Executive summary

The edition on a few pages: the abstract, the key messages, the headline finding and what each steward reads in it.

5 min read1 figure0 tables16 notesNR-COUNTRY-USA-2026-BASELINE

Contents

S.1Abstract

The United States enters 2027 as the country carrying the largest share of the world’s recorded disaster losses. North America accounted for US$133 billion of the US$224 billion in global natural-disaster losses in 2025, about 70% of it insured, led by the Los Angeles wildfires at about US$53 billion². There were 27 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in 2024¹⁵, and the contiguous United States has warmed about 1.4 °C since 1970, faster than the global average³. Gross greenhouse-gas emissions were 6,343 Mt CO₂e in 2022; net emissions were about 17% below 2005¹. Data centres used about 4.4% of US electricity in 2023, with 6.7–12% projected for 2028⁶, and heat-related deaths reached a record 2,325 in 2023⁹. This Baseline Edition fixes the reference state for the five core systems, maps the dependencies through which shocks travel between them, and sets the questions the first operational edition will answer in Q1 2027. It ranks nothing and decides nothing.

S.2Key messages

The eight questions this edition answers, each with its status and source.

Gross emissions were 6,343 Mt CO₂e in 2022; net emissions about 17% below 2005.¹
Where do emissions stand?Reported
27 billion-dollar disasters in 2024; the 2025 Los Angeles fires were the costliest wildfire on record.²¹⁵
Are disaster losses rising?Reported
About 70% of 2025 North American losses were insured, but cover is retreating where risk is highest.²²¹
Who carries the losses?Reported
Heat with drought and fire, through grids, water, health and insurance.³⁹³¹
Which hazard couples the most systems?Inferred
Winter Storm Uri in 2021 showed cold can fail power, water and health together; summer peaks now add data-centre load.⁶¹⁶³¹
How exposed is the grid?Reported
The Colorado River basin, under its first shortage since 2021, and the depleting High Plains aquifer.⁸⁷
Where is water tightest?Reported
About 40% of animal species and 34% of plants are at risk of extinction.¹⁰
How is nature faring?Reported
The Western heat–fire–grid pathway into health, water and insurance. SCN-USA-HFG-01
What will Q1 2027 test first?Expert input

S.3Headline finding

ReportedEQL 4NRF-COUNTRY-USA-2026-BASELINE-FIN-002

North America carried US$133 billion of the US$224 billion in global natural-disaster losses in 2025; about US$93 billion, roughly 70%, was insured.

Figure S.1North American disaster losses, 2025 (US$ billion)

Item	Bar, scaled to the largest value	Value
Insured		93
Uninsured		40

Source: Munich Re NatCatSERVICE 2025²; uninsured = overall − insured.

High insured shares can hide a growing gap at the margins. Where premiums rise and insurers withdraw, uninsured losses concentrate among households least able to bear them and shift onto state and federal budgets²¹⁴⁰.

S.4At a glance

340.1million

population, 2024⁴

1.4°C

warming since 1970³

6,343Mt CO₂e

gross emissions, 2022¹

≈43%

electricity from natural gas⁵

50minerals

on the critical list¹²

27events

billion-dollar disasters, 2024¹⁵

S.5What each steward reads in it

GCRI · KEY T

Technical Truth

The evidence supports a coupled reading of American risk.

GRF · KEY M

Public Meaning

For most Americans risk arrives as a smoke-filled summer, a power cut in a heat wave or a non-renewed home policy.

GRA · KEY F

Capital Meaning

Readiness implications only. The world’s largest insured losses, a retreating homeowners market and large flood exposure outside private cover show where finance-readiness evidence will matter.

NEXUS

Synthesis

The United States is deeply observed and unevenly protected.

S.6What this edition is, and is not

What this edition is

A baseline: the state of the United States’ water, energy, food, health and biodiversity systems in 2026, the dependencies between them, the risks that travel through them and the capabilities that hold them. It sets the questions the operational series will answer.

What it is not

Not a national risk assessment, an official warning or a rating. It decides nothing about any agency, state, utility or company. Competent federal, state, tribal and local authorities keep every mandate they hold, and national ownership is unaffected.

What comes next

Q1 2027 opens the operational series with a sealed Foundry evidence cut. Each later edition reports what changed against this baseline, new observations, source revisions, method changes, scenario updates and corrections.

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

2Munich Re (ed.), Natural disasters in 2025: NatCatSERVICE full-year figures. Munich Re, Munich, January 2026.back
15NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (ed.), U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters, 1980–2024. NOAA NCEI, Asheville, NC, January 2025.back
3A. R. Crimmins, C. W. Avery, D. R. Easterling, K. E. Kunkel, B. C. Stewart and T. K. Maycock (eds.), Fifth National Climate Assessment. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, 2023.back
1U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (ed.), Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990–2022. EPA, Washington, DC, April 2024.back
6A. Shehabi, S. J. Smith, A. Hubbard et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, December 2024.back
9J. T. Howard, N. Androne, K. C. Alcover and A. R. Santos-Lozada, “Trends of heat-related deaths in the US, 1999–2023,” JAMA, vol. 332, no. 14, pp. 1203–1204, 2024.back
21Federal Insurance Office (ed.), Analyses of U.S. Homeowners Insurance Markets, 2018–2022: Climate-Related Risks and Other Factors. U.S. Department of the Treasury, Washington, DC, January 2025.back
31Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and North American Electric Reliability Corporation (eds.), February 2021 Cold Weather Outages in Texas and the South Central United States. FERC and NERC, Washington, DC, 2021.back
16Texas Department of State Health Services (ed.), February 2021 Winter Storm-Related Deaths, Texas. DSHS, Austin, TX, 2021.back
8U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (ed.), “Reclamation announces 2022 operating conditions for Lake Powell and Lake Mead.” News release, Washington, DC, August 2021.back
7C. A. Dieter, M. A. Maupin, R. R. Caldwell et al., Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2015, Circular 1441. U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA, 2018.back
10NatureServe (ed.), Biodiversity in Focus: United States Edition. NatureServe, Arlington, VA, 2023.back
40Federal Emergency Management Agency (ed.), National Flood Insurance Program: program description and policy statistics. FEMA, Washington, DC, retrieved 2026-09-30.back
4U.S. Census Bureau (ed.), Vintage 2024 national population estimates. Census Bureau, Washington, DC, December 2024.back
5U.S. Energy Information Administration (ed.), “Electricity in the United States” and Electric Power Monthly. EIA, Washington, DC, retrieved 2026-09-30.back
12U.S. Geological Survey (ed.), “2022 Final List of Critical Minerals.” Federal Register, vol. 87, 24 February 2022.back

Cite this summary

Valadbaygi, S. (Ed.). (2026). Executive summary: Executive summary. In United States Systems Risk and Resilience Report 2026: The State of the United States’ Interdependent Systems (Baseline Edition 2026, Report No. NR-COUNTRY-USA-2026-BASELINE) [Draft under review]. The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI).

Every citation form of the whole report, BibTeX and RIS included, is on the edition home. Cite this report