage market. Can we 
all agree on that?
  Let me break this down. Republicans may object, but facts remain. And 
the fact is that sea levels are rising.
  Sea level rise and the flooding that comes along with it causes 
catastrophic damage to coastal infrastructure, businesses, and homes. 
This drives enormous financial loss.
  Between 2005 and 2017, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, 
Virginia, and Georgia together lost $7.4 billion in home value due to 
sea level rise-related flooding. Absent climate action, flooding like 
this will get worse in the years to come.

  Researchers find that 300,000 U.S. homes and commercial properties 
collectively valued at $136 billion, in today's dollars, are at risk of 
chronic disruptive flooding in the next 30 years, the duration of a 
mortgage; and by the end of the 21st century, nearly 2.5 million U.S. 
homes and commercial properties, collectively valued at over $1 
trillion, will be at risk of chronic flooding. Indeed, the chief 
economist of Freddie Mac has predicted what he called a ``coastal 
property values crash.''
  Sea level rise is not the only climate impact threatening homes 
across the country. We see it in all kinds of natural calamities. I 
have shown this chart on the floor before. It tracks billion-dollar 
climate disasters in the United States between 1980 and now. These 
include floods, wildfires, cyclones, and drought. As you can see, the 
events and the costs are increasing.
  And it is not just homes directly impacted by climate disaster that 
face declines in property values. Following a weather disaster, housing 
values decline substantially across entire impacted ZIP Codes, in part 
because of the market's expectation of future disasters in that area.
  Last week, I explained that the same forces driving home insurance 
costs up are driving down home values. That is because climate losses 
hit insurers first, and insurers then raise their costs; and those 
costs ultimately affect the home's value.
  This chart shows that insurance costs are increasing the most in 
areas facing the highest climate risk, which is only logical.
  Unfortunately, for the parts of the country most exposed to climate 
change, insurance premiums are going to continue to climb. This chart 
shows the county-level forecast for homeowners insurance premiums over 
the next 30 years. As you can see, all along the gulf coast, through 
Florida and out through the Intermountain West, where fires are such an 
issue, premiums are expected to double or triple or even quadruple. The 
darkest areas here are the highest increase, but everywhere is heading 
up.
  And it gets worse. Rising premiums depress home values, as the 
carrying cost of owning that home increases. If you have to pay, as in 
Florida, on average, $14,000 every year for home insurance and that 
doubles or triples, and now you have a $30,000 or $40,000 annual 
burden--a check you have to pay to keep that home--that is going to 
drive down the cost of the home because the next buyer is going to be 
looking at that cost burden.

[[Page S3051]]

  So rising premiums are one key risk to home property values, but 
insurance unavailability is just as big. More and more often, in the 
areas of highest climate risk, insurance companies are refusing to 
insure homes at all.
  This chart tracks home insurance nonrenewal rates. That is when your 
insurance company--that you have been a good customer of for years and 
years and years--suddenly sends a notice into your mail slot saying: 
Sorry, you are all done. Your property is too dangerous. We are not 
going to insure it any longer. You will have to look elsewhere.
  This was based on work we did last Congress in the Budget Committee, 
and the nonrenewal rates are the highest in areas with high climate 
risk. Again, it seems obvious, but the data tracks that the greater the 
climate risk, the more the insurance industry is backing away from 
uninsurable risks. Obviously, coastal Florida and wildfire-prone 
western areas are in greatest danger.
  This problem is a disaster for homeowners because lenders won't 
approve a mortgage unless the borrower also purchases insurance. An 
uninsurable home is an unmortgageable home, and an unmortgageable home 
is, in most places, an unsellable home. At the individual level, 
homeowner by homeowner, this can wipe out a family's primary source of 
wealth. One day your home had one value. The notice of nonrenewal 
comes, you can't get insurance, and your own home's value drops 
precipitously, wiping out your primary source of wealth, endangering 
retirements, endangering your children's future.
  And as climate disasters keep getting worse, so will this. 
Researchers predict that U.S. residential property will lose nearly 
$1.5 trillion in value over the next 30 years due to increasingly 
expensive and unavailable insurance. Just recently, Moody's Analytics 
came to a similar conclusion. And, sure enough, the places that will 
see the biggest declines in value are the places most exposed to 
climate risk: the Southeast and gulf coast, and the West and Plains, 
which are exposed to wildfire and hail risks.
  Indeed, in Florida, property values have already started to decline. 
It has been reported that Florida is the No. 1 State in the country for 
lost property value, which is the natural endpoint of the cascade from 
climate risk to insurance collapse, to mortgage market collapse, to 
property values collapse. And there in Florida, you see it beginning to 
happen.
  Here is the bad news. At the end of the day, the pressure from the 
insurance market on home values--this is the place where home values 
are likely to decline because of climate change.
  There has always been a basic truth in America that, with time, over 
the course of the mortgage, your property is going to go up in value. 
But in a world burdened by this level of climate risk, that is no 
longer the case. Now, we are looking at areas where it is predicted 
that home values may decline. In some cases, the decline is targeted at 
100 percent.
  What is 100 percent decline in home value? That means it ain't worth 
nothing anymore; you have lost all the value in your home. And, 
obviously, it is concentrated in the highest risk areas, but the risk 
is continuing to grow.
  We know what happened the last time, when there was a widespread 
decline in property values: The economy spiraled into the great 
recession. It cost millions of people in the United States their jobs, 
their homes, their savings. It would be folly to repeat 2008 all over 
again. The warnings are many, and they are real, and they come from 
leading voices in the financial sector--not environmentalists--people 
who track financial markets.

  So let's agree on the simple truth that climate change portends 
significant declines in American home values in climate-exposed regions 
of the United States.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, therefore, that the Committee 
on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged and the Senate 
proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 555; further, that 
the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the 
motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Wyoming.
  Ms. LUMMIS. Mr. President, I object. And excuse me. Let me start with 
this: I reserve the right to object.
  I have respect for the Senator's tenacity in making these arguments, 
but we are being asked, through this resolution, to accept the most 
dire narrative that is built on projections and models rather than 
proven causation. The data cited here conflates correlation with 
causation.
  The U.S. Senate should legislate based on evidence, not based on 
unrealized projections and fear. The resolution cites a $7.4 billion 
real estate loss in five southeastern States, between 2005 and 2017, 
and attributes it to sea level rise.
  But we shouldn't forget what also happened during those years. We 
lived through the 2008 financial crisis and the housing collapse, the 
worst real estate market in generations. Property values fell across 
the entire Nation, but they were particularly bad in Florida.
  So future projections and predictions are a troubling thing upon 
which to base legislation. Models are tools, not crystal balls. Models 
predict outcomes based on assumptions fed to them, and those 
assumptions can be wrong.
  There were many projections that cattle cause climate to be worse. At 
Oxford, in England, and in Italy, studies were done that changed the 
projections, and the new projections determined that cattle are good 
for the environment. They not only are not making things worse, but 
they are making things better.
  So if you change the assumptions and the projections, models can 
produce a different result. So we should not assume that every model 
has been fed the right information. We cannot make policy based on 
worst case scenarios from computer models.
  Mr. Chairman, I actually do believe that climate is changing. But 
even during the Obama administration, when I was on the House Science, 
Space, and Technology Committee, we had some witnesses come to the 
committee from National Labs and testify. And one of them was asked 
what percentage of climate change is caused by mankind, the activities 
of mankind. And the response was it is a single-digit number. And that 
scientist, from a U.S. National Lab, was never allowed to testify in 
front of our committee again because he gave an answer that didn't 
comport with the narrative that the administration was trying to sell.
  Climate change is happening, and I wish the Senator were making his 
remarks in China, rather than the United States, where the air is so 
bad that--I was in South Korea, in Seoul, and one day the weather was 
beautiful, the climate was beautiful, the air was fabulous. And the 
next day, you couldn't see two blocks because there was so much 
pollution.
  And I said: What happened here?
  They said: We know what our air quality will be in Seoul, South 
Korea, when we look at what the air quality was in China 48 hours ago.
  So it is coming from a very polluted environment.
  The United States has been exemplary, since the passage of the Clean 
Air Act, in cleaning up its air. We have extremely clean air, and 
especially so since we are an industrialized nation. I am proud of what 
the United States has done to address the Senator's concerns, but 
climate cannot be used to address the issue of concern to the Senator. 
Therefore, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, may I just say that some of the 
projections that my colleague objects to go back to the Chafee hearings 
of 40 years ago. These are predictions that are the product of NASA 
scientists.
  NASA is pretty good at stuff. We have vehicles rolling around on Mars 
thanks to NASA science. Their predictions are pretty good about where 
things are going to go.
  When the 2008 mortgage meltdown happened, there were two guys--one 
named Burry and one named Burt--who predicted. They got it right. Had 
we listened to those predictions, we could have saved ourselves a lot 
of pain.
  By the way, both of them are predicting a climate-related insurance 
collapse affecting property values, as we

[[Page S3052]]

have said. And, indeed, if you look at some of the companies most 
responsible for this mess, their own scientists predicted exactly what 
we have seen.
  We can test those predictions from 30, 40 years ago by measuring what 
has happened since, and what happened since confirms the predictions 
that Exxon scientists knew about, American Petroleum Institute 
scientists knew about, Chevron scientists knew about.
  Their problem was that when they told their senior management, the 
senior management said: No. No. No. Let's not talk about that. Let's 
cover that up, and let's start actually misleading the public about it.
  The folks who came into the Budget Committee to testify about this 
are people like the former risk management chief for Goldman Sachs, the 
chief economist--former chief economist for Freddie Mac, the mortgage 
giant.
  We had reports from the international Financial Stability Board about 
the danger to global banking markets. The Mortgage Bankers Association 
expressed their concern about this problem. An Allianz board member has 
written a very compelling article about what the collapse of the 
insurance market looks like as it continues. The American president of 
Aon, a huge insurance giant testified about this risk. Mark Carney, who 
was the president of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada before 
that and is now Prime Minister of Canada, testified about this.
  So some predictions are worth paying attention to, either because 
they have a track record over decades of proving themselves out or 
because the people really seem to know what they are talking about. And 
I would urge that we pay more attention to these predictions.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.

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