Climate Crisis:Italian insurers paid out record 6 bn in 2023

(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 2 - Italian insurers paid out a record six billion euros in claims linked to damage caused by 'natural' disasters last year as the impact of the climate crisis here continued to become more dramatic, ANIA President Maria Bianca Farina told the insurance association's assembly on Tuesday.
    Farina said this tally included some 800 million euros paid out in relation to last year's deadly floods in Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany.
    "In 2023, the worldwide insurance industry paid out almost 100 billion euros for claims related to natural disasters," Farina said.
    "In Italy there was the all-time maximum of insured damages: more than six billion, including 5.5 billion caused by atmospheric events.
    "Climate change is a crucial challenge.
    "We are witnessing increasingly extreme, frequent and destructive natural disasters, which put more and more people and property at risk".
    Scientists say the climate crisis is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions. Although there are many sources of the greenhouse gases that are causing global heating, the main driver is the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal, sales of which generate huge profits for the world's energy giants.
    The WWF said Monday that Italy is in a "permanent state of climate calamity" after the latest in a long series of waves of extreme weather caused massive damage in northern Italy at the weekend.
    The Italian branch of the NGO said a group of young people taking part in a summer camp it organized in Cogne were among the people who had to be evacuated via helicopter after mudslides caused by flooding and torrential rain blocked the regional highway to the Aosta Valley town on the slopes of the Gran Paradiso mountain and knocked out water supplies.
    "It's increasingly clear that we are experiencing a new 'permanent state of climate calamity', where the climate crisis is the greatest risk to citizen's safety, with record temperatures and extreme heat alternating with violent rainfall and devastating floods," the WWF said.
    "What happened in Cogne is caused by climate change, which is causing extreme events that were once very rare to multiply, making them almost daily, but it also highlights all of our country's delays in tackling, predicting and mitigating it".
    (ANSA).