Everyone in a position to deal with this worsening [climate] crisis is looking for a magic solution. There is no magic solution. The coastal homeowners and the private insurance companies and the reinsurance companies and the state governments are all looking at one another to rescue them, without acknowledging that they are all in the same sinking ship. The real solution is to deal with climate change, which will be a long global struggle. But even on a slightly more practical level than that, this is at minimum a federal government problem. Unfortunately, our federal government is dysfunctional and one of our two major political parties still denies that climate change is even happening. Damn! This month Adam Schiff of California introduced a bill to create a federal reinsurance program to mitigate the soaring insurance rates in states like his. This is, at least, a gesture in the right direction, but there is still some sleight of hand going on. Even if such a program were built, I guarantee you that its creation would be accomplished in large part by lying and dissembling about what the true question being debated was—namely, “Should everyone in America pay to subsidize the ability of a segment of our population to live in places that are, objectively speaking, stupid to live in, because they are very likely to be burned up or washed away or underwater in the near future?”
I realize that it makes me sound like I wear a tin foil hat, but I wouldn’t be surprised if
is just code for blue states. Trump made it cool to use the government as an instrument of punishment against his political opponents - that’s what the tax code adjustment that nuked the state tax exemption was. He was punishing all his rich buddies who didnt back him, who lived in high tax “blue” states. I’m worried that the rest of the GOP is starting to join in, but in a broader scope and scale. Our political alignments might make us “undesirable” sooner than later - especially if November goes badly.
Just for an anecdote. I live in an HOA neighborhood with a shared boat dock in NC. We had pretty random tornado damage that hit the dock last year, we aren't in a high tornado area normally. The HoA was dropped from the insurance 1/1/24 about 2 months after the claim was made. My understanding now is out of about 20 solicited companies only 1 will insure with massive caveats. Our county is very much "red"(no I'm not personally).
I just find it hilarious that there are politicians - and even entire legislatures - that have proposed, debated, and passed laws that prohibit planning for the impacts of global warming. As in: there are laws that prohibit the fucking US Navy for accounting for sea level rise. The US Navy. Whose job is “ocean”. Because that’s gonna turn out well, no doubt.