From the morning of the 6th (local time), the sky in New York, USA was covered with gray smoke, and the Manhattan skyscraper skyline disappeared from view in the afternoon. My throat was sharp and my eyes stung. Outdoor events have been canceled one after the other as the ‘Code Red’ warning for seriously poor air quality was issued in an unusual manner.
Hundreds of wildfires in Canada have caused smoke to reach the United States. Smoke from wildfires that blanketed Ottawa, Toronto, and Quebec, Canada, at least 700 to 1,000 km away from New York, fell into Minnesota, Michigan, Massachusetts, and New York, as well as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina further south, bordering. northern United States An air pollution warning has been issued.
The wildfires in Canada this time have occurred in more than 400 places at the same time, which is unusual. The fires are so fierce that 250 places are out of control, and the worst damage ever is expected to be recorded by next week. It has already burned a total of 33,000 square kilometers since last weekend, which is 18 times the area burned by the average Canadian wildfire over the past decade. CNN said, “As the global average temperature rises and humidity decreases, forests become drier and frequent forest fires are a rapidly increasing phenomenon not only in Canada but also in other countries.”
In the United States, as more and more areas suffer from abnormal weather such as forest fires, the insurance market is hit and local finances decline. California, the most populous state, is overwhelmed by a ‘climate disaster’, alternating heat waves, droughts, wildfires or floods. Late last month, State Farm, a major insurance company, stopped selling new home damage insurance, California’s largest business, because the burden of insurance payments due to wildfires was too great.
Even in hurricane-prone Florida, major new home insurance companies have gone bankrupt in the past two to three years. As the private insurance market collapsed, insurance corporations run by southern state governments, such as Florida and Louisiana, took over home insurance. Extreme weather also adds to the burden of home insurance subscribers. Public housing insurance, operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, currently receives an average of $888 a year, but according to a recent plan to review insurance premiums when considering climate disasters, it is said to have been calculated to have to more than double to $1,800. In Canada, the rate of increase in home insurance premiums due to abnormal weather has ranged from 60 to 140 percent over the past 10 years, more than three times the rate of inflation.
In this situation, all state governments are busy preparing emergency measures such as regulating housing construction or saving water. Arizona announced on the 1st that it would regulate the construction of new buildings and houses for three years due to a lack of underground water due to a long drought and misuse of water. “In order to build a new house, the owner must prove that there has been enough underground water for 100 years,” he said. Previously, three states along the western Colorado river basin, including Arizona, California and Nevada, agreed to reduce water use by 13% over the next three years.
