claim: The monetary cost of damages has increased dramatically in recent decades, but that is due to increasing population, wealth and the amount of vulnerable infrastructure.
evidence: Losses caused by catastrophes, defined by the property insurance industry as storms causing insured losses over $5 million in the year of occurrence, have grown steadily in the United States from about $100 million annually in the 1950s to $6 billion per year in the 1990s, and the annual number of catastrophes grew from 10 in the 1950s to 35 in the 1990s.” Authors have pointed to several reasons why commercial insurance markets cannot adequately cover risks associated with climate change ( Arrow et al., 1996, p. 72 ).