Business
Base Policies on Reality – Not Myths, Models, Misinformation and Fearmongering
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Donald Trump and JD Vance have a mandate on energy, economic, immigration and other issues that won them 50% of popular, 58% of electoral and 82% of US county votes.
On January 20 they will begin tackling the numerous problems bequeathed them by the Biden-Harris Administration and Washington Deep State: illegal immigration of criminals, terrorists and opportunists; outrageous government spending by bloated federal agencies; wars and crises across the globe; and federal and state politicians and bureaucrats determined to slow or stymie their every move.
Mr. Trump will let the DOGE out, to cut government waste. Pundits and political pros are offering advice across the board. My suggestions center on the “climate crisis” and the destructive policies it has justified.
1. First and foremost, withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate straitjacket. Its terms and subsequent agreements require that the USA and other industrialized nations switch from fossil fuels to “clean renewable” energy and de-modernize agricultural and other practices, to eliminate “greenhouse gas” (GHG) emissions. That would bring blackouts, de-industrialization and job losses.
It would also mean now-rich nations must pay developing countries $300 billion per year for climate damage “compensation” and renewable energy financing. But China, India and other developing countries need not cut emissions and will continue using coal, oil and natural gas in ever-increasing quantities, to modernize, create vibrant economies and lift more people out of poverty. That would mean even zero fossil fuel use by Western nations would not reduce global atmospheric GHG levels at all.
Better yet, send the Paris document to Congress for Article II Senate advice and two-thirds consent. President Obama’s sly move of calling this accord a mere “agreement” that required no Senate “treaty” review cannot be countenanced. Paris was among the most far-reaching, impactful agreements in US history. It affects our energy, economy, jobs, living standards, healthcare, national security and more. It’s a treaty and should be treated as such.
2. Equally important, eliminate the institutionalized junk science, assertions and fearmongering that fossil fuel use has caused an existential climate crisis for people and planet. Begin by re-examining the 2009 Obama Environmental Protection Agency “Endangerment Finding” that carbon dioxide “pollution” threatens the American people’s health and welfare.
Fossil fuels provide 80% of America’s energy; raw materials for thousands of petrochemical products; and the foundation of our economy, health and welfare. Their emissions certainly contribute to the 0.04% CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere, but this miracle molecule enables and spurs plant growth, thereby feeding the animal kingdom and making nearly all life possible.
EPA’s convoluted finding defied science and reality. It allowed the Obama and Biden Administrations to justify biased climate “research,” anti-fossil fuel regulations, sprawling wind and solar installations, and the transformation of America’s entire energy system and economy.
The Endangerment Decision was likely the most “major federal action” in US history, yet it has no real statutory basis. It clearly defies the Supreme Court’s decisions in West Virginia v. EPA, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council and Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc., v. Raimondo.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin should direct the agency to formally and publicly reexamine the secretive process that EPA employed to ensure its “endangerment” decision – with no contrarian science, evidence, questions or public hearings permitted to challenge its preordained edict. A fair, balanced, scientific review would demolish the faulty Finding and bring the agency into compliance with SCOTUS rulings.
The President-elect’s appointment of energy and environmental “czars” and National Energy Council will build on those important steps, help restore reality and common sense to America’s energy and climate policies, rein in other Biden-era regulations and executive actions, and advance Mr. Trump’s promise of US energy dominance and economic resurgence.
Other actions the new Administration and Congress should take include the following.
3. Utilize the Congressional Review Act to reverse eleventh-hour Biden-Harris regulatory sprees – such as its ban on further coal leasing in the Powder River Basin.
4. Open all US non-National-Park areas for no/low impact evaluation and exploration, to identify prospects warranting more detailed assessments for critically needed metals and minerals. Most of these public land areas were deliberately made off-limits to such evaluations by Congress, courts and the Deep State, making it impossible to weigh surface values against potential for world-class subsurface deposits.
China’s recent ban on exports of several vital metals and minerals underscores yet again why America must not rely on adversaries for raw materials critical for US defense, aerospace, battery, AI, wind, solar and other industries – especially when those materials could be found and developed in America, under the world’s best pollution control and environmental protection rules, technologies and practices.
5. Reopen the Delaware-sized “coastal plain” of Alaska’s South-Carolina-sized Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas leasing, exploration and drilling. Congressional legislation in 2017 explicitly allowed those activities, but President Biden unilaterally cancelled all leases and permits in 2023.
6. Require that applicants for climate change research and modeling grants demonstrate that their previous models and studies have been confirmed by actual temperature, drought and extreme weather data and evidence; and provide computer codes and analyses so that reviewers can view and evaluate their work.
7. Define “sustainability” to reflect complete global life-cycle raw material requirements, mining and processing needs and impacts, energy required to produce raw materials and manufacture energy and other systems, and land, air and water pollution resulting from all those activities. This will ensure that wind, solar, battery, electric vehicle and other technologies are not classified as “clean, renewable and sustainable” merely because they don’t emit CO2 or pollution after they start operating.
8. End subsidies and fast-track permitting for wind and solar installations – especially offshore wind, where raw material requirements and costs are many times higher than for onshore turbines and far more excessive than that for combined-cycle gas generators.
9. Require that wind and solar projects, and associated backup battery and transmission line projects, meet the same environmental review standards and requirements as required for oil, gas, coal and metals mining, and nuclear projects, regarding local, regional and global air and water pollution, land and habitat destruction, wildlife disturbance and loss, and post-project equipment removal and land reclamation.
Even better, cancel the entire offshore wind program. Its electricity is weather-dependent and ultra-expensive, threatens wildlife and fisheries, and requires unjustifiable amounts of raw materials.
10. Expand and streamline programs to bring new nuclear power plants online, especially small modular reactors – to meet rapidly expanding needs for abundant, reliable, affordable electricity for data centers, artificial intelligence, and increasingly electrified households, technologies and industries.
11. Terminate Diversity Equity Inclusion, Environment Social Governance, and Environmental and Climate Justice programs, offices and funding. They only serve as twisted justifications for arbitrarily selecting preferred companies and communities that are often less qualified to serve public health and safety.
There is much more to be done. But this is a solid beginning for reducing or eliminating needless, excessive and harmful pseudo science, grants, policies, practices and regulations – and restoring government of, by and for the People.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.
We’ve all seen the headlines — such as the below — loudly proclaiming that due to climate change the insurance industry is in crisis, and even that total economic collapse may soon follow. For instance, since 2019, the New York Times, one of the primary champions of this narrative, has published more than 1,250 articles on climate change and insurance.
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Climate advocates have embraced the idea of a climate-fueled insurance crisis as it neatly ties together the hyping of extreme weather and alleged financial consequences for ordinary people. The oft-cited remedy to the claimed crisis is, of course, to be found in energy policy: “The only long-term solution to preserve an insurable future is to transition from fossil fuels and other greenhouse-gas-emitting industries.”
However, it is not just climate advocates promoting the notion that climate change is fundamentally threatening the insurance industry. A climate-risk industrial complex has emerged in this space and a lot of money is being made by a lot of people. The virtuous veneer of climate advocacy serves to discourage scrutiny and accountability.
In this series, I take a deep dive into the “crisis,” its origins, its politics, and its tenuous relationship with actual climate science.¹ Today, I kick things off by sharing three fundamental, and perhaps surprising, facts that go a long way to explaining why insurance prices have increased and who benefits:
- Property/casualty insurance is raking in record profits;
- Insurance underwriting returns vary year-to-year but show no trend;
- “Climate” risk assessments are unreliable and a cause of higher insurance prices.
Grab a cup of coffee, settle in, and let’s go . . .
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Property/casualty insurance is raking in record profits
This year is shaping up to be an extremely profitable year for the property/casualty (P/C) insurance industry. In a report covering the first six months of 2025, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) shares the good news (emphasis added):
Despite heavy catastrophe losses, including the costliest wildfires on record, the U.S. Property & Casualty (P&C) industry recorded its best mid-year underwriting gain in nearly 20 years.
In the second half of 2025, returns got even better for the P/C industry. According to a new report from S&P Global Intelligence, as reported by Carrier Management (emphases added):
For U.S. P/C insurers, it just doesn’t get any better than this. . . With a combined ratio of 89.1 for third-quarter 2025, the U.S. property/casualty insurance industry had its best quarter in at least a quarter of a century—and maybe longer, S&P Market Intelligence said.
Taking a longer view, the extremely profitable 2025 follows significant industry profitability in 2023 and 2024, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), as shown in the figure below.
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What accounts for the high profits?
The NAIC explains:
Strong premium growth, driven largely by rate increases, coupled with abating economic inflation . . . Net income nearly doubled compared to last year, attributed to the underwriting profit and healthy investment returns.
Below, I’ll pick up the issue of rate increases and explore one big reason why they have occurred.
If there is a P/C insurance crisis, it may be in figuring out how to explain its impressive returns at the same time that the climate lobby is telling everyone that the industry is collapsing.
Insurance underwriting returns vary year-to-year but show no trend
The P/C industry makes money primarily in two ways — underwriting of insurance policies and investment income. Typically, insurance companies seek to break even, or lose little, on insurance underwriting and earn profits on investment income.
Warren Buffet, in his 2009 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, explained concisely how the P/C industry works:
Our property-casualty (P/C) insurance business has been the engine behind Berkshire’s growth and will continue to be. It has worked wonders for us. We carry our P/C companies on our books at $15.5 billion more than their net tangible assets, an amount lodged in our “Goodwill” account. These companies, however, are worth far more than their carrying value– and the following look at the economic model of the P/C industry will tell you why.
Insurers receive premiums upfront and pay claims later. In extreme cases, such as those arising from certain workers’ compensation accidents, payments can stretch over decades. This collect-now, pay-later model leaves us holding large sums– money we call “float”– that will eventually go to others. Meanwhile, we get to invest this float for Berkshire’s benefit. Though individual policies and claims come and go, the amount of float we hold remains remarkably stable in relation to premium volume. Consequently, as our business grows, so does our float.
If premiums exceed the total of expenses and eventual losses, we register an underwriting profit that adds to the investment income produced from the float. This combination allows us to enjoy the use of free money– and, better yet, get paid for holding it. Alas, the hope of this happy result attracts intense competition, so vigorous in most years as to cause the P/C industry as a whole to operate at a significant underwriting loss. This loss, in effect, is what the industry pays to hold its float. Usually this cost is fairly low, but in some catastrophe-ridden years the cost from underwriting losses more than eats up the income derived from use of float.
The figure below, using data from the Insurance Information Institute, shows the underwriting performance of the P/C industry from 2004 to 2024.
The time series shows lots of ups and downs, but no trend — by design, as Buffet explained. There are certainly no signs of an underwriting crisis, much less indications of a coming collapse. The P/C industry looks both well-managed and healthy.
“Climate” risk assessments are unreliable and a cause of higher insurance prices
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If profits are high and underwriting is steady, then what then accounts for increasing insurance prices — which, as of the end of 2024, increased 29 consecutive quarters in a row (above)?
A big part of the answer is Climate Change. But not how you might think.
A decade ago, Mark Carney — then Governor of the Bank of England and today Prime Minister of Canada — gave an influential speech titled, Breaking the Tragedy of the Horizon – climate change and financial stability.
Carney argued that the insurance industry was at risk due to changes in the climatology of extreme events that were not properly understood by experts in the industry:
[T]here are some estimates that currently modelled losses could be undervalued by as much as 50% if recent weather trends were to prove representative of the new normal. . . Such developments have the potential to shift the balance between premiums and claims significantly, and render currently lucrative business non-viable.
Coincident with Carney’s 2015 speech, the Bank of England released a report on the impacts of climate change on the insurance industry, and noted that conventional catastrophe modeling did not effectively consider a changing climate. The Bank of England kicked off a longstanding campaign to convince people that extreme weather events were changing dramatically in the near term.
Subsequently, in 2019, the Bank of England required firms to assess their “climate risks.” This guidance was updated last week. In (a coordinated) parallel effort, national and international organizations focused on “climate risk” to the financial sector started multiplying — such as the Climate Financial Risk Forum and the Network for Greening the Financial System.
The climate-risk industry was born circa 2019.
There is an incredible story to be told here (and Jessica Weinkle is the go-to expert), but for today, the key takeaways are that (a) the notion of “climate risk” to finance, including insurance, led to the creation of a “climate risk” industry, and (b) within this industry, a new family of risk assessment vendors emerged, promising to satisfy the new demands for climate risk disclosure and risk modeling.
The Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) explains:
As this [“climate risk”] was a new discipline for most financial firms, many turned to third party providers (“vendors”) to help them with different areas of expertise. There are now many physical risk data vendors, which offer a variety of services to financial institutions. While vendor offerings often sound alike — providing projections of how physical risk could evolve for locations across a range of risks and climate scenarios — they can differ significantly in terms of features, approach, or suitability for specific needs, and the underlying models that these providers use differ in methodology and assumptions.
GARP just published an incredibly important study that assessed how 13 different “climate risk” vendors modeled physical risk and risk of loss across 100 individual structures around the world.²
The results are shocking — given how they are used in industry, but should not be surprising — given what we know about modeling.
There is absolutely no consensus across vendors about “climate risk” in terms of either physical risks or risks of loss.
The figure below shows, for 100 different properties around the world, the differences in modeled 200-year flood risk across the 13 vendors, as refelcted in modeled flood heights. The maximum difference among the properties across vendors is about 12 meters and the median difference is about 2.7 meters — These are huge differences.
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In terms of risk of loss, the models have an even greater spread. The figure below shows that for a modeled 200-year flood, 10 properties are modeled by at least one vendor to have total losses (100%) while another vendor models the same properties to have no losses, under the exact same event. The median difference between minimum and maximum modeled loss ratio is 30% — Another huge number.³
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Insurance pricing does not scale linearly with increasing modeled loss ratios. Consider that the difference between a modeled 10% loss ratio and a 40% loss ratio (i.e., the 30% median difference across vendors from above) might result in a 10x increase in insurance rates. Risk adverse insurers have incentives to price at the most extreme modeled loss.
Model inaccuracies, unceratinties, spread, and ambiguity are feature not flaws when it comes to making money. “Climate risk” modeling has resulted in a financial windfall not just for the newly created climate analytics industry, but also for insurers and reinsurers who have seen the envelope of modeled losses expand. The need for new models, of questionabl fidelity, are necessary to satisfy industry guidance and government regulators.
The net result has been a seemingly scientific justification for increasing insurance rates.⁴
There are of course real changes in physical risk, exposure, and vulnerability as well as the regulatory and political contexts within which the P/C industry must operate. The discipline of catastrophe modeling has long integrated these factors to assess risks. As insurance policies and reinsurance contracts are typically implemented on a one-year basis, and this well-positioned to incorporate changng perceptions of risk, this series will explore why a new “climate risk” assessment industry was even needed in the first place.
What about that “climate risk”? THB readers will be very familiar with the science of extreme events and climate change, which, as reported here, happens to be consistent with both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and those in the legacy catastrophe modeling community.
One of those modeling firms, Verisk, gets the last word for today:
We estimate about 1% of year-on-year increases in AAL [Average Annual Loss] are attributable to climate change. Such small shifts can easily get lost behind other sources of systematic loss increase discussed in this report, such as inflation and exposure growth. The random volatility from internal climate variability also dwarfs the small positive climate change signal.
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““He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” George Bernard Shaw
In the days immediately following Donald Trump’s rude intervention into the 2025 Canadian federal election— suggesting Canada might best choose American statehood— two schools of thought emerged.
The first and most impactful school in the short term was the fainting-goat response of Canadian’s elites. Sensing an opening in which to erode Pierre Poilievre’s massive lead in the 2024 polls over Justin Trudeau, the Laurentian elite concocted Elbows Up, a self-pity response long on hurt feelings and short on addressing the issues Trump had cited in his trashing of the Canadian nation state.
In short order they fired Trudeau into oblivion, imported career banker Mark Carney as their new leader in a sham convention and convinced Canada’s Boomers that Trump had the tanks ready to go into Saskatchewan at a moment’s notice. The Elbows Up meme— citing Gordie Howe— clinched the group pout.
(In fact, Trump has said that America is the world’s greatest market, and if those who’ve used it for free in the past [Canada] want to keep special access they need to pay tariffs to the U.S. or drop protectionist charges on dairy and more against the U.S.)
The ruse worked out better than they could have ever imagined with Trump even saying he preferred to negotiate with Carney over Poilievre. In short order the Tories were shoved aside, the NDP kneecapped and the pet media anointed Carney the genius skewing Canada away from its largest trade partner to the Eurosphere. We remain in that bubble, although the fulsome promises of Carney’s first days are now coming due.
Which brings us to the second reaction. That was Alberta premier Danielle Smith bolting to Mar A Lago in the days following Trump’s comments. Her goal was to put pride aside and accept that a new world order was in play for Canada. She met with U.S. officials and, briefly, with Trump to remind them that Canada’s energy industry was integral to American prosperity and Canadian stability.
Needless to say, the fainting goats pitched a fit that not everyone was clutching pearls and rending garments in the wake of Trump’s dismissive assessment of his northern neighbours. Their solution to Trump was to join China in retaliatory tariffs— the only two nations to do so— and to boycott American products and travel. Like the ascetic monks they cut themselves off from real life. Trump has yet to get back to Carney the Magnificent
And Smith? She was a “traitor” or a “subversive” who should be keel hauled in the North Saskatchewan. For much of the intervening months she has been attacked at home in Alberta by the N-Deeps and in Ottawa by just about everyone on CBC, CTV, Global and the Globe & Mail. “How could she meet with the Cheeto?”
Nonetheless conservatives in the province moved toward a more independence within Canada. Smith articulated her demands for Alberta to prevent a referendum on whether to remain within Confederation. At the top of her list were pipelines and access to tidewater. Ergo, a no-go for BC’s squish premier David Eby who is the process of handing over his province to First Nations.
It became obvious that for all of Carney’s alleged diplomacy in Europe and Asia (is the man ever home?) he had a brewing disaster in the West with Alberta and Saskatchewan growing restless. In a striking move against the status quo, Nutrien announced it would ship its potash to tidewater via the U.S., thereby bypassing Vancouver’s strike-prone, outdated port and denying them billions.
Suddenly, Smith’s business approach began making eminent good sense if the goal is to keep Canada as one. So we saw last week’s “memorandum of understanding” between Alberta and Ottawa trading off carbon capture and carbon taxes for potential pipelines to tidewater on the B.C. coast. A little bit of something for everyone and a surrender on other things.
The most amazing feature of the Mark Carney/Danielle Smith MOU is that both politicians probably need the deal to fail. Carney can tell fossil-fuel enemy Quebec that he tried to reason with Smith, and Smith can say she tried to meet the federalists halfway. Failure suits their larger purposes. Which is for Carney to fold Canada into Euro climate insanity and Smith into a strong leverage against the pro-Canada petitioners in her province.
Soon enough, at the AFN Special Chiefs Assembly, FN Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak told Carney that “Turtle Island” (the FN term for North America popularized by white hippy poet Gary Snyder) belongs to the FN people “from coast to coast to coast.” The pusillanimous Eby quickly piped up about tanker bans and the sanctity of B.C. waters etc.
Others pointed out the massive flaw in a plan to attract private interests to build a vital bitumen pipeline if the tankers it fills are not allowed to sail through the Dixon Entrance to get to Asia.
But then Eby got Nutrien’s message that his power-sharing with the indigenous might cause other provinces to bypass B.C. (imagine California telling Texas it can’t ship through its ports over moral objections to a product). He’s now saying he’s open to pipelines but not to lift the tanker ban along the coast. Whatever.
Meanwhile the kookaburras of isolation back east continue with virtue signalling on American booze— N.S. to sell off its remains stocks — while dreaming that Trump’s departure will lead to the good-old days of reliance on America’s generosity.
But Smith looks to be wining the race. B.C.’s population shrank 0.04 percent in the second quarter of 2025, the only jurisdiction in Canada to do so. Meanwhile, Alberta is heading toward five million people, with interprovincial migrants making up 21 percent of its growth.
But what did you expect from the Carney/ Eby Tantrum Tandem? They keep selling fear in place of GDP. As GBS observed, “You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.”
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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