Climate change effects

From the viewpoint of the 

insurance industry 

To recap: due to rising seas and increasing hurricane and wildfire risk and other long-predicted consequences of global warming, the cost of insurance for homeowners in many disaster-prone areas has been skyrocketing at a staggering rate. Many of these areas, particularly the coastal South, are the same places experiencing the fastest population growth in America. State governments want to maintain this economic influx. Because we have no coherent federal policy for managing insurance rates (much less for adequately dealing with the underlying problem of carbon emissions), states are left with the problem themselves. Because many state governments are run by some of the most craven political cowards you will find anywhere, they tend to manage the problem of fleeing insurance companies by trying to stuff policies into state-run “insurer of last resort” firms. Because state governments do not have enough money to actually pay out the claims in the event of a serious disaster in a highly populated area, what we are really dealing with is sort of the paper fiction of insurance—just enough to keep the real estate market pumping and stave off immediate exodus, with the implicit knowledge that in the worst case scenario, these (red, socialist-loathing) states will run to the federal government for a bailout, and then keep on doing the same thing. It is emblematic of our general response to the problem of climate change itself: ignore it, paper it over, and pray that the bill doesn’t come due while it’s our responsibility to pay it.

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I am not even suggesting answers to these questions here. I am just trying to illustrate how far away we are from a genuine public discourse on this topic. We are still mired in the “Everything is fine!” phase, where nervous, sweating politicians with pasted-on smiles beckon you into their doomed states while silently praying that the collapse doesn’t come while they’re still in office. Even the more enlightened political discussions tend to focus on the near future, rather than gaming out the full, decades-long cost of our battle to defend the status quo. We need leaders brave enough to make millions of people face the fact that they are fucked one way or another, and the only question is how specifically they are going to be fucked, and how soon. Yet our electoral system is optimized against anyone who talks like this being able to sustain a long career. We prefer being soothed and lied to. So I expect it to continue in that vein for far longer than it should. By the time America is ready to talk about this crisis like adults, the method of fucking will, I’m guessing, already be decided by Mother Nature herself.