In this week’s newsletter: The climate crisis is making insurance unaffordable for many – and it should worry all of us, even if we think we’re safe from floods, wildfires and hurricanes

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I’m worried about insurance.

Some homes are becoming uninsurable due to the rapidly escalating impacts of the climate crisis. And that should worry you too, even if you think your home is safe enough.

Under water, in denial: is Europe drowning out the climate crisis?

The Great Olympic lie: untold story of Winter Games’ huge environmental impact

‘It’s more exciting than Tesco’: can traditional fishing lure Cornwall’s young people?

‘Homes may have to be abandoned’: how climate crisis has reshaped Britain’s flood risk

‘Delays, lowballs, outright denials’: how the LA wildfires have exposed the US’s broken insurance industry

The Guardian view on the rising risk from flooding: uninsurable buildings should focus minds on climate adaptation

Insurers say cases of scammers manipulating people into staging crashes and filing bogus claims are under-reported

Romance fraud typically evokes images of people being tricked out of their life savings by partners they meet on dating sites, but some scammers use a different tactic: recruiting unsuspecting victims into fake insurance claims.

The scam involves a fraudster convincing their partner, or a person they are dating, either to say they have witnessed a car accident, or to take out an insurance policy and file a bogus claim in order to secure a payout.

Figures from Aviva also show number of homes being built in risky areas is rising

One in nine new homes in England built between 2022 and 2024 were constructed in areas that could now be at risk of flooding, according to new data.

The figures show the number of homes being built in risky areas is on the rise – a previous analysis showed that between 2013 and 2022, one in 13 new homes were in potential flooding zones.

Insurance practices in an age of climate volatility raise troubling questions about home ownership and housing affordability – the bedrock of the American middle class

For a few frenetic days last January, after losing their midcentury ranch home to the wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles, Jessica and Matt Conkle thought they could see a glimmer of hope.

Their insurance company, State Farm, had sent emergency response teams to Altadena, where they lived, and they filed a claim right away. It wasn’t long before they received a check that covered four months of living expenses.