When Bernard Weisse first noticed a tiny crack in the outer wall of his
house on the outskirts of Paris, he dismissed it as little more than a nuisance. But in the four years since, a spid
erweb of fiss
ures has spread from floor to ceiling and snaked into virtually every corner of his home.
“We can hear loud cracking noises especially when it’s warm ou
tside,” said the retired salesman and father of three. “Sometimes, I think we should get all our stuff together and leave.”
Like a growing number of people around the world, Weisse is grappling with subsidence — a term for the sinking la
tructures built on it. The slow-moving climate disaster has already caused tens of billions in damage and has the p
otential to affect 1.2 billion people in areas accounting for more than $8 trillion of economic output.
While groundwater extraction, mining and earthquakes also cause the ground to shift, global warming vastly incre
ases the risks. What happens is that soil swells with winter rain and then shrinks as it dries in the heat, cracking foundations in the process.
A repaired crack in the walls of a house in the village of Presles-en-Brie, outside Paris, on June 2, 2025. Photo cr
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edit: Cyril Marcilhacy/Bloomberg
Because of its soil and its status as the world’s fastest-warming continent, Europe is particularly exposed. The Eur
opean Central Ba
nk estimates the region’s potential damage from sinking land at more than €2.5 trillion ($2.9 billion) across all euro-area financial institutions. Although most of that is classified as “low risk,” this summer is fore
cast to be one of the hottest and driest on the continent, creating perfect conditions for subsidence damage.
For Weisse, the cost for repairs could climb to as much as €200,000 to keep his two-story home from crumbling. That would be part of the estimated €43 billion in damage that households face by 2050 in France alone, according to insurance trade group France Assureurs. With that much money at stake, it’s set off a battle over who will ultimately have to pay.