🧵 Something profoundly important (and scary) is happening.
Climate change is finally starting to break through the financial firewalls Americans and our government have put up, and affecting where people can live -- now and in the future.
There's an unlikely driver of this new reality:
The insurance industry.
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gift link:
“If you had to pick a canary-in-the-coal-mine industry to measure the extent to which climate change is real, I think insurance is probably the best one I can think of. The balance sheets—they’re not going to lie.”
Climate change is the fundamental driver behind insurers abandoning California, Florida and more than 200 zipcodes elsewhere in the U.S.
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Insurance costs are driving other industries too.
Real estate is out of reach for the next generation, in part due to insurance.
You can't get a mortgage without property insurance. You can't build or sell a condo without condo insurance.
Daycares did not reopen after the covid pandemic, in part because of insurance costs.
The oil industry is creating captive insurance subsidiaries to evade the true cost of upcoming environmental litigation risk.
Christopher Mims
Nicole Parsons