By Insurance companies are supposed to protect us from catastrophic risks. Yet when it comes to climate change, insurers perpetuate climate chaos and dependence on fossil fuels by insuring new coal, oil, and gas projects while raising premiums and abandoning communities that are hit by worsening and repeat climate disasters.
And still, the insurance industry tries to present itself as a victim of climate disasters while continuing to insure the fossil fuel projects causing them. Through 50 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, we discovered that over 35 major insurers are supporting the biggest fossil fuel build out of our lifetimes: methane gas expansion in the US Gulf South.
Our new report Risk Exposure: The Insurers Secretly Backing the Methane Gas Boom in the US Gulf South reveals for the first time the extent and scale of specific insurers’ direct role in complicity in the reckless expansion of methane.
YOUR insurance company is backing climate chaos in the Gulf
We pulled the insurance certificates of 7 methane terminals, and discovered at least 35 insurers who are propping up these disastrous projects, including names you know and probably pay for like Liberty Mutual, Chubb, and AIG.
Not only are these so-called “risk experts” risking Gulf communities, ecosystems, and our shared climate by insuring methane — but they’re undercutting their own climate policies to do so. For example, Chubb is the only US insurer to have some restrictions on insuring oil and gas, and as such position themselves as a leader in reducing methane leaks along gas supply chains. However, they’re insuring half the terminals in our report, making their effort completely insufficient given the amount of methane pollution that these terminals emit.
Time and time again these companies have shown disgusting hypocrisy by raising premiums and even pulling out of communities due to climate disasters. Some insurers, like AIG, have abandoned the entire state of Louisiana, claiming it’s too high-risk to cover, meanwhile they’re insuring the very projects that are driving the increasing and intensifying disasters!
These insurers must listen to communities
These terminals will (and already) have horrific impacts on primarily Black, Brown and Indigenous communities across Texas and Louisiana, and people have been fighting back against this build out for years.
If built, Texas LNG, Rio Grande LNG, and their proposed Rio Bravo Pipeline would destroy our low-income Latine community’s way of life. Pollution from these mega LNG/methane export terminals would destroy the waterways where shrimp lay their eggs and our people fish to feed their families. We’re calling on these insurance companies to stop insuring LNG/methane terminals because it’s blatant environmental racism.” – Bekah Hinojosa, South Texas Environmental Justice Network
Stop insuring methane gas!
Methane gas is not safe or wanted. These methane terminals will destroy precious ecosystems, disrupt crucial revenue streams for local communities, displace people, violate Indigenous sovereignty, spew carcinogens and other toxins into the air, further push our climate over the brink as methane has 80 times more climate-warming potential than carbon dioxide, and each one locks us into decades more reliance on fossil fuels.
By insuring this methane boom, these companies are insuring our shared destruction. Insurers must urgently stop enabling the methane boom that’s perpetuating environmental racism, the destruction of ecosystems and communities, and threatening a livable future for all.
IS YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY BEHIND LNG IN THE GULF?
