We need more data, not less. We need stronger oversight, not weaker. The costs of climate change are mounting — and the longer we look away, the more expensive they’ll become.

There is ultimately no way to hide the reality of climate change from people experiencing disasters and paying through higher insurance premiums. But cutting the tools to monitor the crisis will delay emergency planning, resilience investments, and data-driven solutions.

And losing this data won't just affect the coasts. Wisconsin's Congressman Scott Fitzgerald is sponsoring a bill that would prevent any further data collection. In maps we recently published with federal data, Wisconsin already stands out nationally for claims frequency.

Unsurprisingly, these state officials hail from state struggling with climate costs. As the Louisiana's commissioner calls for federal insurance data collection to be abolished, Louisiana leads the nation in risk of insurance withdrawal

Taking away public climate data will drive up insurance costs. Then cutting federal data collection on insurance will hide the fully tally of those costs.

State insurance commissioners should be out in front fighting to preserve this data. Instead, a group of commissioners has aligned on a different priority: gutting the one federal office responsible for tracking the costs of climate change via insurance.

Without public climate data that insurers rely on, insurers will only raise rates and retreat faster. This will drive up the costs for the public through insurance premiums. Less data = higher costs.