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comment by goobster

Insurance will eventually be the lever that breaks the back of climate denial.

It's simple economics, I think: The insurer has to make more money than they dish out for claims. That's why they charge more for "high risks", like 16-year olds with a drivers license, homes built on cliffs with common seismic activity, commercial businesses that handle dangerous chemicals or explosives, etc.

These homes are getting wiped out by natural disasters as fast as they can rebuild them, and restock them with new furniture, cars, and 70" TVs.

Either the insurance companies raise rates to make up for these losses, or they get out of the business. It's just economics. (Yeah, FEMA funds are available, but even those are limited.)





wasoxygen  ·  2017 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Insurance will eventually be the lever

It once was. Insurance companies were taking losses on flood claims, so they separated flood coverage and raised rates. Then FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program was introduced to make sure building and rebuilding in high-risk areas would remain affordable.

    (Yeah, FEMA funds are available, but even those are limited.)

FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program had 87% of all flood premiums nationwide in 2017.

To make the simple economics work, FEMA borrows from the Treasury. It is now about $25 billion in debt. The debt limit is $30 billion, and the program was scheduled to sunset this year, but Congress authorized an extension.

    According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, houses that repeatedly flood account for 1% of NFIP’s properties but 25-30% of its claims. Five states, Texas among them, have more than 10,000 such households and, nationwide, their number has been going up by around 5,000 each year. Insurance is meant to provide a signal about risk; in this case, it stifles it.
kleinbl00  ·  2017 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The reinsurance industry - the guys who insure the insurance companies - started jacking the rates of coastal areas back in like 2009. That, for me, was the moment when it was all over but the posturing.

There was a farm I was keenly interested in up in Whatcom County. It was going for crazy cheap. Couldn't figure out why. Did some serious digging (I'm good at serious digging) and discovered that FEMA had adjusted the 100 year floodplain maps in 2010, putting that farmhouse on the "this is a fucking writeoff" portion of the map. Whatcom County regulations made it so that the building would never be issued another permit, that it would be ineligible for federal, state and county relief and that any sales of the property would come with the rider that the structure was not fit for human habitation.

So. That cute farmhouse on the North Fork Nooksack with tenants in it in 2014 became a dilapidated shack in 2016.

user-inactivated  ·  2016 days ago  ·  link  ·  

yep PDF warning, but a facinating read.

Climate change is impacting shareholders which means we have to acknowledge its impacts now.

user-inactivated  ·  2016 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Climate change is impacting shareholders which means we have to acknowledge its impacts now.

Not at the state level. The NC GOP is less interested in economics than in raging at the Triangle and Charlotte while they can.

goobster  ·  2017 days ago  ·  link  ·  

So there is hope, is what you are saying!

kleinbl00  ·  2017 days ago  ·  link  ·  

If not hope, certainly statistics.