Homeowners face a $25trn bill from climate change

THE residentS of northern Italy had never seen anything like the thunderstorm that mauled their region last summer. Hailstones as big as 19cm across pummelled Milan, Parma, Turin and Venice. Windows were broken, solar panels smashed, tiles cracked and cars dented. The episode cost the insurance industry $4.8bn, making it the most expensive natural disaster in the world from July to September (the figures exclude America, which collates such data separately).

Yet insurance executives, although smarting, were not surprised. Climate change is making such incidents much more common. In the decade from 2000 to 2009 only three thunderstorms cost the industry more than $1bn at current prices. From 2010 to 2019 there were ten. Since 2020 there have already been six. Such storms now account for more than a quarter of the costs to the insurance industry from natural disasters, according to Swiss Re, a reinsurance firm. In Europe, not known for extreme weather, losses have topped $5bn a year for the past three years.