The Insurance Apocalypse Conversation America Won't Have

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?”