Eira TanseyThere is a reason I have been saying for years that the insurance industry will be the primary driver of climate change adaptation in this country. You know who doesn’t fuck around and find out? Actuaries. https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-farm-halts-home-insurance-sales-in-california-5748c771
My absolute favorite thing about the insurance industry’s response to climate change (refusing to insure things they’re sure to lose money on) is it’s the purest distillation of how Republicans are always howling for letting the markets solve everything. Turns out when you let the insurance industry operate as a free market well oops now your constituents can’t get a mortgage bc of Republican refusal to acknowledge the existence of climate change impacts in land use policy
Decades ago the private insurance market got out of the flood insurance business. This is why flood insurance is now primarily offered by the federal government and why debates over flood insurance rate maps are possibly the fiercest debates that are absolutely worth paying attention to for the combination of market failure, government as the insurer of last resort, and how bad it is that we tie homeownership to both local development and individual economic security