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States Hit by the Most Weather Disasters in the Last Decade

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Source: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Nine out of 10 U.S. counties have experienced a federally declared climate disaster between 2011 and 2021, according to a recently released report. Disasters such as flooding, wildfires, hurricanes, winter storms, or other extreme weather events affected nearly every part of the country.

This means most U.S. residents are potentially in the path of natural disasters, which are becoming more frequent and powerful amid global warming.

To find the states with the most weather disasters, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the Atlas of Disaster report published by Rebuild by Design, a nonprofit that helps communities struck by natural disasters. We ranked states by the number of weather disasters from 2011 to 2021 as listed in the report. All data, including federal aid, came from the report. A disaster in a state can span several counties, and therefore the number of counties with five or more disasters can be larger than the number of disasters declared by the state.

Federal aid to help states prepare for and clean up after weather-related events comes largely from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. According to the recent report, these agencies have dispersed $91 billion in disaster aid to states from 2011 to 2021, led by $26.3 billion to New York and $14.8 billion to Texas.

Superstorm Sandy in 2012 was the costliest natural disaster in New York and New Jersey in this period of time, while Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and a devastating winter storm in 2021 were the costliest weather disasters in the Lone Star state in that 10-year span. (Here are the most destructive storms in U.S. history.)

Seven other states have received more than a billion dollars in weather-related disaster aid from FEMA and HUD since 2011, including hurricane-prone Florida, Louisiana, and both Carolinas.

Louisiana, the country’s 25th most populous state, ranks at the top in weather disaster aid as measured on a per capita basis. In other words, Louisianans have received the highest amount of disaster aid when adjusting for its population size: $1,736 per resident. The only other state to have per capita FEMA and HUD aid for natural disasters above $1,000 per resident is New York, the country’s fourth most-populated state.

A string of massive seasonal wildfires from 2011 to 2021 helped put California as the sixth largest recipient of federal weather disaster aid. California is also the state with the highest number of climate disaster declarations. Five other states have issued 20 or more disaster declarations from 2011 to 2021: Tennessee, Iowa, Mississippi, and Oklahoma, in part due to powerful weather events like tornadoes and thunderstorm supercells.

California, the country’s largest state by population and gross domestic product, also has 1,966 polluted Superfund sites, the highest number in the nation. Other high-population states like New Jersey, Florida, and New York also have among the highest number of these polluted sites. (Here are the 13 most destructive wildfires in U.S. history.)

Here are the states with the most weather disasters.

The one thing everyone said would happen after Russia invaded Ukraine hasn’t

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Source: LeoPatrizi / E+ via Getty Images

In today’s issue:

— Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was supposed to speed the renewable transition. What happened?
— One of the world’s leading atmospheric observatories is sitting on an erupting volcano
— What Switzerland’s new mandate on climate risk reporting means for the U.S.
— How a new term called dynamic line rating (DLR) could upgrade the power grid system and deliver more renewable energy at the same time
— A British aviation giant has successfully used hydrogen to power a jet engine for the first time
— A short list of the largest polluters in the U.S.

One of the most common refrains among politicians and climate leaders since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that there is a thin silver lining in the wartime storm clouds as the backlash against Vladimir Putin will finally wean Europe off Russia’s oil and gas and speed the transition to renewable energy.

Only problem is that nine months later we’re still headed in the opposite direction.

Heading into December, we’re staring at a new record for coal usage worldwide and an increase in oil production of almost 5% to more than 100 million barrels a day, according to forecasts from the International Energy Agency. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have easily made up for lost production from Russia.

Gas production is expected to be flat while the increase of installed capacity for renewable energy such as solar and wind are up only 8%. In Europe, where the gains are expected to be largest, solar and wind usage has climbed to a record 24% of the total energy mix, but only up from 21%. Those gains were held back somewhat by a decline in hydro energy use because of droughts.

To be fair, experts have always said that the changes would come long term, but we’re not sure how long they mean. Certainly not longer than if there was no Russian backlash, we trust. In the meantime, plans by countries like Germany to place a windfall tax of up to 90% on energy company profits, including renewables, does little to encourage investment.

If the first casualty of war is truth, certainly rosy forecasts can’t be far behind. Then again, who thought Ukraine would still be independent by now, either?

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By David Callaway

27 Countries That Face the Worst Catastrophic Ecological Threats

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Source: Spencer Platt / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Climate change has hit every country in some way. Category 5 hurricanes and massive floods have struck many nations across the globe. Florida is still recovering from two hurricanes. Yet some countries face a much higher threat of catastrophic ecological events than others. (See the most destructive storms in U.S. history.)

To find the 27 countries that face catastrophic ecological threats, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the global think tank Institute for Economics & Peace report Ecological Threat Report 2022. The report, which covers 163 countries, identified 27 hotspot countries that face catastrophic ecological threats, while also having the lowest levels of societal resilience (as measured by ongoing domestic and international conflict, societal safety and security, and militarization). Countries are ordered by the number of catastrophic ecological threats in reverse alphabetical order.

We added such measures as the Global Peace Index 2022, which is on a scale of 1-5, whereas 5 is least peaceful; gross domestic product per capita in current U.S. dollars; the Human Development Index (the HDI uses health, education, and economic measures to assess a country’s development on a scale of 0-1 with 1 being most developed); and 2021 and projected 2050 population of each country.

Countries with effective water management, efficient agricultural systems, and strong disaster preparedness have the ability to better withstand an ecological disaster. Being free of conflicts further strengthens a country’s resilience. No single country with a high level of socio-economic resilience has an extremely low ETR score. Conversely, countries plagued by ongoing conflicts exhibit less societal resilience and are ecologically fragile. (Are any among the countries facing the worst climate emergencies?)

The 2022 ETR identifies 27 hotspot countries that face catastrophic ecological threats, while also having the lowest levels of societal resilience. These countries are home to 768 million people. Two-thirds of hotspot countries are in sub-Saharan Africa, with seven of the eight hotspot countries with the highest risk found in that region – Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Somalia, South Sudan, and Uganda. The eighth country is Yemen.

Meanwhile, countries in the Middle East/North Africa account for another 18.5% of hotspot countries. In addition to natural disasters and unstable societies, many of the hotspot countries face food shortages due to supply disruptions caused by the Russia war in Ukraine. 

Click here to see 27 countries that face the worst catastrophic ecological threats.

Click here to read our detailed methodology.

Climate Christmas: Europe’s holiday markets turn down the lights

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Source: billnoll / E+ via Getty Images

(A native of England, veteran journalist Matthew Diebel has worked at NBC News, Time, USA Today and News Corp., among other organizations. Having spent much of his childhood next to one of the world’s fastest bodies of water, he is particularly interested in tidal energy.)

NEW YORK (Callaway Climate Insights) — OK, call me a Grinch, but here’s a casualty of Europe’s energy crisis that that I’m not too upset about: The news that many of Europe’s Christmas markets are turning down their lights, shrinking the number of stalls and forgoing traditional accompaniments like energy-sapping ice-skating rinks.

Talk about kitsch! I experienced a couple of them when staying with a German family in my student days trying to get in touch with my Teutonic roots. Twinkling lights, lots of them. Cloying displays of furry animals — fake and real — and sappy music. And then there was the ghastly gluhwein, a hot spiced concoction too heavy on sugary sweetness.

Now all that is being toned down, The Guardian reports…

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By David Callaway

The 18 Worst Nuclear Accidents in World History

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Source: ETH Library / Wikimedia Commons

It has been more than a decade since the last major global nuclear disaster, the meltdown of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011.  However, the the risk of a dangerous nuclear accident remains present, and has been since the development of the first atomic bomb in Los Altos, New Mexico in 1945.

To find the world’s worst nuclear accident, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed several online sources to list accidents rated Level 4 or higher, according to the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, or INES. Nuclear accidents are assigned a level ranging from zero to 10 by a scale developed in 1990 by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Our list does not include military-related accidents and is in chronological order.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Association, there are 31 countries with nuclear power reactors that generate 10.3% of the world’s electricity. In the U.S., there are 94 reactors operating in 30 states that produce almost 20% of total annual electricity generation. Though nuclear power does not produce carbon dioxide, it does generate nuclear waste, and these materials can remain radioactive and dangerous to people for thousands of years. (These are America’s oldest nuclear power plants.)

There have been very few serious nuclear incidents in the U.S. The most concerning was the accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, an incident that eerily followed the release of the nuclear-accident film “The China Syndrome” several weeks earlier. (Here are nuclear mixups that almost started World War III.)

Nuclear accidents have occurred for a variety of reasons such as miscalculations involving experiments or tests, human error, or a flawed design at some of the facilities. In one case, an old radiotherapy device stolen by scavengers from a Brazilian hospital was mishandled by many people, killing four of them.

The two worst nuclear accidents in history were the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011 and Chernobyl in Pripyat, Ukraine, in 1986. Both were Level-7 incidents.

In Fukushima, the cause of the accident was an earthquake, which unleashed a tsunami more than twice as high as the plant was designed to withstand, disabling backup generators and shutting down the reactor cooling systems. This led to hydrogen explosions and radiation that contaminated the area around the plant and caused the evacuation of about 500,000 people.

The Chernobyl accident occurred when a power surge during a reactor systems test produced an explosion and workers did not take adequate measures. Two died that night and more later as a result of the radiation that also escaped into the atmosphere over western Soviet Union and Europe. About 220,000 people had to be relocated as the Soviet Union created the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in the surrounding contaminated area (about 1,500 sq. miles).

Click here to see the world’s worst nuclear accidents

Markets already pricing long-term climate risk, new study shows. Here’s how.

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Source: Michael B. Thomas / Getty Images

(Mark Hulbert, an author and longtime investment columnist, is the founder of the Hulbert Financial Digest; his Hulbert Ratings audits investment newsletter returns.)

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (Callaway Climate Insights) — The financial markets may be doing a better job than previously thought when accounting for the long-term risks of climate change, according to a recent study.

This is encouraging, since many previous studies had concluded that the markets are too obsessed with near-term results to play a helpful role in mitigating climate change. As I wrote in this space a couple of years ago, a major 2007 study in the American Economic Review found that the markets are “short-sighted and neglect information beyond a horizon of four to eight years.”

Though climate researchers tell us that we’re already dealing with climate-change-related disasters, most everyone would agree that the greatest climate-change risks won’t manifest themselves until several decades into the future at a minimum. Normal year-to-year variability in the weather plays a much larger role over the near term. If the markets neglect risks beyond an eight-year horizon, then those markets will largely fail to steer capital away from the most climate-destructive companies and towards those that will help cool the planet.

This new study that reaches a more hopeful conclusion about the markets is titled “Sea Level Rise Exposure and Municipal Bond Yields.” It recently began circulating as a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Its authors are Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham of Yale University, Matthew Gustafson of Penn State, Ryan Lewis of the University of Colorado Boulder, and Michael Schwert of the Wharton School.

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By David Callaway

John Kerry’s climate reparations dilemma has a very predictable solution

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Source: John Moore / Getty Images

In today’s issue:

— John Kerry just signed up for a global climate fund that could cost trillions. Where will he get the money?
— Electric vehicle sales in the U.S. are surging even more than expected. Here’s who will benefit.
— Climate activists have stepped up their attacks on artwork, with a new catch.
— What will Buffalo, NY do with seven feet of snow that fell over the weekend? There is a plan.

Pity John Kerry. Trapped in a hotel room in Egypt with Covid, he had little choice but to accede to the demands of small and vulnerable nations at the COP27 climate summit over the weekend and agree to U.S. participation in a massive climate reparations fund to help protect them from global warming.

Especially after the European Union, his last supporter, turned on him at the last moment. Left until next year’s COP28 in Dubai were all the messy details about where the money will come from and who will actually pay. But it’s a safe bet it’s not going to come from U.S. taxpayers ahead of a presidential election in 2024. Or any Western taxpayers, for that matter.

Fortunately for Kerry, there is a solution to the dilemma right in his backyard in Washington D.C. As the only real way to finance such a fund will come from public/private partnerships, President Joe Biden’s climate czar can now be expected to fully turn up the heat, pun intended, on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund when he recovers and gets home.

The World Bank, which loans about $20 billion a year to poor countries already, is ripe for climate reform after current President David Malpass emerged as something of a climate denier a few months ago. Kerry can be expected to lead an international push among World Bank shareholders for new leadership next year and a dramatic escalation in loan leverage to help find new funding for poor countries.

Kerry said in Egypt he wants a plan from the World Bank, IMF, and other development banks to overhaul themselves and “unleash hundreds of billions” in funding by April, which is conveniently when the two Washington-based agencies have their spring meetings in the U.S. capital. Spring meetings are usually sleepy affairs. Expect that to change this time.

Tuesday’s subscriber-only insights

. . . . We wrote about it earlier this year — how sales of electric vehicles in the U.S. appeared to have reached a tipping point of about 5% in the first quarter. That figure has now exploded, with the Electric Drive Transport Association reporting that EV purchases rose to 7% in the second quarter alone and that sales are up 41% this year.

And that is putting a smile on the face of automaker executives, with General Motors GM CEO Mary Barra, according to a company news release, predicting that her company’s EV portfolio will be profitable in 2025. “Total company revenue is expected to grow at a 12% compound annual rate through 2025,” according to the statement, “reaching more than $225 billion as EV volumes and software revenue grow. Revenue from EVs is expected to be more than $50 billion in 2025.”

What the statement doesn’t mention is one of the key reasons EVs are set to be so profitable: They are cheap to build and getting cheaper. First, there are fewer moving parts — no complicated internal combustion engines to put together, for example. Second, their most expensive component, the batteries, are getting cheaper as economies of scale increase and new factories, some of them built by domestic car manufacturers, come online. In that regard, the automaker said that it plans to reduce its Ultium battery cell costs to $87/kWh in 2025 and below $70/kWh by later in the decade.

Barra, meanwhile, gives considerable credit to the tax incentives provided by President Joe Biden’s climate-focused Investment Reduction Act, which passed in August. “It’s clear these credits are going to help usher in a new era of technology innovation and job creation that’s going to achieve what was intended,” she said. “It will be good for the American economy. It’ll be good for American families. It’ll be good for the environment, and frankly, General Motors is well poised.”

The resulting revenue projections are impressive, with the company predicting a 12% compound annual growth rate to more than $225 billion, including $50 billion from EVs, in 2025. Also likely up, GM says, will be profit margins, which are on the way to achieving 12% to 14% levels amid annual revenue of $280 billion by 2030.

And with Ford F especially bullish over sales of its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck and also sending positive signals about EV-driven profitability, it seems like Detroit — along with Elon Musk’s market-leading Tesla TSLA — are hitting their next-generation stride.

. . . . Hyundai-Kia is an electric vehicle maker you can’t ignore. First, it was Tesla — way ahead of the pack — that grabbed all of the electric vehicle headlines. Then General Motors made news with its compact Chevrolet Bolt, a car with a price point that put it in reach of less-than-wealthy buyers. And then came Ford, especially with the May 2021 introduction of its F-150 Lightning pickup truck, which has gone on to garner a huge number of orders.

The dark horse in the pack, though, is South Korean giant Hyundai/Kia, which, according to figures from Experian cited by InsideEVs.com, is now second to Tesla in American EV sales, with its Hyundai Ioniq5 and Kia EV6 both selling strongly. Sales were also healthy for the EV version of Hyundai’s premium brand, Genesis. Read more below on how Hyundai/Kia leads the EV nominations in the 2023 North American Car, Truck and Utility awards, which will be announced in Detroit in January. And now the company appears to be treading further into Tesla’s territory, The Verge reports, with the announcement of Hyundai Home, a marketplace launched last week during the Los Angeles Auto Show that enables buyers to pick a home battery storage solution and a home EV charging system in one location, a process that in some ways mirrors Tesla’s model.

Unlike Tesla, though — and an upcoming version from GM — Hyundai isn’t selling its own wares, instead partnering with other vendors, such as ChargePoint CHPT 0.00 for at-home charging stations and Enphase Energy ENPH 0.00 for home batteries. “A big piece was speed to market,” Hyundai’s senior group manager of strategic environmental partnerships Ian Tupper told The Verge. “We recognize that there’s a need for this market and that there are companies that provide great products out there already.” In addition, Hyundai has solar panels to the mix, working with maker Solaria, and also including home-power broker Electrum, who help organize systems for customers, including helping make sure that all relevant federal, state, and local incentives are applied to the purchase price of a setup, such as tax breaks under the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act.

“New Thinking, New Possibilities,” is Hyundai’s current slogan. It seems like they mean it.

Editor’s picks: Thanksgiving, EVs climb award rankings, and activists target art

EVs lead list of finalists for key industry awards

Electric vehicles are overtaking the list of finalists for 2023 North American Car, Truck and Utility Vehicle of the Year Awards, taking six of the nine spots, Mark Phelan reports for the Detroit Free Press. And all three finalists for Utility Vehicle of the Year are EVs. They are the Cadillac Lyriq, Genesis GV60 and Kia EV6. The Chevrolet Silverado ZR2, with its gas engine, Lordstown Motors’ Endurance, and Ford’s F-150 Lighting, both EVs, are finalists for Truck of the Year. The finalists for Car of the Year are the Acura Integra, Genesis G80 EV and the Nissan Z. Phelan notes four of the finalists are produced by U.S.-based companies. Korea’s Hyundai-Kia has three vehicles among the finalists, but none of the finalists are from European brands.

Latest in climate activists attacking artwork

Climate activists went after artworks in Paris, Milan and Oslo Friday. ArtNews reports these actions differed from previous events in that they were done simultaneously and they targeted artworks not protected by glass. The members of organizations working under the umbrella group A22 Network threw orange paint or flour on three sculptures. In the front entrance to the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection museum in Paris, two members of the French group Dernière Rénovation doused Charles Ray’s stainless-steel sculpture Horse and Rider with orange paint. In Milan, members of Ultima Generazione covered a BMW art car painted by Andy Warhol with bags of flour. In Oslo, the group Stopp oljeletinga poured paint on Gustave Vigeland’s sculpture Monolith. According to the report, none of the pieces were damaged, although some are being assessed for additional cleaning and treatment.

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By David Callaway

Coal-loving Manchin’s gift to his state: The fastest rising electricity rates in the nation

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Source: Drew Angerer / Getty Images

MATTHEW DIEBEL

Forrest Gump’s phrase “Stupid is as stupid does” comes to mind when you read a piece in Inside Climate News that coal-addicted West Virginia, which generates about 90% of its power from the black stuff, has seen the electricity rates of its largest utility rise 180% in the past 15 years, five times the average increase in the U.S.

True, the state used to have some of the lowest electricity costs in the nation, largely due to the abundant coal it mined. But, with aging coal plants becoming less reliable — and an almost non-existent move to renewable energy — the costs of keeping the plants going has largely been passed on to the consumer. “It’s all about overwhelming economic forces,” James Van Nostrand, professor at the West Virginia University College of Law and director of its Center for Energy and Sustainable Development, told the website. “The rest of the country embraced natural gas, they embraced wind and solar, and we doubled down on coal. And the West Virginia ratepayers are paying for that.”

And guess who is the state’s most prominent cheerleader for coal? Yes, none other than U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, the Democrat whose Dark Age demands almost sank President Joe Biden’s climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act.

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By David Callaway

The Most Populous Countries in the World

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Source: MarioGuti / E+ via Getty Images

The world population surpassed 8 billion on Tuesday, according to population projections made by the United Nations earlier this year. This shockingly comes just 11 years after the world population passed 7 billion. It has only taken 48 years for the world’s population to double. The U.N. projects that the world population will continue to expand by the tens of millions every year, crossing the 9 billion mark around 2037, before finally peaking at 10.4 billion in the 2080s. 

24/7 Wall St. used the U.N.’s World Population Prospects 2022 report to list the 36 most populous nations on earth, with population figures listed as of July 2022. These countries represent 80% of the world’s population. Past years’ population estimates and future projected figures, as well as population growth and life expectancy at birth are all from the U.N. report.  

While these projected population figures are alarming, growth does appear to be slowing down. The global population’s annual growth rate as of July 2022 was 0.83%, the slowest in decades, and the U.N. projects that rate will continue to decline until the population begins to shrink in the 2080s. (Here are rich countries with the biggest families.)

In some of the most populous countries on Earth, population growth rates have leveled out. These include the United States, which in 2021 had a population growth rate of just 0.21%, its lowest such figure in decades. In China, currently the world’s most populous nation, the annual population declined in 2022, the first time in 60 years. 

On the other hand, while there are countries like the United States and China, there are other nations that continue to have meteoric population growth. Nigeria, for example, added 5.2 million people between July 2021 and July 2022, a 2.3% growth rate. The African nation is currently the world’s seventh most populous, but in 20 years the U.N. projects it will become the fourth most populous. 

Meanwhile, India, which currently has the second largest population, added 9.7 million in the 12 months through July 2022. The U.N. projects India’s population will surpass China’s some time next year. (These are the fastest growing countries in the world.)

Click here to see the most populous countries in the world.

Zeus: ESG deals push through recession talk as investors look past election, bear market

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Source: Maxiphoto / iStock via Getty Images

(David Callaway is founder and Editor-in-Chief of Callaway Climate Insights. He is the former president of the World Editors Forum, Editor-in-Chief of USA Today and MarketWatch, and CEO of TheStreet Inc. His climate columns have appeared in USA Today, The Independent, and New Thinking magazine).

SAN FRANCISCO (Callaway Climate Insights) — An expected narrow win by Republicans for control of the U.S. House of Representatives this month means we’ll still have to endure obnoxious, anti-ESG hearings in the New Year. But for most investors in environmental, social and governance deals, that backlash ship has sailed.

Third-quarter deal flow reports suggest ESG investing has withstood the worst of the bear market and money is still flowing into clean tech despite talk of a recession next year and a further leg down in global markets. Investing in sustainable buildings, so-called energy efficiency, was particularly strong. And despite backlash from some red state officials against large fund managers over their ESG practices, the allure of profit as the economy transitions to renewable energy is too strong to overcome.

“In the past 12 months, we’ve had more than 1,000 new signatories to the PRI,” said David Atkin, CEO of the London-based Principles for Responsible Investment group, which has more than 5,000 total asset owners and managers as members now. “It is now mainstream for investors to believe that environmental strategies are material.”

The numbers tell the story…

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By David Callaway

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