At the debate, Harris made climate change a pocketbook issue

When moderators at the presidential debate asked the candidates about plans to fight climate change, Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted a problem quietly accelerating across the country: homeowners are losing their insurance.

Harris said the costs of inaction on global warming are already having an impact: homeowners nationwide face soaring insurance costs — or the loss of coverage altogether — as extreme weather like storms and wildfires becomes more extreme.

Climate change is “very real,” Harris said. “You ask anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences who now is either being denied home insurance or it’s being jacked up; you ask anybody who has been the victim of what that means in terms of losing their home, having nowhere to go.”

It’s an issue the Harris campaign seems to have zeroed in on. The day before the debate, Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was in Nevada near the Davis Fire, where he talked to first responders about rising insurance costs.

“We’re seeing a lot of our residents losing their fire insurance and/or premiums are going up, you know, 1,000%, so [Walz] was very cognizant of that issue,” said Adam Mayberry, a spokesperson for Truckee Meadows Fire and Rescue.

A lot of the turmoil has been concentrated in states like California and Colorado that face the threat of wildfires, and in coastal states like Louisiana and Florida where storms inflict billions in damage.

In a recent report, the Federal Reserve said low- and moderate-income homeowners in the middle of the country are buying insurance with less coverage as premiums increase, and that some low-income households are dropping insurance in an area that covers Texas and parts of Louisiana and