In the Face of Mounting Climate Risks, the Insurance Safety Net Is Falli
December 1, 2023 10:59 AM Subscribe
Natural disasters are costing the US insurance industry a fortune. What happens when no one wants to pick up the tab?
A few highlights:
A few highlights:
While insurance prices have soared, a recent report from the nonprofit First Street Foundation estimates that 39 million homes are covered at prices artificially lower than their true risk. The authors suggest that state regulations capping premiums and government-backed insurer-of-last-resort programs have concealed the extent of the crisis. They predict that as disasters continue surging, what they call the “growing climate bubble in the housing market” will pop—leaving millions of homes uninsurable and destroying their value. The average homeowner who loses an insurance policy automatically sees a drop of more than 10 percent in the home’s value, the report notes. “If the value of their home plummets or if the credit agencies downgrade their communities,” Hill says, “one of my big fears is we’re going to have a lot of people trapped in places that are unsafe—economically trapped.”and
Despite being one of the first to understand these perils, insurers continue to contribute to them. They’ve played a major role in emissions for decades: without insurance, fossil fuel companies have difficulty obtaining financing. Coal is an apt example of what happens when insurers withdraw from a market—since 45 insurers are phasing out of coal policies, construction of new coal-fired power declined by 84 percent between 2015 and 2018.and
But insurers have been slower to move away from oil and gas, in part because it’s a larger portion of many companies’ business. In June, the US Senate Committee On the Budget sent letters to major insurance companies asking for information about how much each company earns from the fossil fuel industry. “It is difficult to understand how the industry can carefully price and manage climate risk in some areas of its business,” committee members wrote, “while simultaneously having no apparent plan to phase out its underwriting of and investment in the projects and companies generating the emissions that are causing these very harms.”
Not only is that bad for the families whose losses aren’t protected, it deepens existing inequities. Right now, the insurance market is unintentionally protecting wealthy property owners while socializing their risk through highly subsidized premiums. The US government holds liability for the majority of flood insurance, for example, managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Repeatedly flooded properties make up just one percent of the program’s policies but account for more than 30 percent of the claims. “When the government’s the backup insurer, the taxpayers have to support that,” Hill says.
Two out of every three American homes are now underinsured, meaning owners may face major financial losses if they were to endure a disaster. The effects won’t be felt equally. There can be an inherent tension between climate-related financial risks and anti-redlining efforts: people of color who have long suffered discrimination are now disproportionately living in areas in greater danger of disaster. That makes it difficult to both price climate risks and not divest from underserved communities.
Remember, private sector insurance is for random risks. Not systemic risks.
Actuaries can calculate the risk that you're a dumbass who will burn his house down with a turkey fry, and charge premiums accordingly.
If the risk increases, they will gradually notice and raise premiums to cover it.
If the risk declines they will gradually notice and lower premiums to stay competitive.
If they miscalculate the risk, it will be some time before it hits their bottom line. Lots of time to correct the issue and move on.
But for a systemic risk, like a hurricane, or a wild fire, you get years upon years of no data to go on, and then it happens and the claims are enough to sink your company. Either you take on the risk as a nation, and insure against it as a nation, or you don't, and you tell people on flood zones they will be screwed.
posted by ocschwar at 11:15 AM on December 1, 2023 [13 favorites]
Actuaries can calculate the risk that you're a dumbass who will burn his house down with a turkey fry, and charge premiums accordingly.
If the risk increases, they will gradually notice and raise premiums to cover it.
If the risk declines they will gradually notice and lower premiums to stay competitive.
If they miscalculate the risk, it will be some time before it hits their bottom line. Lots of time to correct the issue and move on.
But for a systemic risk, like a hurricane, or a wild fire, you get years upon years of no data to go on, and then it happens and the claims are enough to sink your company. Either you take on the risk as a nation, and insure against it as a nation, or you don't, and you tell people on flood zones they will be screwed.
posted by ocschwar at 11:15 AM on December 1, 2023 [13 favorites]
Like, my dad legit lives on a tiny island in the Gulf of Mexico that is routinely pummeled by tropical storms and now I wonder what he has that is still insurable.
posted by Kitteh at 11:20 AM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 11:20 AM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
"I'm sorry, you have Florida. There's nothing we can offer, Florida is a pre-existing condition."
posted by mcstayinskool at 11:22 AM on December 1, 2023 [37 favorites]
posted by mcstayinskool at 11:22 AM on December 1, 2023 [37 favorites]
My brother-in-law was talking to some fishing guides in the Florida Keys who were basically self-insuring their own homes because they either couldn't afford premiums or couldn't get insurance at all. At that point the home you have is probably no longer affordable to you even if you've technically paid it off. I strongly suspect that large swaths of California real estate will be uninsurable from wildfire risk soon if it's not already.
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:27 AM on December 1, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:27 AM on December 1, 2023 [10 favorites]
There’s no consumer regulatory protection that can’t be weaponized against consumers with the right people on the case.
posted by toodleydoodley at 11:30 AM on December 1, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by toodleydoodley at 11:30 AM on December 1, 2023 [8 favorites]
Our home insurance was a pretty reasonable $1,600 the first year (2013). I sent the payment in. A few months later, I got a notice our coverage had been canceled for nonpayment. I made all the phone calls and found out the insurer had misapplied our payment (multi line policy, as one does to get the discount) to auto, *even though* we prepay auto in full every year. Whatever. I reapplied. The premium went up to $6,000 BECAUSE WE’D HAD A LAPSE IN COVERAGE. Then the insurer withdrew from the state and we had to get JUA, which was like, five figures. At this point we could rebuild our house for five years’ premiums. Probably for less than that.
posted by toodleydoodley at 11:36 AM on December 1, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by toodleydoodley at 11:36 AM on December 1, 2023 [10 favorites]
There’s no consumer regulatory protection that can’t be weaponized against consumers with the right people on the case.
I think the problem isn't just that the regulatory move failed but that florida, as a market, is not sustainable when you have a major hurricane every single year. You can try and force the issue by putting requirements to insure certain homes but that doesn't change the fact of it being impossible to cover your costs from yearly damage.
posted by Ferreous at 11:39 AM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
The property insurance industry collapse is just the first phase of a "massive stranded asset problem" IMO.
Look at the projections for sea level rise and impact on coastal communities.
posted by elmay at 11:52 AM on December 1, 2023 [13 favorites]
Look at the projections for sea level rise and impact on coastal communities.
posted by elmay at 11:52 AM on December 1, 2023 [13 favorites]
“If the value of their home plummets or if the credit agencies downgrade their communities,” Hill says, “one of my big fears is we’re going to have a lot of people trapped in places that are unsafe—economically trapped.”
But this points to one of the central problems in our thinking about dealing with housing in disaster-prone areas: The solution has always involved someone else buying the place after you. What would need to happen--essentially a governmental buyout of the millions of homes in danger--isn't on the table. (At least not in a way that makes sense, that doesn't involve the homeowner spending years of effort to get compensated.)
But if we don't have plans in place--if the idea is always, fix up the place with your insurance, or sell to the next person--then eventually the system simply halts; if reinsurance falls through, the insurance companies go out of business and you've just lost a life's investment.
But how do you do it? You literally could not move at-risk communities en masse. Can you imagine? We can't even get people to wear masks during a pandemic, let alone move out of the way of certain harm. There'd be another civil war if you tried, even if you offered a tempting buy-out.
posted by mittens at 11:59 AM on December 1, 2023 [14 favorites]
But this points to one of the central problems in our thinking about dealing with housing in disaster-prone areas: The solution has always involved someone else buying the place after you. What would need to happen--essentially a governmental buyout of the millions of homes in danger--isn't on the table. (At least not in a way that makes sense, that doesn't involve the homeowner spending years of effort to get compensated.)
But if we don't have plans in place--if the idea is always, fix up the place with your insurance, or sell to the next person--then eventually the system simply halts; if reinsurance falls through, the insurance companies go out of business and you've just lost a life's investment.
But how do you do it? You literally could not move at-risk communities en masse. Can you imagine? We can't even get people to wear masks during a pandemic, let alone move out of the way of certain harm. There'd be another civil war if you tried, even if you offered a tempting buy-out.
posted by mittens at 11:59 AM on December 1, 2023 [14 favorites]
Insurance companies going "nope" is one of those (too late) signs that shit is real and needs to be dealt with. In a saner universe this would be a huge red flags for all politicians that we need to act decisively.
Instead we have Moron Desantis, the governor of fucking Florida, probably the state that has the most to lose to climate change effects, in pure denial, its beyond me I just can't understand.
Also, insurance companies (and their reinsurers) stepping up behind the scenes to fight climate change is a staple of KSR climate novels. Instead we'll probably just get them to withdraw further and further away from providing coverage, because even those novels are too optimistic.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 12:04 PM on December 1, 2023 [10 favorites]
Instead we have Moron Desantis, the governor of fucking Florida, probably the state that has the most to lose to climate change effects, in pure denial, its beyond me I just can't understand.
Also, insurance companies (and their reinsurers) stepping up behind the scenes to fight climate change is a staple of KSR climate novels. Instead we'll probably just get them to withdraw further and further away from providing coverage, because even those novels are too optimistic.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 12:04 PM on December 1, 2023 [10 favorites]
This is what I don't get. Back in Australia we have homes called Queenslanders which are basically stilted houses. They're primarily built in flood plains where shit gets washed away every 5 years. They gable the roofs on all four sides to resist wind from tropical cylones better. They'll often have the roofs bolted down to the foundation. Why?
BECAUSE AIR IS WAY LESS DENSE THAN WATER.
I look at street view on Clearwater Beach and the homes are on the shoreline, plopped on the fucking slab, only two sides of the roof are gabled. What do they think is going to happen? The roof is coming off and the rest is going to get washed away by the storm surge. No shit things are going to be expensive to insure. No shit they're going to drop out of the market as events become more frequent.
Like not only do we build in the stupidest place possible for... reasons? But we also don't adapt to the surroundings because...? I don't fucking know. Murica? I swear this country sometimes. We've so internalized that someone should face no inconvenience for their dumb choices at any point in time in the name of liberty that we do the dumbest, most expensive way of doing things out of sheer spite.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 12:05 PM on December 1, 2023 [26 favorites]
BECAUSE AIR IS WAY LESS DENSE THAN WATER.
I look at street view on Clearwater Beach and the homes are on the shoreline, plopped on the fucking slab, only two sides of the roof are gabled. What do they think is going to happen? The roof is coming off and the rest is going to get washed away by the storm surge. No shit things are going to be expensive to insure. No shit they're going to drop out of the market as events become more frequent.
Like not only do we build in the stupidest place possible for... reasons? But we also don't adapt to the surroundings because...? I don't fucking know. Murica? I swear this country sometimes. We've so internalized that someone should face no inconvenience for their dumb choices at any point in time in the name of liberty that we do the dumbest, most expensive way of doing things out of sheer spite.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 12:05 PM on December 1, 2023 [26 favorites]
But how do you do it? .... , even if you offered a tempting buy-out.
There is a now at least a decade old John Stossel rant about coasts, hurricanes, and insurance. In the responses to that rant of his it was noted the %age of people who have taken buyouts.
It seems people WANT to have waterfront properties.
posted by rough ashlar at 12:09 PM on December 1, 2023
There is a now at least a decade old John Stossel rant about coasts, hurricanes, and insurance. In the responses to that rant of his it was noted the %age of people who have taken buyouts.
It seems people WANT to have waterfront properties.
posted by rough ashlar at 12:09 PM on December 1, 2023
And the timeline gets moved up again...
Carbon dioxide becomes more potent as climate changes, study finds
Carbon dioxide becomes more potent as climate changes, study finds
"This new finding shows that the radiative forcing is not constant but changes as the climate responds to increases in carbon dioxide," said Ryan Kramer, a physical scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and alumnus of the Rosenstiel School.posted by MrVisible at 12:22 PM on December 1, 2023 [6 favorites]
Carbon dioxide leads to global warming by trapping heat energy in the climate system.
"Future increases in CO2 will provide a more potent warming effect on climate than an equivalent increase in the past," said the study's lead author, Haozhe He, who completed the work as part of his Ph.D. studies at the Rosenstiel School. "This new understanding has significant implications for interpreting both past and future climate changes and implies that high CO2 climates may be intrinsically more sensitive than low CO2 climates."
Insurance companies continue to cash in on oil and gas industry; don't budget to compensate the people who live with the consequences
posted by aniola at 12:50 PM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by aniola at 12:50 PM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
I've been thinking about a similar issue in home/real estate value, and how we prop it up with automobile subsidies. I live in Northern California, where part of the subsidy for putting homes in fire prone areas is adding lanes to freeways to support longer commutes. As we start to dial back some of the subsidies, the value of these homes is gonna fall.
Which is related to putting all of the retirees out in Paradise, but is another unsustainable subsidy of people living in ecologically unsustainable areas that's gonna be a political nightmare to unravel.
posted by straw at 12:55 PM on December 1, 2023 [8 favorites]
Which is related to putting all of the retirees out in Paradise, but is another unsustainable subsidy of people living in ecologically unsustainable areas that's gonna be a political nightmare to unravel.
posted by straw at 12:55 PM on December 1, 2023 [8 favorites]
Last resort insurance should be a one-off thing. You get the insurance payment in exchange for vacating the property. The property is then owned by the last-resort agency, who leases it for parkland: no building on it allowed.
If nobody would insure the property, then nobody should live there. But ordering people to leave is considered rude. So you offer them last-resort insurance: they get to live there until they liquidate and leave.
This prevents the property from being sold to another person who moves in and continues with the risk. The terms of last resort insurance need not be super generous either - they just have to be better than rebuilding.
posted by NotAYakk at 1:10 PM on December 1, 2023 [10 favorites]
If nobody would insure the property, then nobody should live there. But ordering people to leave is considered rude. So you offer them last-resort insurance: they get to live there until they liquidate and leave.
This prevents the property from being sold to another person who moves in and continues with the risk. The terms of last resort insurance need not be super generous either - they just have to be better than rebuilding.
posted by NotAYakk at 1:10 PM on December 1, 2023 [10 favorites]
Seems like the government should do something like pay residents to move away and then, seeing as the government paid for it, make the land a federal preserve, especially for shoreline that needs to be protected.
posted by pracowity at 1:13 PM on December 1, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by pracowity at 1:13 PM on December 1, 2023 [6 favorites]
They gable the roofs on all four sides to resist wind from tropical cylones better.
Looking at the GIS for Queenslander houses, I'm wondering if "gabling" in Australia means the opposite of what it does in the US? The houses mostly have what in the US I'd call a hipped roof, which doesn't have any gables.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:13 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
Looking at the GIS for Queenslander houses, I'm wondering if "gabling" in Australia means the opposite of what it does in the US? The houses mostly have what in the US I'd call a hipped roof, which doesn't have any gables.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:13 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
Our home insurance was a pretty reasonable $1,600 the first year (2013). I sent the payment in. A few months later, I got a notice our coverage had been canceled for nonpayment. I made all the phone calls and found out the insurer had misapplied our payment (multi line policy, as one does to get the discount) to auto, *even though* we prepay auto in full every year. Whatever. I reapplied. The premium went up to $6,000 BECAUSE WE’D HAD A LAPSE IN COVERAGE. Then the insurer withdrew from the state and we had to get JUA,
Do you think they 'misapplied' your payment on purpose in order to have an excuse to raise your rates? If so, they probably did the same to many other customers, and that would be the kind of shenanigan which might lead a responsible state insurance commissioner to pull their ticket, so their withdrawal may not have been entirely voluntary.
posted by jamjam at 1:45 PM on December 1, 2023 [10 favorites]
Do you think they 'misapplied' your payment on purpose in order to have an excuse to raise your rates? If so, they probably did the same to many other customers, and that would be the kind of shenanigan which might lead a responsible state insurance commissioner to pull their ticket, so their withdrawal may not have been entirely voluntary.
posted by jamjam at 1:45 PM on December 1, 2023 [10 favorites]
People have lived in some pretty inhospitable places for thousands of years so retreating from places like Florida isn't necessary but for sure the construction of cities and buildings will need to change to be better able to deal with the effects of climate change. There definitely needs to be some discussion of the costs of doing so instead of say encouraging migration to areas that are less negatively effected. There are a lot of cities around the Great Lakes for example that could grow to accommodate many climate migrants.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:44 PM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:44 PM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
Looking at the GIS for Queenslander houses, I'm wondering if "gabling" in Australia means the opposite of what it does in the US? The houses mostly have what in the US I'd call a hipped roof, which doesn't have any gables.
I think the person must have used the wrong term, because hipped or hatted roofs (no gables) resist wind far better, because tall gables are basically sails. A 'gable' is a tall flat triangle. "The House of 7 Gables" had 7 tall triangle shaped roofs, like a mcmansion.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:01 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think the person must have used the wrong term, because hipped or hatted roofs (no gables) resist wind far better, because tall gables are basically sails. A 'gable' is a tall flat triangle. "The House of 7 Gables" had 7 tall triangle shaped roofs, like a mcmansion.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:01 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's depressing that the insurance market collapsing under the weight of too many people living in climate disaster zones is going to be one of the few things that puts a damper on that trend.
posted by Ferreous at 11:05 AM on
This is a crappy post in a thread of crappy posts. Housing is a human right. Freedom of movement is a human right.
People live where they live because it is home. Home is sacred. For Native Americans, it is actually sacred.
Blaming people, including Floridians, for not maximizing their insurability in the face of climate change, is an opinion. People don't decide where to live based on insurability.
Why are we not focused on making Exxon pay? Have we internalized Neoliberal values to the point that we hate people for where they live?
posted by eustatic at 3:01 PM on December 1, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 11:05 AM on
This is a crappy post in a thread of crappy posts. Housing is a human right. Freedom of movement is a human right.
People live where they live because it is home. Home is sacred. For Native Americans, it is actually sacred.
Blaming people, including Floridians, for not maximizing their insurability in the face of climate change, is an opinion. People don't decide where to live based on insurability.
Why are we not focused on making Exxon pay? Have we internalized Neoliberal values to the point that we hate people for where they live?
posted by eustatic at 3:01 PM on December 1, 2023 [11 favorites]
Blaming people, including Floridians, for not maximizing their insurability in the face of climate change, is an opinion
Mate, I don't build a place with a flat roof in Boston because it's a patently stupid thing to do. Even if snowstorms were getting more intense and frequency, it's not any less of a mistake. But I could choose to if I really wanted to. And I'd probably be uninsurable because it's a patently stupid thing to do.
Floridians building directly on the slab next to the coast are the equivalent of building flat roofs in snow country and wondering why their roof falls in after the occasional blizzard. Then building back a flat roof yet again hoping next time it won't fall in.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 3:19 PM on December 1, 2023 [11 favorites]
Mate, I don't build a place with a flat roof in Boston because it's a patently stupid thing to do. Even if snowstorms were getting more intense and frequency, it's not any less of a mistake. But I could choose to if I really wanted to. And I'd probably be uninsurable because it's a patently stupid thing to do.
Floridians building directly on the slab next to the coast are the equivalent of building flat roofs in snow country and wondering why their roof falls in after the occasional blizzard. Then building back a flat roof yet again hoping next time it won't fall in.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 3:19 PM on December 1, 2023 [11 favorites]
Michael Lewis, who has been discussed elsewhere on the blue recently and has become problematic of late, wrote a good article for the NYT around 15 years ago on the matter of insurance pricing for systemic risk: In Nature's Casino. (archive)
It's also helpful to understand Berkshire Hathaway's role in the insurance system, with Uncle Warren running the show solo after the death of his business partner Charlie Munger earlier this week. Here's a good profile of Buffett and Berkshire's reinsurance business from Walter Kirn in The Atlantic about 20 years back: American Everyman.
tl;dr - The insurance companies have no real ability to price systemic risks of the size and breadth we're already facing.
posted by sockshaveholes at 3:21 PM on December 1, 2023 [5 favorites]
It's also helpful to understand Berkshire Hathaway's role in the insurance system, with Uncle Warren running the show solo after the death of his business partner Charlie Munger earlier this week. Here's a good profile of Buffett and Berkshire's reinsurance business from Walter Kirn in The Atlantic about 20 years back: American Everyman.
tl;dr - The insurance companies have no real ability to price systemic risks of the size and breadth we're already facing.
posted by sockshaveholes at 3:21 PM on December 1, 2023 [5 favorites]
Mate, I don't build a place with a flat roof in Boston because it's a patently stupid thing to do.
I'm confused. Do you think Boston has no flat roofs? Of what? Residential properties? Office buildings? Stores? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:28 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm confused. Do you think Boston has no flat roofs? Of what? Residential properties? Office buildings? Stores? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:28 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm confused. Do you think Boston has no flat roofs? Of what? Residential properties? Office buildings? Stores? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
They do have them because reinforcing a flat or lower pitched roof on a larger building to specific snow loads is less expensive with a larger building but they're fraught with problems like, surprise surprise, they're leaky and cave in from time to time. You're not going to see flat roof Moorish architecture for single family detached here.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 3:41 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
They do have them because reinforcing a flat or lower pitched roof on a larger building to specific snow loads is less expensive with a larger building but they're fraught with problems like, surprise surprise, they're leaky and cave in from time to time. You're not going to see flat roof Moorish architecture for single family detached here.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 3:41 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
Aquaman Realty of South Florida is gonna have some great deals on property soon!
posted by nofundy at 3:45 PM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by nofundy at 3:45 PM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Look, I think we can provisionally agree that we don't want to socialize risk for rich people who actually knew better, but maybe we want to partially socialize risk for poor people who are trapped by economic circumstance? Not everyone lives somewhere because they had a lot of options.
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:49 PM on December 1, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:49 PM on December 1, 2023 [11 favorites]
“Do you think they 'misapplied' your payment on purpose in order to have an excuse to raise your rates? If so, they probably did the same to many other customers, and that would be the kind of shenanigan which might lead a responsible state insurance commissioner to pull their ticket, so their withdrawal may not have been entirely voluntary.”
I think the answer to (1) is “very likely,” because it was State Farm, a nightmare company when I went up against them as a commercial auto adjuster because they had a policy of denying all third party claims until you could show them photographs of how wrong they were. I loved going to arbitration against them and made a point of winning every time. Which is why I think the answer to (2) is “probably not,” because there’s no way the insurance commissioner of Florida cares more about consumers than kickbacks, however they may come.
posted by toodleydoodley at 3:51 PM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think the answer to (1) is “very likely,” because it was State Farm, a nightmare company when I went up against them as a commercial auto adjuster because they had a policy of denying all third party claims until you could show them photographs of how wrong they were. I loved going to arbitration against them and made a point of winning every time. Which is why I think the answer to (2) is “probably not,” because there’s no way the insurance commissioner of Florida cares more about consumers than kickbacks, however they may come.
posted by toodleydoodley at 3:51 PM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
Housing is a human right. Freedom of movement is a human right.
People live where they live because it is home. Home is sacred. For Native Americans, it is actually sacred.
These are important concepts, but trying to use them as a basis to garner sympathy for snowbirds who wilfully built their castles on sensitive coastal or desert land, trusting in the sheer power of FYIGM to make it come out right, and are now beginning to reap the entirely foreseeable and foreseen consequences is ... unpersuasive.
And as the article notes, those are exactly the people whose choices are currently, and unsustainably, being subsidized:
What? Of course we do. Even recognizing that housing is a human right, rebuilding your house in a flood plain (for example) isn't.
More to the point, using the principle that housing is a human right to justify propping up the inequities of a system that does not respect that human right (or many others) is problematic. If we had a system that respected human rights and human equality, that would be a reasonable guiding principle. But in such a system it is unlikely that these particular problems would have arisen, inasmuch as Florida as we know it (and the US as we know it) would not exist in the first place.
posted by Not A Thing at 3:56 PM on December 1, 2023 [18 favorites]
People live where they live because it is home. Home is sacred. For Native Americans, it is actually sacred.
These are important concepts, but trying to use them as a basis to garner sympathy for snowbirds who wilfully built their castles on sensitive coastal or desert land, trusting in the sheer power of FYIGM to make it come out right, and are now beginning to reap the entirely foreseeable and foreseen consequences is ... unpersuasive.
And as the article notes, those are exactly the people whose choices are currently, and unsustainably, being subsidized:
Right now, the insurance market is unintentionally protecting wealthy property owners while socializing their risk through highly subsidized premiums. The US government holds liability for the majority of flood insurance, for example, managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Repeatedly flooded properties make up just one percent of the program’s policies but account for more than 30 percent of the claims. “When the government’s the backup insurer, the taxpayers have to support that,” Hill says.People don't decide where to live based on insurability.
What? Of course we do. Even recognizing that housing is a human right, rebuilding your house in a flood plain (for example) isn't.
More to the point, using the principle that housing is a human right to justify propping up the inequities of a system that does not respect that human right (or many others) is problematic. If we had a system that respected human rights and human equality, that would be a reasonable guiding principle. But in such a system it is unlikely that these particular problems would have arisen, inasmuch as Florida as we know it (and the US as we know it) would not exist in the first place.
posted by Not A Thing at 3:56 PM on December 1, 2023 [18 favorites]
Blaming people, including Floridians, for not maximizing their insurability in the face of climate change, is an opinion.
I believe this approach misunderstands the nature of insurance. We are essentially socializing the increasing risk of having housing in dangerous areas. We are doing this because we assume an inalienable right to live wherever you like, if you can afford it. That right is underwritten by the billions all homeowners pay to insurance companies. The fact that many people can't afford to move, or like where they live, does not take away from the fact that this is a real, and expensive, and increasingly imminent problem with American housing.
This is too complicated to be a simple moral issue. You ask why we can't make Exxon pay. So they pay. Then what? Do we continue to use that money to build more and more fortress-like houses so that people continue to risk their lives and livelihoods in dangerous places?
Sometimes I think we should stop thinking about Florida specifically when we think about this crisis, and imagine instead that some people have built their homes around the rim of a volcano that we know is going to explode. How much of our national resources should be devoted to financing someone's right to live on the volcano?
posted by mittens at 3:57 PM on December 1, 2023 [9 favorites]
I believe this approach misunderstands the nature of insurance. We are essentially socializing the increasing risk of having housing in dangerous areas. We are doing this because we assume an inalienable right to live wherever you like, if you can afford it. That right is underwritten by the billions all homeowners pay to insurance companies. The fact that many people can't afford to move, or like where they live, does not take away from the fact that this is a real, and expensive, and increasingly imminent problem with American housing.
This is too complicated to be a simple moral issue. You ask why we can't make Exxon pay. So they pay. Then what? Do we continue to use that money to build more and more fortress-like houses so that people continue to risk their lives and livelihoods in dangerous places?
Sometimes I think we should stop thinking about Florida specifically when we think about this crisis, and imagine instead that some people have built their homes around the rim of a volcano that we know is going to explode. How much of our national resources should be devoted to financing someone's right to live on the volcano?
posted by mittens at 3:57 PM on December 1, 2023 [9 favorites]
The volcano thing is less of a hypothetical than you'd think Lava Zone 1 is A Whole Thing on Hawaii, and could serve as a model. Although it tends to be a thing that, well, just happens once to a given area.
NB:the original owner does continue to own the land. It's just, you know, covered by cooling lava...
posted by DebetEsse at 5:59 PM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
NB:the original owner does continue to own the land. It's just, you know, covered by cooling lava...
posted by DebetEsse at 5:59 PM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
Blaming people, including Floridians, for not maximizing their insurability in the face of climate change, is an opinion. People don't decide where to live based on insurability.I’m not comfortable using the language of inclusion to say that the rest of us should subsidize a bunch of affluent people who decided they wanted to move somewhere they knew was disaster-prone because they didn’t want to pay income taxes, deal with winter, or worry about those pesky building codes. We’re not talking about a bunch of native Americans being forced out of their ancestral homes by white people’s climate arson, we’re talking about snowbirds from Canada and retirees from New York who moved there after seeing major storms in the news for their entire lives. ⅔ of Florida’s current population was born somewhere else, and that was historically even more skewed — especially in the at-risk parts of the state like south Florida, which was significantly unpopulated until in the real estate bubbles of the 1920s and especially 1940s when massive environmental damage programs were undertaken to provide land for farming and housing. Florida as whole only had half a million people at the turn of the previous century but Miami’s population was around 300 people at the – it’s 6.5M now – and by that time they had solid records of at least 150 major hurricanes, so anyone moving there had no excuse for not building appropriately. That goes double for anyone who experienced the catastrophic damage of the 1926, 1928, and 1935 hurricanes which were well reported throughout the entire country. The majority of people who moved there well after WWII have absolutely no excuse for not knowing this happens regularly.
The same programs which cleared all of that land for housing also removed a lot of natural storm protection and added impermeable surfaces, so I think the mention of native Americans is especially inappropriate because they suffered considerable losses so white settlers could live less sustainably in their former territories.
posted by adamsc at 6:11 PM on December 1, 2023 [17 favorites]
Housing is a human right.
In American politics, a "right" is something you can get upheld in court.
Who do you sue? The insurers who stopped issuing policies? Florida? FedGov?
The only court appropriate in this context is King Canute's.
posted by ocschwar at 7:37 PM on December 1, 2023
We are already paying for Climate Emergency in the form of increased premiums and taxes to cover floods, fires, storms, heat. Tip of the melting iceberg. I've been explaining this to deniers, who just can't get past their love of fossil fuels. Actuaries, at least good ones, don't care what you believe. In the past, insurance companies were huge investors; that seems to be a bit less so now, but, still, they've fed Big Oil for years.
posted by theora55 at 7:44 PM on December 1, 2023
posted by theora55 at 7:44 PM on December 1, 2023
You're not going to see flat roof Moorish architecture for single family detached here.
I mean, other than all the ones that are there. Just fly around on google maps dude. they aren't hard to find.
Also anybody who thinks that everyone moved to Florida because 'they hate snow' has no idea what they are talking about.
Housing Permits per 1000 people for 2022
This same graph basically goes back 30 years. Massachusetts, NY, and CA, and Illinois build 2 housing units per 1000 people, Florida builds 10. The people moving there are economic refugees due to really stupid policies in the NE, where a huge number of jobs and QOL is. That's why people move there. And guess what? The population shift is going to be so severe in another decade or two, that the US will have no choice but to subsidize these places because they will outvote you.
Or you could build some housing so they could stick around.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:26 PM on December 1, 2023 [6 favorites]
I mean, other than all the ones that are there. Just fly around on google maps dude. they aren't hard to find.
Also anybody who thinks that everyone moved to Florida because 'they hate snow' has no idea what they are talking about.
Housing Permits per 1000 people for 2022
This same graph basically goes back 30 years. Massachusetts, NY, and CA, and Illinois build 2 housing units per 1000 people, Florida builds 10. The people moving there are economic refugees due to really stupid policies in the NE, where a huge number of jobs and QOL is. That's why people move there. And guess what? The population shift is going to be so severe in another decade or two, that the US will have no choice but to subsidize these places because they will outvote you.
Or you could build some housing so they could stick around.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:26 PM on December 1, 2023 [6 favorites]
Mate, I don't build a place with a flat roof in Boston because it's a patently stupid thing to do.
Sometimes I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to 1912 and punch the guy who built my house in Albany, NY in the balls for giving us a flat roof. It slopes inward to a drain in the center of one side. The failure-modes are obvious.
posted by mikelieman at 10:01 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
Sometimes I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to 1912 and punch the guy who built my house in Albany, NY in the balls for giving us a flat roof. It slopes inward to a drain in the center of one side. The failure-modes are obvious.
posted by mikelieman at 10:01 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
One thing I’ve wondered about is how many businesses are facing disaster risks they don’t fully account for because of remote work and outsourcing, and how this will play out.
This includes businesses like tech startups and hedge funds who have random key employees in places where they’ll get knocked off the grid and otherwise have their lives and productivity disrupted at crucial moments. But probably also more complex scenarios where like a school district in suburban Buffalo has to cancel class because the bus contractor’s shift scheduling software vendor’s call center provider got hit by a bad storm, and the local dentist has to cancel appointments to stay home with their kids.
posted by smelendez at 1:40 AM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
This includes businesses like tech startups and hedge funds who have random key employees in places where they’ll get knocked off the grid and otherwise have their lives and productivity disrupted at crucial moments. But probably also more complex scenarios where like a school district in suburban Buffalo has to cancel class because the bus contractor’s shift scheduling software vendor’s call center provider got hit by a bad storm, and the local dentist has to cancel appointments to stay home with their kids.
posted by smelendez at 1:40 AM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
What happened when State Farm and Allstate completely independently decided they didn't want to insure property under California's regulatory regime and Farmers decided to pick up the low-risk properties left behind while reducing their portfolio elsewhere is that the governor and the industry's handpicked commissioner decided to let proprietary catastrophe modeling shape ratesetting. What happened when the industry acted as a cartel to strongarm regulators into shifting the increasing cost of reinsurance onto policyholders is that California's craven electeds shirked their own duty and betrayed the voters' mandate for public scrutiny of the entire ratesetting process.
The Hakai article juxtaposes narrative about hurricanes with imagery from wildfires. Too often these are viewed as similar consequences of climate change. But while the geographic area exposed to hurricane-force winds will continue to increase decade over decade, human intervention can reduce both the area exposed to wildfire and the risk of ignition for structures within fire perimeters relative to the ten years past.
The case of Paradise, mentioned above, has been extensively studied, and mitigations were found to reduce the Average Annual Loss by a factor of two or three. Note that both sets of researchers found proximity to another structure to be the single greatest risk factor. The actuarial study goes on to estimate premiums at 175% of the AAL plus $120 per $100K of coverage. Without mitigations, net cost of reinsurance can add another 50% on top of that. The insurers who settled with arsonists for a fraction of the billions they were owed now want to ensure quarterly profitability by denying coverage until the insured shell out for Munich Re.
Thus most homeowners with mortgages in areas the cartel has redlined must pay our insurer of last resort, the California FAIR Plan, and many homeowners without mortgages rationally decide not to pay premiums out of line with the actual risk. There have been efforts, such as the Board of Forestry's regulatory takings and stunt bills from Senator Stern, to prevent dispossessed survivors like the pictured Tobe Magidson from ever returning home. Or from the left-behinds on Blue Mountain regaining enough of a community for their water district to survive. Yet this scapegoating elides that California built back so effectively from its most destructive fire that the denizens of what once was ash ascribe risk to building in the hinterland rather than their own demand for electric power putting the hinterland at risk.
I lament that rising seas will someday drown Smith Island and the self-reliant culture it has sustained for centuries. But the self-reliant ranchlands and timberlands of the West are not similarly doomed; we can coexist with fire just as our predecessors did for millenia. The trick is getting insurers or less captive regulators to acknowledge that a 5-foot non-combustible zone around structures and a 30-foot minimum between structures quantifiably reduce ignition risk and merit a commensurate reduction in premium.
posted by backwoods at 1:47 AM on December 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
The Hakai article juxtaposes narrative about hurricanes with imagery from wildfires. Too often these are viewed as similar consequences of climate change. But while the geographic area exposed to hurricane-force winds will continue to increase decade over decade, human intervention can reduce both the area exposed to wildfire and the risk of ignition for structures within fire perimeters relative to the ten years past.
The case of Paradise, mentioned above, has been extensively studied, and mitigations were found to reduce the Average Annual Loss by a factor of two or three. Note that both sets of researchers found proximity to another structure to be the single greatest risk factor. The actuarial study goes on to estimate premiums at 175% of the AAL plus $120 per $100K of coverage. Without mitigations, net cost of reinsurance can add another 50% on top of that. The insurers who settled with arsonists for a fraction of the billions they were owed now want to ensure quarterly profitability by denying coverage until the insured shell out for Munich Re.
Thus most homeowners with mortgages in areas the cartel has redlined must pay our insurer of last resort, the California FAIR Plan, and many homeowners without mortgages rationally decide not to pay premiums out of line with the actual risk. There have been efforts, such as the Board of Forestry's regulatory takings and stunt bills from Senator Stern, to prevent dispossessed survivors like the pictured Tobe Magidson from ever returning home. Or from the left-behinds on Blue Mountain regaining enough of a community for their water district to survive. Yet this scapegoating elides that California built back so effectively from its most destructive fire that the denizens of what once was ash ascribe risk to building in the hinterland rather than their own demand for electric power putting the hinterland at risk.
I lament that rising seas will someday drown Smith Island and the self-reliant culture it has sustained for centuries. But the self-reliant ranchlands and timberlands of the West are not similarly doomed; we can coexist with fire just as our predecessors did for millenia. The trick is getting insurers or less captive regulators to acknowledge that a 5-foot non-combustible zone around structures and a 30-foot minimum between structures quantifiably reduce ignition risk and merit a commensurate reduction in premium.
posted by backwoods at 1:47 AM on December 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
This thread definitely seems to be suffering from the bias that a lot of MeFites live in northern US big cities, and so you assume everyone in Florida is like the people you know who moved to Florida from there for part of the year as "snowbirds". My spouse was born and raised in Miami. His parents moved there in the 1970s for the same reason that people move all over the world--for his mom's job. They loved living there for the weather (his parents grew up in Buffalo and Bemidji), but they also loved the people and the cultures and the amazing national park and their communities--all the things you may well love about the place where you live. They also lost everything they owned to Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and insurance money made it possible for my spouse and his sister to finish high school in the place they had lived their entire lives.
According to the 2020 census, only 20% of Florida's population is over 65, and another 20% is under 18. People of Hispanic origin make up 27% of the population. Black people another 17%; many of those would be descendants of people enslaved in Florida or nearby states. The median income is $61,777, which given our nationwide shortage of affordable housing means half of the state's population could barely afford to move from Florida if they wanted to, and 13% of the population lives in poverty.
All 22 million of those people are people, too, and all of them, rich and poor, with good reasons for living in Florida and ones you judge bad, will face rising sea levels and increasingly severe and frequent hurricanes in coming decades. We have to figure out a way for them to either continue to live in Florida or somehow move them all out of Florida to somewhere safer.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:08 AM on December 2, 2023 [15 favorites]
According to the 2020 census, only 20% of Florida's population is over 65, and another 20% is under 18. People of Hispanic origin make up 27% of the population. Black people another 17%; many of those would be descendants of people enslaved in Florida or nearby states. The median income is $61,777, which given our nationwide shortage of affordable housing means half of the state's population could barely afford to move from Florida if they wanted to, and 13% of the population lives in poverty.
All 22 million of those people are people, too, and all of them, rich and poor, with good reasons for living in Florida and ones you judge bad, will face rising sea levels and increasingly severe and frequent hurricanes in coming decades. We have to figure out a way for them to either continue to live in Florida or somehow move them all out of Florida to somewhere safer.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:08 AM on December 2, 2023 [15 favorites]
This thread definitely seems to be suffering from the bias that a lot of MeFites live in northern US big cities, and so you assume everyone in Florida is like the people you know who moved to Florida from there for part of the year as "snowbirds". My spouse was born and raised in Miami. His parents moved there in the 1970s for the same reason that people move all over the world--for his mom's job. They loved living there for the weather (his parents grew up in Buffalo and Bemidji), but they also loved the people and the cultures and the amazing national park and their communities--all the things you may well love about the place where you live. They also lost everything they owned to Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and insurance money made it possible for my spouse and his sister to finish high school in the place they had lived their entire lives.
This is where Metafilter shows off its very white very privileged side. The North is a bastion of reason and freedom and no one is ever ever racist; California is also the land of reason and freedom and never ever racist.
Listen, my late grandparents were OG North Florida natives. I am sure the fine folks here would call them poor trash or horrible Christians or whatever folks tell themselves, but my paternal family has lived in Florida since the turn of the 20th century. They were sharecroppers, eventually built their own home when they could, and lived out their lives there. I know MeFites love to throw Florida under the bus--and not without good reason, honestly--but not everyone there is a snowbird. I don't understand how folks are completely omitting the communities of colour that hail from there. Okay, so you hate snowbirds. Got it. But what about all the Black folks and Latinx folks who love their homes and can't just pick up sticks and head out?
posted by Kitteh at 5:35 AM on December 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is where Metafilter shows off its very white very privileged side. The North is a bastion of reason and freedom and no one is ever ever racist; California is also the land of reason and freedom and never ever racist.
Listen, my late grandparents were OG North Florida natives. I am sure the fine folks here would call them poor trash or horrible Christians or whatever folks tell themselves, but my paternal family has lived in Florida since the turn of the 20th century. They were sharecroppers, eventually built their own home when they could, and lived out their lives there. I know MeFites love to throw Florida under the bus--and not without good reason, honestly--but not everyone there is a snowbird. I don't understand how folks are completely omitting the communities of colour that hail from there. Okay, so you hate snowbirds. Got it. But what about all the Black folks and Latinx folks who love their homes and can't just pick up sticks and head out?
posted by Kitteh at 5:35 AM on December 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
hydropsyche: by the numbers, most of the Floridians I know either moved there in the 1970s or were born there. They loved a lot of the things about growing up in the state … and none of the people younger than retirement age still live there. That's partially due to the rising cost of living but mostly due to the very real understanding that the real-estate market is heading into a climate change disaster over the time of a 30 year mortgage. The information has been there for a very, very long time but many people chose not to see it.
My point wasn't that we should write-off the entire population of the state but specifically reacting to the “housing is a human right / housing is actually sacred to Native Americans” framing in service of an insurance bailout for people who didn't look at the future of the area they were planning to buy in. Housing is not legally a human right – it should be – but that's housing somewhere, not housing exactly where you want, and that's the problem here. There are trillions of dollars in real estate which was built unsuitably for the area, bought by people who banked on the value going up even though they had good reason to know that the cost of living there would need to include the cost of repairing storm damage on a periodic basis. There's also an interesting choice in that inclusivity framing to talk about “maximizing insurability” as if someone who owns a house isn't more affluent than a lot of people.
I'm sympathetic to anyone who can't just pull up stakes and move but the answer isn't to have everyone else subsidize repairs pretending that each storm is a one-time fluke, either, because at some point that's going to stop being economically or politically viable and everyone will be faced with the same choice under worse circumstances. In some areas there might be ways to rebuild with better designs but in a lot of cases the answer should be more along the lines of having the state buy people out and helping them move somewhere safer - similar to how at least part of the answer in California has to involve some exurbs returning to nature rather than pretending they can be secured from wildfires or telling some wealthy people that there's no way to save their cliffside house from rising seas. To Kitteh's point, that should be but almost certainly will not be done in an equitable manner, especially given the prevailing political trend in the state.
posted by adamsc at 6:10 AM on December 2, 2023 [4 favorites]
My point wasn't that we should write-off the entire population of the state but specifically reacting to the “housing is a human right / housing is actually sacred to Native Americans” framing in service of an insurance bailout for people who didn't look at the future of the area they were planning to buy in. Housing is not legally a human right – it should be – but that's housing somewhere, not housing exactly where you want, and that's the problem here. There are trillions of dollars in real estate which was built unsuitably for the area, bought by people who banked on the value going up even though they had good reason to know that the cost of living there would need to include the cost of repairing storm damage on a periodic basis. There's also an interesting choice in that inclusivity framing to talk about “maximizing insurability” as if someone who owns a house isn't more affluent than a lot of people.
I'm sympathetic to anyone who can't just pull up stakes and move but the answer isn't to have everyone else subsidize repairs pretending that each storm is a one-time fluke, either, because at some point that's going to stop being economically or politically viable and everyone will be faced with the same choice under worse circumstances. In some areas there might be ways to rebuild with better designs but in a lot of cases the answer should be more along the lines of having the state buy people out and helping them move somewhere safer - similar to how at least part of the answer in California has to involve some exurbs returning to nature rather than pretending they can be secured from wildfires or telling some wealthy people that there's no way to save their cliffside house from rising seas. To Kitteh's point, that should be but almost certainly will not be done in an equitable manner, especially given the prevailing political trend in the state.
posted by adamsc at 6:10 AM on December 2, 2023 [4 favorites]
Or you could build some housing so they could stick around.
Oh believe me I wish I could. I'd personally do something about it. We have over an acre a quarter mile from town (we chose a place close to my wife's work) and a town that won't let you build ADUs. This parcel has a second driveway. It's screaming out for an ADU to be built but the town is obstinant about it. The second MA zones ADUs by right I'm building one.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:04 AM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
Oh believe me I wish I could. I'd personally do something about it. We have over an acre a quarter mile from town (we chose a place close to my wife's work) and a town that won't let you build ADUs. This parcel has a second driveway. It's screaming out for an ADU to be built but the town is obstinant about it. The second MA zones ADUs by right I'm building one.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:04 AM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
This thread has made me think about my little farm family, who moved away to the Front Range, and then had many of their belongings destroyed in the Marshall Fire. It's been an actual nightmare to deal with the insurance companies. Who want people whose lives are literally ashes to buy new belongings and then they'll reimburse them. Maybe. Or will only pay for what a home was “worth,” not what it will cost to build even just a windowless box with the same square footage in 2023.
Anyway, I read both of these essays about insurance in the age of climate catastrophe in the last couple of months, and they definitely made me feel some type of way.
“The System Isn’t Designed to Help You,” Tony Dunn, OK Doomer, 10 October 2023
Anyway, I read both of these essays about insurance in the age of climate catastrophe in the last couple of months, and they definitely made me feel some type of way.
“The System Isn’t Designed to Help You,” Tony Dunn, OK Doomer, 10 October 2023
According to my therapist, I still have PTSD from dealing with our insurer. Not from nearly dying in the fire mind you; from dealing with our insurer after the fire. That’s how traumatic the experience was.“How to Prepare to Lose Your Home in a Climate Disaster,” Id., 05 November 2023
Yes, our insurance company ripped us off, but in the end we did get enough to pay off our “toxic ash pile” and to relocate. Rebuild, no. But we do have a home... 3000 miles from our real home, but a home, with a roof and everything.posted by ob1quixote at 9:03 AM on December 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
Without insurance, you’ll never even have a chance to recover. Nobody really does a good job of tracking what happens to climate victims, but homelessness in Chico (the nearest city) more than doubled after the Camp Fire. I guarantee that the vast majority of those people had no insurance or too little insurance.
I know insurance is a rip off. I know that you’re not “in good hands”. I know your insurer is not “on your side”. I know your insurer is not “a good neighbor”. And I know that insurance will not make you whole.
But without it, you’ll have nothing. You’ll lose everything except your mortgage payment.
My comments were not meant as "hahaha get fucked Floridians!" but a statement that the US has no functional legal mechanisms that prevent people from building in places where it is impractical to build homes. Florida, as it stands, is an unsustainable place for a lot of the inhabitants of the state. Even if you force insurance to cover everyone at bargain rates houses are going to destroyed yearly and the money isn't going to be there to fix that.
I can have deep sympathy for the people who live there but also clearly see that as a country we should be discouraging movement of people into disaster areas. Insurance is acting as the stick, the US should be offering a carrot to get people into places that are better suited to sustainable human habitation.
posted by Ferreous at 10:54 AM on December 2, 2023 [5 favorites]
I can have deep sympathy for the people who live there but also clearly see that as a country we should be discouraging movement of people into disaster areas. Insurance is acting as the stick, the US should be offering a carrot to get people into places that are better suited to sustainable human habitation.
posted by Ferreous at 10:54 AM on December 2, 2023 [5 favorites]
And for what it's worth, florida is still the state with the highest number of net migrants from within the US. Everyone moving there knows the score but it's still happening.
posted by Ferreous at 11:18 AM on December 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 11:18 AM on December 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
But what about all the Black folks and Latinx folks who love their homes and can't just pick up sticks and head out?
It doesn't matter who they are. It makes sense to help people if they're in immediate danger and it makes sense to help people relocate to safer places, but it doesn't make sense to help people rebuild the same houses in the same dangerous places every time the same predictable disaster blows through.
posted by pracowity at 1:52 PM on December 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
It doesn't matter who they are. It makes sense to help people if they're in immediate danger and it makes sense to help people relocate to safer places, but it doesn't make sense to help people rebuild the same houses in the same dangerous places every time the same predictable disaster blows through.
posted by pracowity at 1:52 PM on December 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
Oh, Florida.
Florida provides an excellent example of what happens when you put total dipshits in charge of a place who are either unable or unwilling to understand the problems faced by those who live in that place.
It is true that hurricane insurance has been (modestly) underpriced for at least the past couple of decades. It is also true that the rates insurers have begun to charge over the past couple of years are just taking the piss and were mainly instituted to give the legislature cover to gut any protection policyholders have against unscrupulous insurers when it turned out that the previous scam wasn't making people desperate enough to accept the rolling back of the last recourse they had when their insurer decides to fuck them on a claim.
The old (though still ongoing) scam, which is what generates headlines about insurers going bust every time anything more than a tropical storm hits, is to set up an insurance company, collect premiums, return most of the premiums to shareholders in years when hurricanes don't hit, then throw up your hands and say you're broke when one finally does hit. The state doesn't require you to keep sufficient reserves, so why would you? Next year, you just start another insurance company and repeat.
The most recent new scam was to literally triple rates and claim it's necessary because you're getting sued over claims so much that you're spending boatloads on attorneys, thus convincing people that it's ok if the legislature makes it so you don't have to pay your insured's attorney's fees if they sue and you lose. Never mind that you only pay if you lose and you only lose if you wrongfully denied or undervalued a claim. No, it's all the ambulance-chasing attorneys' fault.
So now people in Florida are paying three times what they were for homeowners insurance a couple of years ago and their insurers can just not pay claims with impunity as long as the claim isn't more than 20 or 30 grand because the homeowner will pay that much in attorney's fees anyway. And it hasn't done shit to rate increases. How unsurprising.
Also, hurricanes just aren't that big of a deal to insurers unless they have shit risk management and load up on risk in concentrated areas. Hurricane deductibles are usually around 20% of value, so coverage doesn't kick in at all or only pays a relatively small amount except in the hardest hit areas, which are always relatively limited.
If you insure half the property on a bunch of surge prone barrier islands all in one area, yeah, you can get pretty fucked. Which is why nobody who isn't running a scam does that. Sadly, most of the insurers in Florida are running scams because the regulation is intentionally toothless and has been for decades. The big guys write very few policies here because the scammers will always underprice them since the scammers don't have to worry about the catastrophic events. They're planning to go bankrupt and walk away.
It will be interesting to see if the large national carriers write more policies now that the scam companies that drove them out in the first place are charging so much. Their book in Florida has already gotten small enough that they can afford to take on at least some risk here, if they can be bothered, which I doubt. Not much sense in competing against scammers who will just take the business right back with unsustainable pricing if they start losing a significant number of policies.
posted by wierdo at 4:30 PM on December 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
Florida provides an excellent example of what happens when you put total dipshits in charge of a place who are either unable or unwilling to understand the problems faced by those who live in that place.
It is true that hurricane insurance has been (modestly) underpriced for at least the past couple of decades. It is also true that the rates insurers have begun to charge over the past couple of years are just taking the piss and were mainly instituted to give the legislature cover to gut any protection policyholders have against unscrupulous insurers when it turned out that the previous scam wasn't making people desperate enough to accept the rolling back of the last recourse they had when their insurer decides to fuck them on a claim.
The old (though still ongoing) scam, which is what generates headlines about insurers going bust every time anything more than a tropical storm hits, is to set up an insurance company, collect premiums, return most of the premiums to shareholders in years when hurricanes don't hit, then throw up your hands and say you're broke when one finally does hit. The state doesn't require you to keep sufficient reserves, so why would you? Next year, you just start another insurance company and repeat.
The most recent new scam was to literally triple rates and claim it's necessary because you're getting sued over claims so much that you're spending boatloads on attorneys, thus convincing people that it's ok if the legislature makes it so you don't have to pay your insured's attorney's fees if they sue and you lose. Never mind that you only pay if you lose and you only lose if you wrongfully denied or undervalued a claim. No, it's all the ambulance-chasing attorneys' fault.
So now people in Florida are paying three times what they were for homeowners insurance a couple of years ago and their insurers can just not pay claims with impunity as long as the claim isn't more than 20 or 30 grand because the homeowner will pay that much in attorney's fees anyway. And it hasn't done shit to rate increases. How unsurprising.
Also, hurricanes just aren't that big of a deal to insurers unless they have shit risk management and load up on risk in concentrated areas. Hurricane deductibles are usually around 20% of value, so coverage doesn't kick in at all or only pays a relatively small amount except in the hardest hit areas, which are always relatively limited.
If you insure half the property on a bunch of surge prone barrier islands all in one area, yeah, you can get pretty fucked. Which is why nobody who isn't running a scam does that. Sadly, most of the insurers in Florida are running scams because the regulation is intentionally toothless and has been for decades. The big guys write very few policies here because the scammers will always underprice them since the scammers don't have to worry about the catastrophic events. They're planning to go bankrupt and walk away.
It will be interesting to see if the large national carriers write more policies now that the scam companies that drove them out in the first place are charging so much. Their book in Florida has already gotten small enough that they can afford to take on at least some risk here, if they can be bothered, which I doubt. Not much sense in competing against scammers who will just take the business right back with unsustainable pricing if they start losing a significant number of policies.
posted by wierdo at 4:30 PM on December 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
Just to jump in and say the people well-meaningly hand-waving away Black/latinx/poor homeowners as people who nevertheless had the poor judgment to live in coastal risk zones — not in decades, pal. Florida’s been gentrifying for at least that long, and it only made sense to start from the coasts. Poor people have been pushed inland and out of city cores, into decaying suburbs and exurbs, as the rich reclaim newly “revitalized” cities and coastal areas.
The 1995 net ban was just one such territory grab in the coastal regions, and the cost of post-Andrew building standards has basically caused generational fishing families to abandon the coast and move inland. So if you want to point fingers at who’s simultaneously elevating the disaster risk and instance premiums and housing prices, you’ll need to point up, not down. Remember, it was Trent Lott’s gulf coast mansion gw bush promised to rebuild. Not like somebody’s gulfport trailer.
posted by toodleydoodley at 7:34 PM on December 2, 2023
The 1995 net ban was just one such territory grab in the coastal regions, and the cost of post-Andrew building standards has basically caused generational fishing families to abandon the coast and move inland. So if you want to point fingers at who’s simultaneously elevating the disaster risk and instance premiums and housing prices, you’ll need to point up, not down. Remember, it was Trent Lott’s gulf coast mansion gw bush promised to rebuild. Not like somebody’s gulfport trailer.
posted by toodleydoodley at 7:34 PM on December 2, 2023
As a stereotypical engineer I really would like to stamp my foot and remind you that the seas are rising and the storms are getting worse.
No amount of talk about housing being a human right will make it any easier to rebuild a house in Florida once a hurricane destroys it. And no amount of talk will change the frequency at which it is destroyed.
Rah-rah talk about the American free market system won't change it either. In fact, none of our decision making systems can change it because human decision making is besides the point. We can decide to rebuild because or how are economy is organized, or how our political system is organized, or because we have a religions revere this or that spot, and it won't change a thing.
Apropos religious thinking, there is the Houma tribe of Louisiana. French-speaking Natives. The sea is going to take their land, so I'm glad they don't have a spiritual attachment to it. They just have a history of living where they can be together and keep the tender mercies of the Louisiana plantation society at arm's length, which means helping them move to a new town together is the thing to do. Then there are the Miccosukkee of Florida. THey're far enough inland that they are in relatively good shape, and if the Miami sprawl is forced to stop, at least from an ecological viewpoint, they would benefit.
If anything, calling housing a "human right" is something that can only help if we adopt Japanese zoning laws, where noxious land uses are limited to specific zones, but housing is as-of-right. (As I understand it, if you want to build an apartment building in Japan right next to an area designated for polluting industries, you have the right. You just can't get the neighboring factories to change what they do.)
That's the reform we need because yes, in areas like mine, where we have enough water in a gravity fed aqueduct, and where the hurricanes are rare and the inland towns high enough to be safe from them, we MUST allow more homes to replace the ones that will definitely be destroyed and not rebuilt in Floria.
posted by ocschwar at 8:23 PM on December 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
No amount of talk about housing being a human right will make it any easier to rebuild a house in Florida once a hurricane destroys it. And no amount of talk will change the frequency at which it is destroyed.
Rah-rah talk about the American free market system won't change it either. In fact, none of our decision making systems can change it because human decision making is besides the point. We can decide to rebuild because or how are economy is organized, or how our political system is organized, or because we have a religions revere this or that spot, and it won't change a thing.
Apropos religious thinking, there is the Houma tribe of Louisiana. French-speaking Natives. The sea is going to take their land, so I'm glad they don't have a spiritual attachment to it. They just have a history of living where they can be together and keep the tender mercies of the Louisiana plantation society at arm's length, which means helping them move to a new town together is the thing to do. Then there are the Miccosukkee of Florida. THey're far enough inland that they are in relatively good shape, and if the Miami sprawl is forced to stop, at least from an ecological viewpoint, they would benefit.
If anything, calling housing a "human right" is something that can only help if we adopt Japanese zoning laws, where noxious land uses are limited to specific zones, but housing is as-of-right. (As I understand it, if you want to build an apartment building in Japan right next to an area designated for polluting industries, you have the right. You just can't get the neighboring factories to change what they do.)
That's the reform we need because yes, in areas like mine, where we have enough water in a gravity fed aqueduct, and where the hurricanes are rare and the inland towns high enough to be safe from them, we MUST allow more homes to replace the ones that will definitely be destroyed and not rebuilt in Floria.
posted by ocschwar at 8:23 PM on December 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
Human society runs on stories. Absolutely everything else runs on science, but that rarely matters.
posted by tigrrrlily at 11:09 PM on December 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by tigrrrlily at 11:09 PM on December 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
A lot of folks are responding really defensively to my first two paragraphs and ignoring the last one:
All 22 million of those people are people, too, and all of them, rich and poor, with good reasons for living in Florida and ones you judge bad, will face rising sea levels and increasingly severe and frequent hurricanes in coming decades. We have to figure out a way for them to either continue to live in Florida or somehow move them all out of Florida to somewhere safer.
Ultimately, the people of Florida (and other low-lying or fire-prone areas) are no more to blame for climate change than the people anywhere else in the US*. We as a society have an obligation to one another to work together to adapt to climate change as a society. Y'all are absolutely right that there are rich people who chose to move to Florida who will choose to move somewhere else as conditions change and really don't need any help to do so. For everyone else, we need to talk about helping them adapt their homes to where they live (elevated homes in flood-prone areas or safer construction and land management practices in fire-prone areas) or helping them move to somewhere safer.
*(all of US society bears a greater amount of blame for climate change compared to the rest of the world, but we all bear it pretty similarly except for the billionaires who should be sacrificed today for the greater good)
posted by hydropsyche at 4:30 AM on December 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
All 22 million of those people are people, too, and all of them, rich and poor, with good reasons for living in Florida and ones you judge bad, will face rising sea levels and increasingly severe and frequent hurricanes in coming decades. We have to figure out a way for them to either continue to live in Florida or somehow move them all out of Florida to somewhere safer.
Ultimately, the people of Florida (and other low-lying or fire-prone areas) are no more to blame for climate change than the people anywhere else in the US*. We as a society have an obligation to one another to work together to adapt to climate change as a society. Y'all are absolutely right that there are rich people who chose to move to Florida who will choose to move somewhere else as conditions change and really don't need any help to do so. For everyone else, we need to talk about helping them adapt their homes to where they live (elevated homes in flood-prone areas or safer construction and land management practices in fire-prone areas) or helping them move to somewhere safer.
*(all of US society bears a greater amount of blame for climate change compared to the rest of the world, but we all bear it pretty similarly except for the billionaires who should be sacrificed today for the greater good)
posted by hydropsyche at 4:30 AM on December 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
we’re talking about snowbirds from Canada and retirees from New York who moved there after seeing major storms in the news for their entire lives.
My parents fit this profile. We have family that’s lived in Florida since the early 60s, including two generations born there since. They bought a condo I’ve referenced before outside of Ft. Lauderdale, on the ocean. They bought it about 2 years after my dad had a traumatic head injury (he was found on the ice with a brain bleed and it was unclear if it was an aneurysm first or he fell first) and my mum wanted to be near her sibling who is a doctor. There was a lot of fear of winter plus an inability to travel or deal with a lot of change.
Their oceanfront condo has the same construction as the one in Surfside except a garden instead of a pool on the piece connected to the building. It’s being shored up. The residents had to vacate for a few month; it was that bad. (Part of the electrical system was under sea water, and the concrete had crumbled and the steel was exposed and corroding.)
I’ve written before about how I talked to them years ago about the sea coming into the limestone issue and they just hand waved it. Well, now they have had to come up with about $175k in levies to fix the building so it doesn’t fall down, I don’t know how much to install better hurricane shutters, and their condo fees are going up over $2k/month to replace communal reserves. On top of that their insurance tripled.
My parents are reasonably intelligent people, but also emotion-driven - especially once my dad’s retirement profile changed dramatically (his frontal cortex was full of blood and he no longer has executive function). My mum also just wanted to be near her family. It was hard for them, at the point they bought, to look at climate change or Florida rules and be sensible.
They weren’t looking to get out of taxes or similar. They were looking for a gentle retirement after an abrupt realization that they were getting old and vulnerable. My dad retired 12 weeks before his aneurysm and still was teachin, and at the time he went into the ER was given a 50% chance if survivor, 10% chance of walking or talking (he does both a lot.).
They were sold the Florida dream their whole lives and my maternal grandparents lived it, with mobility and a walkable (eventually golf cart able) community with tons of friends and bingo night every Thursday for years. They were to some degree enculturated to look there.
They are fortunate Boomers and although they are going to take significant losses either way - their condo is one of those cases where it is basically unsellable (it’s been on the market a year), and the new fees will be a drain - they still have a home up here and will be fine. But they’re very lucky. They are coasting on generational wealth and Toronto real estate.
I’m not making a case here; I advised them against buying. But just humanizing this discussion some, even on the stupid snowbird front.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:56 AM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
My parents fit this profile. We have family that’s lived in Florida since the early 60s, including two generations born there since. They bought a condo I’ve referenced before outside of Ft. Lauderdale, on the ocean. They bought it about 2 years after my dad had a traumatic head injury (he was found on the ice with a brain bleed and it was unclear if it was an aneurysm first or he fell first) and my mum wanted to be near her sibling who is a doctor. There was a lot of fear of winter plus an inability to travel or deal with a lot of change.
Their oceanfront condo has the same construction as the one in Surfside except a garden instead of a pool on the piece connected to the building. It’s being shored up. The residents had to vacate for a few month; it was that bad. (Part of the electrical system was under sea water, and the concrete had crumbled and the steel was exposed and corroding.)
I’ve written before about how I talked to them years ago about the sea coming into the limestone issue and they just hand waved it. Well, now they have had to come up with about $175k in levies to fix the building so it doesn’t fall down, I don’t know how much to install better hurricane shutters, and their condo fees are going up over $2k/month to replace communal reserves. On top of that their insurance tripled.
My parents are reasonably intelligent people, but also emotion-driven - especially once my dad’s retirement profile changed dramatically (his frontal cortex was full of blood and he no longer has executive function). My mum also just wanted to be near her family. It was hard for them, at the point they bought, to look at climate change or Florida rules and be sensible.
They weren’t looking to get out of taxes or similar. They were looking for a gentle retirement after an abrupt realization that they were getting old and vulnerable. My dad retired 12 weeks before his aneurysm and still was teachin, and at the time he went into the ER was given a 50% chance if survivor, 10% chance of walking or talking (he does both a lot.).
They were sold the Florida dream their whole lives and my maternal grandparents lived it, with mobility and a walkable (eventually golf cart able) community with tons of friends and bingo night every Thursday for years. They were to some degree enculturated to look there.
They are fortunate Boomers and although they are going to take significant losses either way - their condo is one of those cases where it is basically unsellable (it’s been on the market a year), and the new fees will be a drain - they still have a home up here and will be fine. But they’re very lucky. They are coasting on generational wealth and Toronto real estate.
I’m not making a case here; I advised them against buying. But just humanizing this discussion some, even on the stupid snowbird front.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:56 AM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
warriorqueen: my wife’s family has a very similar story if you replace “Toronto” with “New York area” and especially the previous generation having lived that dream until they died. I think the most important next step is getting people to realize that this is no longer possible, to the extent that it was ever true, because the last century of marketing has a lot of people thinking that’s a nice plan. By the time people are looking to buy, they’re probably not going to be fully open to conflicting information about the wisdom of the situation unless it’s in the form of something like not being able to get insurance coverage.
I’d like something along the lines of a one-time state buyout in the highest-risk areas up to a certain cap to help people who don’t have much in assets other then equity (especially with America’s punitive disability laws) but given how things work I’m assuming they’ll figure out a loophole which diverts most of the benefits to the richest coastal properties.
posted by adamsc at 8:02 AM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
I’d like something along the lines of a one-time state buyout in the highest-risk areas up to a certain cap to help people who don’t have much in assets other then equity (especially with America’s punitive disability laws) but given how things work I’m assuming they’ll figure out a loophole which diverts most of the benefits to the richest coastal properties.
posted by adamsc at 8:02 AM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
I've zero background on this estiamte, but we could forget Florida if we have +4.5 m of sea level rise by 2045. It's presumably worse in equatorial palaces, and less in northern palces, but maybe he quotes equatorial rise. Also, rebound models maybe tricky too, so again unsure about this estimate.
We'll anyways hopefully see banks start rejecting 30 year mortages, due to climate risks.
Ain't worth focusing upon the snowbirds. America owns 25% of all historical GHG emissions, remains the 2nd largest single GHG emitter behind China, and retains the highest per capita emissions, excluding petrostates, Canada, and Australia. It's therefore broadly positive whenever that country feels some consequences, even if the impact upon the ruling class winds up somewhat muted.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:47 AM on December 4, 2023
We'll anyways hopefully see banks start rejecting 30 year mortages, due to climate risks.
Ain't worth focusing upon the snowbirds. America owns 25% of all historical GHG emissions, remains the 2nd largest single GHG emitter behind China, and retains the highest per capita emissions, excluding petrostates, Canada, and Australia. It's therefore broadly positive whenever that country feels some consequences, even if the impact upon the ruling class winds up somewhat muted.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:47 AM on December 4, 2023
They do have them because reinforcing a flat or lower pitched roof on a larger building to specific snow loads is less expensive with a larger building but they're fraught with problems like, surprise surprise, they're leaky and cave in from time to time. You're not going to see flat roof Moorish architecture for single family detached here.
There is a maximum amount of snow and you can build strong enough so that your flat roof will support, that's not rocket science, just engineering. Montreal has roughly twice the snow per year as Boston and it's flat roof galore in the core dense neighborhoods.
I've zero background on this estiamte, but we could forget Florida if we have +4.5 m of sea level rise by 2045. It's presumably worse in equatorial palaces, and less in northern palces, but maybe he quotes equatorial rise. Also, rebound models maybe tricky too, so again unsure about this estimate.
I think Florida is cooked well before it's underwater, the salt water from the ocean will push further inland through the porous limestone as sea level rises and it'll eventually contaminate most of the fresh water sources. That seems like a major crisis if you put it on "Florida scale", they'll need lots desalination plants, on a scale we're not doing yet (I think). Now this is not a issue unique to Florida but due to the geography of Florida it'll be worst there.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 10:10 AM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
There is a maximum amount of snow and you can build strong enough so that your flat roof will support, that's not rocket science, just engineering. Montreal has roughly twice the snow per year as Boston and it's flat roof galore in the core dense neighborhoods.
I've zero background on this estiamte, but we could forget Florida if we have +4.5 m of sea level rise by 2045. It's presumably worse in equatorial palaces, and less in northern palces, but maybe he quotes equatorial rise. Also, rebound models maybe tricky too, so again unsure about this estimate.
I think Florida is cooked well before it's underwater, the salt water from the ocean will push further inland through the porous limestone as sea level rises and it'll eventually contaminate most of the fresh water sources. That seems like a major crisis if you put it on "Florida scale", they'll need lots desalination plants, on a scale we're not doing yet (I think). Now this is not a issue unique to Florida but due to the geography of Florida it'll be worst there.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 10:10 AM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
4.5 meters? In the next 22 years? Even the worst-case scenario projections I've seen don't come anywhere close to that. I don't read the language that tweet is written in so can't verify that that's even what it says. But if the sea level rises by 4.5 meters we're all pretty much drowned anyway.
posted by Daily Alice at 10:13 AM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Daily Alice at 10:13 AM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's therefore broadly positive whenever that country feels some consequences
This could only be true if the distribution of consequences was somewhat equitable. But it won't be.
posted by mittens at 10:14 AM on December 4, 2023
This could only be true if the distribution of consequences was somewhat equitable. But it won't be.
posted by mittens at 10:14 AM on December 4, 2023
Couple of points of clarification about Florida specifically: First, sea level rise is (so far) lower than the global average for various complicated reasons I only partially understand. As of 2020 we were at around 130mm increase since 1990. The rate of increase is slightly higher over the past decade, but not by a lot.
Second, at least in SE Florida, fresh water aquifers are getting closer to the coast, not retreating. That's because they were previously rather fucked by over pumping, but better management (and to a lesser degree restoration efforts in the Everglades) turned the trend around enough that the 5-6 inches in sea level rise has had no detrimental effect so far.
What increased sea levels are doing is fucking the drainage systems in some areas, leading to increased freshwater flooding hazards, especially when excessive rainfall coincides with king tides.
More generally, it seems like a lot of people are under the mistaken impression that all of Florida will be underwater soon. Even in the very long term, once literally all the glaciers and ice caps have melted, central and north Florida, except for the areas directly along the coast, will still be above the waves.
As far as hurricanes go, the effect of climate change is kinda odd. It's most likely we'll see fewer landfalling hurricanes, but those that hit will be increasingly strong over time. Ironically, in the general case, it's actually better for us for hurricanes to get stronger faster. When they turn into monster storms when they're still well out to sea they're a lot more likely to end up recurving than they are when they start out weak and only become major when they get farther west.
In short, the situation is fucking complicated and predictions of dire outcomes within our lifetimes are very much overblown. (Though there are places in the world where those fears are much more realistic) That's not to say that it isn't crucial that we as a species make drastic changes as immediately as is possible to prevent the worst outcomes, only that all the "lol how can you move to Florida, it's going to be gone any day now" shit is completely counterfactual. A few small areas are already having issues, but that's more due to unique geography combined with a lack of infrastructure investment and stupid as fuck developers in those areas than any wider issue.
Eventually, of course, the problem areas will grow and grow until all the low parts of the state are eventually swallowed by the sea, but that really is a problem for the distant future. We have time to plan, if only we bother.
posted by wierdo at 2:07 PM on December 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
Second, at least in SE Florida, fresh water aquifers are getting closer to the coast, not retreating. That's because they were previously rather fucked by over pumping, but better management (and to a lesser degree restoration efforts in the Everglades) turned the trend around enough that the 5-6 inches in sea level rise has had no detrimental effect so far.
What increased sea levels are doing is fucking the drainage systems in some areas, leading to increased freshwater flooding hazards, especially when excessive rainfall coincides with king tides.
More generally, it seems like a lot of people are under the mistaken impression that all of Florida will be underwater soon. Even in the very long term, once literally all the glaciers and ice caps have melted, central and north Florida, except for the areas directly along the coast, will still be above the waves.
As far as hurricanes go, the effect of climate change is kinda odd. It's most likely we'll see fewer landfalling hurricanes, but those that hit will be increasingly strong over time. Ironically, in the general case, it's actually better for us for hurricanes to get stronger faster. When they turn into monster storms when they're still well out to sea they're a lot more likely to end up recurving than they are when they start out weak and only become major when they get farther west.
In short, the situation is fucking complicated and predictions of dire outcomes within our lifetimes are very much overblown. (Though there are places in the world where those fears are much more realistic) That's not to say that it isn't crucial that we as a species make drastic changes as immediately as is possible to prevent the worst outcomes, only that all the "lol how can you move to Florida, it's going to be gone any day now" shit is completely counterfactual. A few small areas are already having issues, but that's more due to unique geography combined with a lack of infrastructure investment and stupid as fuck developers in those areas than any wider issue.
Eventually, of course, the problem areas will grow and grow until all the low parts of the state are eventually swallowed by the sea, but that really is a problem for the distant future. We have time to plan, if only we bother.
posted by wierdo at 2:07 PM on December 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
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posted by Ferreous at 11:05 AM on December 1, 2023 [8 favorites]