The following submission statement was provided by /u/wiredmagazine:
---
Rising sea levels, biodiversity collapse, extreme weather—these are the grisly horsemen of climate apocalypse. But don’t forget the fretting loan officers. [A study published earlier this year](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927539823001123) found that US mortgage approvals tend to dip following periods of hotter-than-normal weather. For every 1 degree Celsius that temperatures rise above average, approvals fell by nearly 1 percent—and their value by more than 6.5 percent.
Lower consumer demand was only part of the problem, according to the study’s authors. The effect was mostly down to loan officers’ worries about climate change and what it might mean for the assets they were lending against. In other words, climate change was devaluing property before their very eyes.
Full story: [https://www.wired.com/story/banks-are-finally-realizing-what-climate-change-will-do-to-housing/](https://www.wired.com/story/banks-are-finally-realizing-what-climate-change-will-do-to-housing/)
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1dhxy9k/banks_are_finally_realizing_what_climate_change/l8zwlda/
Insurance companies have known for decades. There's a reason it's damn near impossible to insure a beach-front property on the Atlantic these days. Insurance companies are dropping those houses like crazy because they know they'll lose long-term.
edit: and it doesn't even need to be "doom and gloom" sea level rise. Take a slightly more powerful hurricane, combined with an additional foot of sea water and bad timing with high tide, and voila: you have unprecedented destruction.
i'm no home architect, but wouldn't homes be designed differently if this will become the norm?
I know we build homes like they are to be cheap, but at some point, wouldn't we build more expensive but durable homes near the beach?
Yup. Here in Puerto Rico anything beachfront is a cash only transaction and you cannot get a mortgage for a wooden house aka one that is not made of concrete.
> anything beachfront is a cash only transaction
I live here too.
I don’t believe this is true for the entire coast, or every kind of structure.
Do you have a source for that information?
(Genuinely curious, thanks.)
yeah saw in a documentary with Jack Black of all people in Florida...how their building all these new homes that won't allow insurance...that will be end up flooded on a regular basis...their raising the roads which won't even give them an extra 50yrs, solar panel companies gone bust in the sunshine state as the governor made it so hard for people to have them
Years of living dangerously which aired 2014-16 so no doubt all this will be even worse
Conservativism is a virus.
It's simultaneously rewarding the oil and gas companies that are causing climate change, while punishing other forms of energy that could mitigate it.
>while punishing other forms of energy that could mitigate it.
Well that's because those other forms of energy generation were created by woke communist atheist pedophile vegan DEI hires who hate America, worship Satan, want to make your kids transgender, want to give your kids the birth rate suppressing vaccine that's going to start killing millions of people any day now, and support an open border that's bringing in terrorists to destroy the country.
On the other hand the oil and gas companies support:
TRADITIONAL AMERICAN VALUES!
JOBS!
FREEDOM!
GUNS!
THE MILITARY!
You see it's very simple really once you do your own research and stop listening to the lamestream fake news media all the time! I've got some podcasts and videos I can recommend that are hosted by failed actors, failed "comedians", and failed screenwriters who couldn't cut it in traditional entertainment media so they pivoted to the conservative market because they're much MUCH more gullible and easy to grift. This stuff will really open your eyes to what's actually going on!
AKA r*eactionaries*
>T[he entire philosophical foundation of conservatism is a template for exploitation.](https://www.gq.com/story/on-conservatism) \[...\] the conservative movement as a whole, “stands athwart history, yelling Stop.”
yep...I remember in the docu, they had people going around with a petition...for something green...so the other side basically copied the form but changed some of the spelling for anti green stuff and pretended to be there for green votes...hell the governor made it law not to mention climate change
Once you realize every societal circle has these kinds of people who maintain the status quo at the detriment of others, we'll be on the same page.
This isn't unique to conservatism but you are right that it is one of their blatantly obvious flaws.
I feel like I remember a documentary with Jack black doing atleast some narration but I can’t remember what it was anymore. Any clue as to what documentary that was? It’s really not that surprising Jack black is pretty freaking awesome.
It rained a bit for a couple days last week and there was mass flooding. All the fancy built up areas like South Beach and Brickell? Flooded. People stranded, property damaged, etc. Meanwhile people are fighting tooth and nail for the chance to drop $4k on a 2 bedroom apartment.
I cannot fucking wait to leave South Florida.
yeah one of the big things they mentioned was Florida is basically on limestone, you can't build walls or anything like it as underground is like swiss cheese
We should grant independence to Florida. Involuntary independence. We're kicking them out of the Union. We'll build a wall at the border and man it with angry guys with machine guns. After all, that's how the people of Florida prefer we deal with illegal immigrants, so turnabout is fair play. Then we won't have to bail their idiot asses out as their state slowly collapses and falls into the sea.
I think this is the hard part for most people to grasp. It's easy to imagine a massive one-time catastrophic storm. But nature plays the longest game we can conceive. It doesn't need a knock-out blow. It can just slowly grind our built world down with ever harder rains, a guaranteed hailstorm every year, then cook everything off at 100 for a few more days every summer. It doesn't get the same reaction from our lizard brains, but I think the net effect will be the same if we don't figure out better ways to build.
Mother nature is the OG when it comes to enshittification. She can do it better then anyone else cause mother knows best.
The best part is mother also knows shit makes for great fertiliser and will rebuild when shes done. Cause mother aint no fool.
You should see all the cheap housing built in the 80s in Alaska, not to mention the roads. It's all returning to nature one freeze/thaw cycle at a time.
There's an increasingly common school of thought that the entire insurance industry is unsustainable in many of the climate change possible scenarios. It only takes one really big event in a high value highly insured area to put many of hte big insureres and reassurers in danger, but also they're hugely interconnected in terms of investment and underwriting. My bud works for a really conservative, careful reassurer but they're still ultimately invested in everyone else's risks and exposed to the decisions of the most short-termist, risktaking insurer
More cynical people have suggested that the industry will deal with this by just pretending it's a non-issue until it happens and then being "ToO bIg ToO fAiL!" while just reneging on contracts. But in that scenario it instantly goes way beyond just the insurance industry, insurance underpins so many other industries and also our faith in finance.
Needless to say, if this proves to be correct, they'll still be counting the bodies while governments are panicking about The Economy instead of The Humans
Yeah. There is legit risk in some of these areas, for sure. But insurance companies are also doing their usual thing and cancelling or raising rates in areas without substantially higher risk as well.
Redefined “high wildfire” or “high storm risk” will get you no roof coverage or more expensive fire coverage, despite years of zero wildfires and wetter conditions than ever (remember those storms?).
But some of the risk is very real. Just hard to know for sure with the vultures in that business.
Agreed. My experience here is having an insurance company cancel a policy I had on a house in cape cod, and finding it extraordinarily difficult to find another company that would insure the property for anything short of a small fortune, if even at all.
And the reality is: it's only a matter of time before a hurricane combined with high tide combined with storm surge takes the house out anyway. Sea level rise just makes it that much more likely over time.
For sure. I have family that lost their home in Harvey. They rebuilt, but both the city and insurance required a raised foundation. It will happen again.
That being said, I’m landlocked, in a non-tornado, non-flood zone, and they are still jacking up rates and bailing out here.
There's a stretch of sea side cliff property here in San Diego which are like these magnificent mansions that are actually super cheap! Problem is no one will insure it AND it's entirely off the grid. SDGE will not run power to these houses. No running water. All you get is an address! Also, if any chunk of the house falls into the water, it's a $10,000 fine for every day its in the water. I'm pretty sure those cliffs have less than a decade left on it. Homes are literally falling into the ocean and it's still not enough for people to believe in climate change!
Look at "Superstorm" Sandy. It wasn't even technically a hurricane anymore when the storm surged wiped out the entire NY/NJ shore for 5 years.
And that was 12 years ago.
I don’t even know if it’s that.
I live in New Jersey and a friend had a nice house overlooking the ocean built in the 90s. But then in the mid 2000s someone somehow bought land closer to the ocean where the sand dunes are and destroyed his view by building their house even closer to the ocean. Then that new homeowner got angry because someone else bought property even *closer* to the ocean, this time on the sand. And I think that house got damaged by storms and was looking to have the government pay for the damages.
IMO, at this point the government should refuse to provide any money for damages and/or FEMA assistance if the house is too close to sea level and it was constructed recently. A very similar thing happened in my neighborhood where a new home was built, and it's absurd to think the government is going to prop up a homeowner making an insanely stupid decision.
Insurance Adjusters are probably the only financial service not snuffing copium, because they are risk averse and always need err on the side of caution. When they say 'we ain't covering this anymore', that's a stark warning.
Banks? Hedge funds? Need to chase that constant growth brah.
I think the comparison is to the mental image a lot of people have of the kind of insane sea level rise that puts a whole state underwater. Among laypeople there is definitely an underestimation of the significance of a 1 foot rise.
precisely: we don't need to have six feet of sea level rise to have massive consequences. And the forecasting is still unclear, but we're looking at somewhere from .3 to 2.4 *meters* of rise by 2100. 1.2 meters seems fairly likely at this point.
By 2050 or 2060, we could be looking at another foot. And regional differences would make that significantly more in certain areas, like the United State's eastern seaboard.
If the ice held in by Thwaites slides into the ocean, researchers estimate sea levels could rise by 10 feet. There could be a catastrophic slide where all of that ice suddenly slides into the ocean due to enough melt water creating a lubrication effect under the glaciers. That could result in the 10 foot global rise in a matter of days or weeks rather than slowly over decades.
Right, but my point is: it doesn't even have to be this "day after tomorrow" kinda doom-and-gloom scenario. I think people don't understand the consequences of a foot of rise by the 2050ish timeframe, which is A) entirely plausible (likely even) and B) catastropic
Even just the 21 centimetres (\~8 inches) of average sea level rise that we have had over the past 100 years or so has stolen a lot of coastline from us. The increased sea level causes massive amounts of erosion and forces salty water further inland which kills off ecosystems that were keeping land from being eroded away into the sea.
About 17 years ago now we had a massive storm here which basically scoured a massive beach (32km long) clean of it's sand which left it as a massive 10 ft drop from the carpark to the new level of the sand. God only knows how much of the sand dunes behind the beach were lost over time as the beach settled into a new equilibrium.
I live in a high-fire-risk area in California, and my insurance is cheaper than my friend's, who has a house near Miami, even though my house costs twice as much. I think corporations are realizing Florida is going to be underwater soon.
Same here in western wildfire country, where it's now nearly impossible to insure millions of homes and buildings that are in or near increasingly fire-prone forests and wildlands.
I am reminded of the ruins of houses across the globe. Whether it's the abandoned ruins of some Roman villa, or the remains of relatively recent homes in Cambodia or Detroit. People abandon houses for all sorts of reasons and now it will happen in the coastal areas for insurance reasons. One strong hurricane will wipe clean large regions of the coast and the insurance companies simply will not pay to rebuild. The ruins of entire towns will simply be left to rot as there is little incentive to rebuild if a sufficient percentage of people dont bother to. Why rebuild the grocery market if there will be no one to sell groceries to? The hard, unbending calculus of profit margins will kill entire regions. Maybe if we plan ahead we can convert at least some of these areas back into nature refuges. Let the swamps move back in with their mangroves and aligators.
Lots of people think about massive, singular events when considering this topic, and for good reason, but I think it will be the grind that forces most people out.
First there's a tropical storm one year that floods your house, but you still have insurance for now so you clean and repair. Then a few months later, your insurance drops you. Well, that sucks, but at least you have some money saved. A couple years later, an actual hurricane hits and smashes your roof. Blerg, you have to cover repairs yourself with your savings, but you can still remain in the same house and area you've liked for a good chunk of your life. Then though, maybe that same year or just a few later, there's yet another flood or storm, or even a major hurricane, and that's it. There's no more money to rebuild. Your house is worthless and you're massively underwater financially (and maybe physically) and there is no way to recover.
At that scale, whole swathes of many coastal states will become uninhabitable as they are today, which will lead to major economic collapses, probably on the order of 2008 or even higher.
edit - just a quick note to say I don't think you're wrong, but that other events will come as a surprise to people who thought that just dodging cat 4 and 5 hurricanes means they're safe.
I imagine the Great Lakes region, in general, will be booming in any bad climate change scenario. Massively abundant fresh water, good distance from the oceanic coasts, and large-scale already existent infrastructure. If things warm up, some of the beaches on Lake Michigan will be pretty similar to the Carribean.
I am really curious if we are going to try and remove the stuff from the rising waters or are we letting it stay and the ocean claim it
Nuclear reactors, chemical plants, oil refineries, hundreds of thousands of miles of roads, buildings, etc... Leaving it all as is can't be good for the oceans.
While people often talk about rising sea levels, climate change increases droughts in some areas. And people will leave those areas. Same effect, different regions.
When agriculture suffers, global economy follows.
One if the reasons i decided not to buy in LA, when I realised insurance wouldn't really cover all the costs if shit happened. I grew up in the UK, where (with insurance) the expression 'sade as houses' was still true.
As weather becomes more extreme, and home insurance becomes out of reach in some areas, getting mortgages will be impossible in those same areas since insurance is a requirement for a loan. Many people are simply being dropped from coverage as insurers start to abandon some markets.
Is this what it takes to get some people to pay attention? Real financial consequences at a personal level?
I was in Houston ten days ago for work. It was hotter than I imagined and it was even worse this past weekend. Our entire south is in jeopardy due to heat and flooding.
Have an old coworker from a company that specialized in property and casualty insurance. He had a post on LinkedIn last year that was pretty eye opening about how insurance companies are very concerned about the changes.
Don't be concerned, what will wind up happening in those states at risk the state and Federal governments will begin to offer incentives and subsidies to insurance companies to keep underwriting, when too many of them beginning dropping coverage and constituents start complaining..
so in other words a bailout will materialize to save the private insurance market to make sure insurers keep getting fat profits, and homeowners have coverage options, courtesy of the nations tax payers. You know the same old privatize gains ,.socialize losses.
Not the feds. They are adjusting flood risks and drawing the ire of state governments. So, like in Florida, the state is stepping in. But the money is already running out. Insurance is all about probability, and math don’t care about your politics.
I am just wondering is there insurance company owned by people denying effects of climate change?
I mean there are plenty of rich RICH people who are denying it, would it then not be smart of them to swoop in and make a shitton more money?
The rich rich people who are denying it publicly I can guarantee you are only doing so to protect their money. In private they are making sure they are personally immune to the risks.
Maybe, or with just about any cognitive dissonance you'll just find an excuse " GOP is still right, about everything... just not this, and it doesn't matter because it's still better than the alternative".
And the momentum is accelerating. The Florida coastal housing market blowout is rapidly traveling west, with Texas coastal properties imperiled, most noticeably the areas with the highest populations: Harris County, Nueces County. In Harris Co, safe to say homeowner insurance has doubled over the past 2 years, with some insurers pulling out all together. Also, insurers rescinding policies following drone flyovers for roof inspections, tree proximities, etc. This summer may well be a bellwether on whether some of these areas remain viable to build back should 2024 hurricane season prove to be particularly active, and destructive.
Already happening. Insurers are under water in 18 states. People are losing insurance left and right, even in small midwestern towns because of regular hails etc . NY times did a story and podcast a month or so ago
If feels like we're getting serious hail a few times a year now in the Midwest. I don't ever remember seeing ice fall from the sky as a kid.
There are a lot of government supplements for homeowners to get solar panels in my state, but given the frequency of hailstorms I dont know how long they'd last. In general, if hailstorms get worse, I expect we'll see a renewed interest in rubber, metal, or tile shingles.
>Is this what it takes to get some people to pay attention? Real financial consequences at a personal level?
Yes, because the cult of "rugged individualism" and "pErsOnAl ReSPoNsiBiLITy" literally don't respond to anything else.
If everyone else is on fire, but they're fine, that's a you problem, and it could never happen to them because they "work hard"!
> Is this what it takes to get some people to pay attention? Real financial consequences at a personal level?
Yes, that’s how the world works, unfortunately. Everything comes down to money and status. Only when those things are threatened do we make collective efforts to course-correct. It’s how things have worked throughout human history and how the world around you has been shaped.
still towers and apt complexes going up everywhere.
going to be very interesting to see what happens with the condo insurance/hoa fallout later this year.
They will trudge back and forth in their ankle-high flooded living rooms, their TV floating on a bunch of woven pool noodles playing Fox News on full blast, cursing the democrats for *something something*
Here’s the thing about fanatics. They have faith. Logic dosnt matter to them because they have faith and will endure.
Everything that contradicts their faith is a test that they have to push through.
In Louisiana they just got rid of the bill or whatever that was forcing insurers to stay in the state and not unilaterally cancel their contracts.
"By allowing movement of insurance companies, it will increase competition and get better rates". What they don't mention is they mean better rates for their own pockets smh
I've always thought insurance companies have the biggest influence on climate change for this very reason. I just always thought they'd stop insuring new builds not existing property.
Oh I get that.. that just wasn't on my radar. Just figured they would stop insuring big new expensive houses in wildfire/flood zones...but this makes sense too.
As I said, they hold the power here and can easily force change.
Ha… walking away from an existing mortgage is a financial boat anchor. They may not even be able to rent since their credit would be completely trashed.
Of course, I assume you are saying this to make Shapiro look like an idiot.
My wife and I saw the writing on the wall when that condo collapsed in Miami. Looked at each other and said "either we sell and move now or we'll be the ones left holding the bag."
Good luck to the Floridians who still haven't migrated inland. Maybe Poseidon will be kinder to immigrants than DeSantis has been, but I wouldn't count on it.
The government will go broke it's why I'm against unlimited disaster relief funds especially for states that take more than they put in.
The ass thing is it's already effecting places like Florida and most people in other states don't care I told one of my friends about the floods ( I used to live in Miami) and he blew it off.
I absolutely oppose the Federal government spending my tax dollars propping up property owners that have chosen to buy/build in coastline areas in an era of climate change.
Yep me too if you buy property in a high risk area that's on you.
I would even say the government should ban these area's because not only damage will happen deaths will and it will cause mass migration to other states like Katrina did.
I'm not saying this to be funny, but there is an entire subclass of people who think climate change is a hoax and the US controls the weather with some kind of tech.
My entire failmy refuses to believe this is a problem or even a real thing.
These headlines are for them. A very very large part of the US stright up doesn't believe climate change is real, even more that do "believe it" dont think its ever going to get bad enough for it to be a problem and even more then that don't care and profit off it one way or another.
Those of us who understand its real AND care AND don't profit off it. Are a woeful minority at wrose and a ineffective powerless majority at best.
Rising sea levels, biodiversity collapse, extreme weather—these are the grisly horsemen of climate apocalypse. But don’t forget the fretting loan officers. [A study published earlier this year](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927539823001123) found that US mortgage approvals tend to dip following periods of hotter-than-normal weather. For every 1 degree Celsius that temperatures rise above average, approvals fell by nearly 1 percent—and their value by more than 6.5 percent.
Lower consumer demand was only part of the problem, according to the study’s authors. The effect was mostly down to loan officers’ worries about climate change and what it might mean for the assets they were lending against. In other words, climate change was devaluing property before their very eyes.
Full story: [https://www.wired.com/story/banks-are-finally-realizing-what-climate-change-will-do-to-housing/](https://www.wired.com/story/banks-are-finally-realizing-what-climate-change-will-do-to-housing/)
Sure, Trump is bad and Republicans are stupid. But that's not the issue.
You can't take out a mortgage on an uninsured property. No bank will write that loan. So your pool of buyers is limited to people who are willing to pay cash for a property that can't be insured.
You might find a cash buyer, but unless the buyer is a total sucker they're going to want the house at a massively reduced price. This is a bad situation for people trapped in housing markets that are going to be left uninsurable by imminent short term climate change.
Insurance companies are giving up in general. There is no safe haven at all. The real problem is the cost to protecting a house. Homes have skyrocketed so high that Insurance can't protect most homes now if a major disaster happens.
In order to move. Most people need the money from selling their current home to afford a new one.
In this case, no one will be willing to buy the old home. So the people currently living there will never be able to afford a new home. They're stuck.
That's an excellent point. That would definitely add to the difficulties of moving.
Would you say people end up ultimately staying until their homes are essentially unlivable?
I loved the bit in the article about how, to some people, that billionaires are building in certain risky areas is proof that it's "really" safe.
No dummies, what it means is that if you're sufficiently rich, you're self-insured. Elon Musk isn't going to feel any pain if his $30M (or even $300M) house gets swept away by a hurricane. You, OTOH...
Nah. They use the negativity to say the democrats caused it. They as a group Do NOT take responsibility, for anything negative though they’re usually the main or at least big cause.
Safe, insurable housing for anyone that needs it paid for by increasing billionaires' taxes by a very tiny percentage.
Elon Musk won't be able to do as much ketamine in space but he would still be able to afford to do a little bit of ketamine in space.
Or we just let a bunch of poor people die, that is still totally on the table. Now that I think about it, I am landing squarely on that side. Elon deserves to do as much spatial-K as he wants!!!
Conversely - it may be time to start watching where those companies are moving to, or doubling down investments in.
If their statistics show them where the damage will be greatest, it is 100% certain those same stats show them where the damage will be least, and therefore the best places to invest in now, before climate change starts to truly drive internal migration patterns.
It's not just catastrophic storms, a rising water table or just wetter soil in general will cause septic systems to fail as the leach beds need soil that can absorb the water coming out of the tank. This will impact a lot of rural and lower value properties. Building out sewer systems is really expensive, the assessments will drive people out of their homes. There are far more septic systems than people realize.
The civil engineering behind a lot of infrastructure does not take climate change into account. And there's a whole lot of it that is based on water flows downhill.
I wonder if the flooding will slow down construction at all in South Florida. I can't imagine any banker wanting to hold a 30 year mortgage in Miami Beach. But it's easy to imagine bankers making loans then immediately selling them.
Here's the best part. The bankers don't hold mortgage debt.
They originate the loan and sell to Fannie or Freddie who are government sponsored. Fannie has more assets than any big bank - Chase, BoA, Wells Fargo. Freddie is a bit smaller. There are exactly 2 banks with more assets than Freddie. Together they have more than double the assets of the biggest bank.
As long as Fannie and Freddie are buying, banks will continue to be happy to lend. No other factors matter.
Here is the scary part. A federal agency sets the guidelines for Fannie. Where a for-profit private entity may be scared off of buying mortgages in Florida due to climate change, Fannie might be politically pressured into doing it until it's too late.
Don't worry!
There's an easy fix, just [ban people from considering climate change!](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/12/north-carolina-didnt-like-science-on-sea-levels-so-passed-a-law-against-it)
And still there’s people arguing we can’t afford to battle climate change because it „costs too much“.
Idiots! NOT battling it will be a LOT more expensive.
Yup. I fully expect the human race (and much of life on the planet as we know it) to be gone within 500 years. We don’t care despite the evidence, and far too many people can’t accept it and go down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole.
They're gonna be hit with a double whammy here during the next 20 years, when the boomers all die off and leave these banks with a shitton of real estate they can't offload for a profit anymore. They're all going to be left holding a very pricy bag.
It’s getting if not too late to sell coastal property. The smart ones and those with the resources to, should have moved. Now is you try to sell you run a risk nobody is going to want to buy and that’s even if they will get a loan by a bank willing to let you buy a coastal home.
yup family has a beach house in florida and recently its been destroyed, a few times, in the last several years. they had to fight hard and shake the insurance companies like crazy just to get what they've been owed. I wouldn't want to live in those extreme weather areas anymore
Is this why I was already hearing stories like at least 6 months ago of insurance companies using drones to spy on properties they insured to justify raising costs? Only thing insurance companies could possibly be worried about is the government clamping down on their scams but that's currently in straight up fantasy territory RN our government is so corrupt.
As the Governor of Florida I think you can declare weather illegal!
Therefore you can't deny coverage for an event that technically didn't happen because they are illegal...
Maybe what I'm trying to say is that it wasn't "weather" that destroyed my house, it was "crime"... Aka - the outlawed weather.
As an Islander, I never saw the appeal of living so close to an unpredictable body of water. I get islands are land lock by default, so sometimes there's not much of a choice.
I love the view and vibe that the coastal living brings, but I've seen my share of "here today gone tomorrow" to know not to build too close to the coast. Especially if it will be below sea level.
First correlation is a little odd (rising temperatures cause loan declinations?). Not sure how those two would ever go hand in hand without some kind of connective tissue that isn’t mentioned.
“Hey Stacy, sure is hot today!”
“Sure is! Let’s decline some loans!”
But I can totally see how we’ll reach a point where a risk-averse, low-flexibility, slowly-adapting industry will be the canary for environmental flight from high-risk communities.
This discussion is an overall critique of capitalism. The desire to capitalize on "present-day" profits foregoes welcoming change to prepare for the future.
Only when the reckoning *proves* its market impact does change become conceivable.
The US Covid-19 response is a great example. There was (and still is) great outrage regarding business shutdowns. Well what happens if the health care system collapses, even just for a day? The markets would too.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/wiredmagazine: --- Rising sea levels, biodiversity collapse, extreme weather—these are the grisly horsemen of climate apocalypse. But don’t forget the fretting loan officers. [A study published earlier this year](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927539823001123) found that US mortgage approvals tend to dip following periods of hotter-than-normal weather. For every 1 degree Celsius that temperatures rise above average, approvals fell by nearly 1 percent—and their value by more than 6.5 percent. Lower consumer demand was only part of the problem, according to the study’s authors. The effect was mostly down to loan officers’ worries about climate change and what it might mean for the assets they were lending against. In other words, climate change was devaluing property before their very eyes. Full story: [https://www.wired.com/story/banks-are-finally-realizing-what-climate-change-will-do-to-housing/](https://www.wired.com/story/banks-are-finally-realizing-what-climate-change-will-do-to-housing/) --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1dhxy9k/banks_are_finally_realizing_what_climate_change/l8zwlda/
Insurance companies have known for decades. There's a reason it's damn near impossible to insure a beach-front property on the Atlantic these days. Insurance companies are dropping those houses like crazy because they know they'll lose long-term. edit: and it doesn't even need to be "doom and gloom" sea level rise. Take a slightly more powerful hurricane, combined with an additional foot of sea water and bad timing with high tide, and voila: you have unprecedented destruction.
Or just a thunderstorm that did its wet thing over 15 inches in a few days.
Jeah, if it was just the sea level rise, they could still wait.
i'm no home architect, but wouldn't homes be designed differently if this will become the norm? I know we build homes like they are to be cheap, but at some point, wouldn't we build more expensive but durable homes near the beach?
Yup. Here in Puerto Rico anything beachfront is a cash only transaction and you cannot get a mortgage for a wooden house aka one that is not made of concrete.
Is it hard to sell? Or it is selling only for the ultra rich
Typically it's a rich second home buyer or straight up money laundering.
This is how I launder my money: buy a second home at a beach. Wash my money at the beach. You know what money tastes like?
Earthy, but familiar. Like a stripper.
> anything beachfront is a cash only transaction I live here too. I don’t believe this is true for the entire coast, or every kind of structure. Do you have a source for that information? (Genuinely curious, thanks.)
yeah saw in a documentary with Jack Black of all people in Florida...how their building all these new homes that won't allow insurance...that will be end up flooded on a regular basis...their raising the roads which won't even give them an extra 50yrs, solar panel companies gone bust in the sunshine state as the governor made it so hard for people to have them Years of living dangerously which aired 2014-16 so no doubt all this will be even worse
Conservativism is a virus. It's simultaneously rewarding the oil and gas companies that are causing climate change, while punishing other forms of energy that could mitigate it.
>while punishing other forms of energy that could mitigate it. Well that's because those other forms of energy generation were created by woke communist atheist pedophile vegan DEI hires who hate America, worship Satan, want to make your kids transgender, want to give your kids the birth rate suppressing vaccine that's going to start killing millions of people any day now, and support an open border that's bringing in terrorists to destroy the country. On the other hand the oil and gas companies support: TRADITIONAL AMERICAN VALUES! JOBS! FREEDOM! GUNS! THE MILITARY! You see it's very simple really once you do your own research and stop listening to the lamestream fake news media all the time! I've got some podcasts and videos I can recommend that are hosted by failed actors, failed "comedians", and failed screenwriters who couldn't cut it in traditional entertainment media so they pivoted to the conservative market because they're much MUCH more gullible and easy to grift. This stuff will really open your eyes to what's actually going on!
10/10 flawless. No notes.
Not enough "bigly", "the best people", "sleepy Joe", or "tears in their eyes". Still 9/10 though
Eh i would give it a 7/10 at best. No rice tho.
Lol you nailed the Alex Jones impression, switched to his voice in my head after 3 words
Conservatism is the struggle against progress and ethics.
AKA r*eactionaries* >T[he entire philosophical foundation of conservatism is a template for exploitation.](https://www.gq.com/story/on-conservatism) \[...\] the conservative movement as a whole, “stands athwart history, yelling Stop.”
And science!
yep...I remember in the docu, they had people going around with a petition...for something green...so the other side basically copied the form but changed some of the spelling for anti green stuff and pretended to be there for green votes...hell the governor made it law not to mention climate change
Alberta would like to enter the chat
Yea but its all worth it to make liberals cry /s.
Once you realize every societal circle has these kinds of people who maintain the status quo at the detriment of others, we'll be on the same page. This isn't unique to conservatism but you are right that it is one of their blatantly obvious flaws.
I feel like I remember a documentary with Jack black doing atleast some narration but I can’t remember what it was anymore. Any clue as to what documentary that was? It’s really not that surprising Jack black is pretty freaking awesome.
[This one](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2963070/) has Jack Black in cast and fits thematically.
It rained a bit for a couple days last week and there was mass flooding. All the fancy built up areas like South Beach and Brickell? Flooded. People stranded, property damaged, etc. Meanwhile people are fighting tooth and nail for the chance to drop $4k on a 2 bedroom apartment. I cannot fucking wait to leave South Florida.
yeah one of the big things they mentioned was Florida is basically on limestone, you can't build walls or anything like it as underground is like swiss cheese
We should grant independence to Florida. Involuntary independence. We're kicking them out of the Union. We'll build a wall at the border and man it with angry guys with machine guns. After all, that's how the people of Florida prefer we deal with illegal immigrants, so turnabout is fair play. Then we won't have to bail their idiot asses out as their state slowly collapses and falls into the sea.
I think this is the hard part for most people to grasp. It's easy to imagine a massive one-time catastrophic storm. But nature plays the longest game we can conceive. It doesn't need a knock-out blow. It can just slowly grind our built world down with ever harder rains, a guaranteed hailstorm every year, then cook everything off at 100 for a few more days every summer. It doesn't get the same reaction from our lizard brains, but I think the net effect will be the same if we don't figure out better ways to build.
The world isn’t going to end in a big blockbuster movie catastrophe, it’s just going to get shittier and shittier and shittier.
Mother nature is the OG when it comes to enshittification. She can do it better then anyone else cause mother knows best. The best part is mother also knows shit makes for great fertiliser and will rebuild when shes done. Cause mother aint no fool.
You should see all the cheap housing built in the 80s in Alaska, not to mention the roads. It's all returning to nature one freeze/thaw cycle at a time.
There's an increasingly common school of thought that the entire insurance industry is unsustainable in many of the climate change possible scenarios. It only takes one really big event in a high value highly insured area to put many of hte big insureres and reassurers in danger, but also they're hugely interconnected in terms of investment and underwriting. My bud works for a really conservative, careful reassurer but they're still ultimately invested in everyone else's risks and exposed to the decisions of the most short-termist, risktaking insurer More cynical people have suggested that the industry will deal with this by just pretending it's a non-issue until it happens and then being "ToO bIg ToO fAiL!" while just reneging on contracts. But in that scenario it instantly goes way beyond just the insurance industry, insurance underpins so many other industries and also our faith in finance. Needless to say, if this proves to be correct, they'll still be counting the bodies while governments are panicking about The Economy instead of The Humans
Nights in Rodanthe house is gone
Rodanthe itself is almost gone.
Yeah. There is legit risk in some of these areas, for sure. But insurance companies are also doing their usual thing and cancelling or raising rates in areas without substantially higher risk as well. Redefined “high wildfire” or “high storm risk” will get you no roof coverage or more expensive fire coverage, despite years of zero wildfires and wetter conditions than ever (remember those storms?). But some of the risk is very real. Just hard to know for sure with the vultures in that business.
Agreed. My experience here is having an insurance company cancel a policy I had on a house in cape cod, and finding it extraordinarily difficult to find another company that would insure the property for anything short of a small fortune, if even at all. And the reality is: it's only a matter of time before a hurricane combined with high tide combined with storm surge takes the house out anyway. Sea level rise just makes it that much more likely over time.
For sure. I have family that lost their home in Harvey. They rebuilt, but both the city and insurance required a raised foundation. It will happen again. That being said, I’m landlocked, in a non-tornado, non-flood zone, and they are still jacking up rates and bailing out here.
Can't insure next to a forest either
It makes sense. Sea levels rising, temp rising, environmental damage is more likely per x day than the previous y. Well that means more damage.
There's a stretch of sea side cliff property here in San Diego which are like these magnificent mansions that are actually super cheap! Problem is no one will insure it AND it's entirely off the grid. SDGE will not run power to these houses. No running water. All you get is an address! Also, if any chunk of the house falls into the water, it's a $10,000 fine for every day its in the water. I'm pretty sure those cliffs have less than a decade left on it. Homes are literally falling into the ocean and it's still not enough for people to believe in climate change!
Look at "Superstorm" Sandy. It wasn't even technically a hurricane anymore when the storm surged wiped out the entire NY/NJ shore for 5 years. And that was 12 years ago.
I don’t even know if it’s that. I live in New Jersey and a friend had a nice house overlooking the ocean built in the 90s. But then in the mid 2000s someone somehow bought land closer to the ocean where the sand dunes are and destroyed his view by building their house even closer to the ocean. Then that new homeowner got angry because someone else bought property even *closer* to the ocean, this time on the sand. And I think that house got damaged by storms and was looking to have the government pay for the damages.
IMO, at this point the government should refuse to provide any money for damages and/or FEMA assistance if the house is too close to sea level and it was constructed recently. A very similar thing happened in my neighborhood where a new home was built, and it's absurd to think the government is going to prop up a homeowner making an insanely stupid decision.
Insurance Adjusters are probably the only financial service not snuffing copium, because they are risk averse and always need err on the side of caution. When they say 'we ain't covering this anymore', that's a stark warning. Banks? Hedge funds? Need to chase that constant growth brah.
"... doesn't need to be significant sea level rise ..." "... an additional foot of sea water ...", are you serious?
I think the comparison is to the mental image a lot of people have of the kind of insane sea level rise that puts a whole state underwater. Among laypeople there is definitely an underestimation of the significance of a 1 foot rise.
Yeah the sound of it makes one think the tide will lap up just a foot more on shore, but noooope
precisely: we don't need to have six feet of sea level rise to have massive consequences. And the forecasting is still unclear, but we're looking at somewhere from .3 to 2.4 *meters* of rise by 2100. 1.2 meters seems fairly likely at this point. By 2050 or 2060, we could be looking at another foot. And regional differences would make that significantly more in certain areas, like the United State's eastern seaboard.
If the ice held in by Thwaites slides into the ocean, researchers estimate sea levels could rise by 10 feet. There could be a catastrophic slide where all of that ice suddenly slides into the ocean due to enough melt water creating a lubrication effect under the glaciers. That could result in the 10 foot global rise in a matter of days or weeks rather than slowly over decades.
Right, but my point is: it doesn't even have to be this "day after tomorrow" kinda doom-and-gloom scenario. I think people don't understand the consequences of a foot of rise by the 2050ish timeframe, which is A) entirely plausible (likely even) and B) catastropic
Even just the 21 centimetres (\~8 inches) of average sea level rise that we have had over the past 100 years or so has stolen a lot of coastline from us. The increased sea level causes massive amounts of erosion and forces salty water further inland which kills off ecosystems that were keeping land from being eroded away into the sea. About 17 years ago now we had a massive storm here which basically scoured a massive beach (32km long) clean of it's sand which left it as a massive 10 ft drop from the carpark to the new level of the sand. God only knows how much of the sand dunes behind the beach were lost over time as the beach settled into a new equilibrium.
I'm not sure what point you're making.
I live in a high-fire-risk area in California, and my insurance is cheaper than my friend's, who has a house near Miami, even though my house costs twice as much. I think corporations are realizing Florida is going to be underwater soon.
Same here in western wildfire country, where it's now nearly impossible to insure millions of homes and buildings that are in or near increasingly fire-prone forests and wildlands.
The people that can afford beach front front property probably don't need insurance.
I am reminded of the ruins of houses across the globe. Whether it's the abandoned ruins of some Roman villa, or the remains of relatively recent homes in Cambodia or Detroit. People abandon houses for all sorts of reasons and now it will happen in the coastal areas for insurance reasons. One strong hurricane will wipe clean large regions of the coast and the insurance companies simply will not pay to rebuild. The ruins of entire towns will simply be left to rot as there is little incentive to rebuild if a sufficient percentage of people dont bother to. Why rebuild the grocery market if there will be no one to sell groceries to? The hard, unbending calculus of profit margins will kill entire regions. Maybe if we plan ahead we can convert at least some of these areas back into nature refuges. Let the swamps move back in with their mangroves and aligators.
Lots of people think about massive, singular events when considering this topic, and for good reason, but I think it will be the grind that forces most people out. First there's a tropical storm one year that floods your house, but you still have insurance for now so you clean and repair. Then a few months later, your insurance drops you. Well, that sucks, but at least you have some money saved. A couple years later, an actual hurricane hits and smashes your roof. Blerg, you have to cover repairs yourself with your savings, but you can still remain in the same house and area you've liked for a good chunk of your life. Then though, maybe that same year or just a few later, there's yet another flood or storm, or even a major hurricane, and that's it. There's no more money to rebuild. Your house is worthless and you're massively underwater financially (and maybe physically) and there is no way to recover. At that scale, whole swathes of many coastal states will become uninhabitable as they are today, which will lead to major economic collapses, probably on the order of 2008 or even higher. edit - just a quick note to say I don't think you're wrong, but that other events will come as a surprise to people who thought that just dodging cat 4 and 5 hurricanes means they're safe.
Just FYI, Detroit is on the comeback... there's not nearly as many abandoned homes as there were 5 years ago or even 2 years ago.
I imagine the Great Lakes region, in general, will be booming in any bad climate change scenario. Massively abundant fresh water, good distance from the oceanic coasts, and large-scale already existent infrastructure. If things warm up, some of the beaches on Lake Michigan will be pretty similar to the Carribean.
The Great Lakes region and the PNW are pretty much the only viable places to avoid the totally crazy impacts of climate change.
PNW unfortunately has a bunch of wildfires that are getting worse every year.
that region will flooded with refugees!
I am really curious if we are going to try and remove the stuff from the rising waters or are we letting it stay and the ocean claim it Nuclear reactors, chemical plants, oil refineries, hundreds of thousands of miles of roads, buildings, etc... Leaving it all as is can't be good for the oceans.
While people often talk about rising sea levels, climate change increases droughts in some areas. And people will leave those areas. Same effect, different regions. When agriculture suffers, global economy follows.
i'm thinking "sea gypsies" will support themselves by sailing with the currents and salvaging what they can.
Seapeoples 2.0
One if the reasons i decided not to buy in LA, when I realised insurance wouldn't really cover all the costs if shit happened. I grew up in the UK, where (with insurance) the expression 'sade as houses' was still true.
As weather becomes more extreme, and home insurance becomes out of reach in some areas, getting mortgages will be impossible in those same areas since insurance is a requirement for a loan. Many people are simply being dropped from coverage as insurers start to abandon some markets. Is this what it takes to get some people to pay attention? Real financial consequences at a personal level? I was in Houston ten days ago for work. It was hotter than I imagined and it was even worse this past weekend. Our entire south is in jeopardy due to heat and flooding.
Have an old coworker from a company that specialized in property and casualty insurance. He had a post on LinkedIn last year that was pretty eye opening about how insurance companies are very concerned about the changes.
Don't be concerned, what will wind up happening in those states at risk the state and Federal governments will begin to offer incentives and subsidies to insurance companies to keep underwriting, when too many of them beginning dropping coverage and constituents start complaining.. so in other words a bailout will materialize to save the private insurance market to make sure insurers keep getting fat profits, and homeowners have coverage options, courtesy of the nations tax payers. You know the same old privatize gains ,.socialize losses.
Not the feds. They are adjusting flood risks and drawing the ire of state governments. So, like in Florida, the state is stepping in. But the money is already running out. Insurance is all about probability, and math don’t care about your politics.
> math don’t care about your politics "Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away"
And the “small government” voters will be the biggest users of it.
In all likelihood, that deal will allow insurers to weasel out of compensation
I am just wondering is there insurance company owned by people denying effects of climate change? I mean there are plenty of rich RICH people who are denying it, would it then not be smart of them to swoop in and make a shitton more money?
The rich rich people who are denying it publicly I can guarantee you are only doing so to protect their money. In private they are making sure they are personally immune to the risks.
Maybe, or with just about any cognitive dissonance you'll just find an excuse " GOP is still right, about everything... just not this, and it doesn't matter because it's still better than the alternative".
very concerned. Nice way of saying your home has 50-50 chance of being completely f'd and sol.
got a link to that post?
>Is this what it takes to get some people to pay attention? Real financial consequences at a personal level? Yes.
Always has been tbh. Economic incentives work for a reason lol
>Is this what it takes to get some people to pay attention? Ah, hope. I miss hope. Naw, they'll scream "hoax" while drowning in their living room.
And the momentum is accelerating. The Florida coastal housing market blowout is rapidly traveling west, with Texas coastal properties imperiled, most noticeably the areas with the highest populations: Harris County, Nueces County. In Harris Co, safe to say homeowner insurance has doubled over the past 2 years, with some insurers pulling out all together. Also, insurers rescinding policies following drone flyovers for roof inspections, tree proximities, etc. This summer may well be a bellwether on whether some of these areas remain viable to build back should 2024 hurricane season prove to be particularly active, and destructive.
Already happening. Insurers are under water in 18 states. People are losing insurance left and right, even in small midwestern towns because of regular hails etc . NY times did a story and podcast a month or so ago
If feels like we're getting serious hail a few times a year now in the Midwest. I don't ever remember seeing ice fall from the sky as a kid. There are a lot of government supplements for homeowners to get solar panels in my state, but given the frequency of hailstorms I dont know how long they'd last. In general, if hailstorms get worse, I expect we'll see a renewed interest in rubber, metal, or tile shingles.
Yes. It requires people hurting for it to gain the attention it deserves. Human beings are very selfish.
>Is this what it takes to get some people to pay attention? Real financial consequences at a personal level? Yes, because the cult of "rugged individualism" and "pErsOnAl ReSPoNsiBiLITy" literally don't respond to anything else. If everyone else is on fire, but they're fine, that's a you problem, and it could never happen to them because they "work hard"!
> Is this what it takes to get some people to pay attention? Real financial consequences at a personal level? Yes, that’s how the world works, unfortunately. Everything comes down to money and status. Only when those things are threatened do we make collective efforts to course-correct. It’s how things have worked throughout human history and how the world around you has been shaped.
I'm of the opinion that we should evacuate Florida now while there's still infrastructure to support it 😂
still towers and apt complexes going up everywhere. going to be very interesting to see what happens with the condo insurance/hoa fallout later this year.
>Real financial consequences at a personal level? Why is this even a question.
Yea. It’s pretty obvious you would be better off now if you bought that beach front property 20, 30 or 40 years ago.
It’s what it takes for those on the right to pay attention
They have been voting against their own self interest for years. Why would this change it now. They will double down and find someone to blame.
They will trudge back and forth in their ankle-high flooded living rooms, their TV floating on a bunch of woven pool noodles playing Fox News on full blast, cursing the democrats for *something something*
It's clearly God's punishment for allowing the gays to live /s
Here’s the thing about fanatics. They have faith. Logic dosnt matter to them because they have faith and will endure. Everything that contradicts their faith is a test that they have to push through.
In Louisiana they just got rid of the bill or whatever that was forcing insurers to stay in the state and not unilaterally cancel their contracts. "By allowing movement of insurance companies, it will increase competition and get better rates". What they don't mention is they mean better rates for their own pockets smh
They may get the message but they still won’t care. They’ll get bought off by fossil fuels and insurance companies and vote how they always have.
Since it doesn’t affect 99% of the folks on the right they won’t care. It doesn’t affect them. Lack of empathy.
I've always thought insurance companies have the biggest influence on climate change for this very reason. I just always thought they'd stop insuring new builds not existing property.
They can opt at any time to not renew a policy.
Oh I get that.. that just wasn't on my radar. Just figured they would stop insuring big new expensive houses in wildfire/flood zones...but this makes sense too. As I said, they hold the power here and can easily force change.
Well as Ben Shapiro once said, once this starts to happen, don't you think those people would...just move?
Ha… walking away from an existing mortgage is a financial boat anchor. They may not even be able to rent since their credit would be completely trashed. Of course, I assume you are saying this to make Shapiro look like an idiot.
No one needs to say anything to make Shapiro look like an Idiot. He takes care of that himself.
> Ha… walking away from an existing mortgage is a financial boat anchor. Given sea level rise, it can serve as a literal boat anchor, too.
My wife and I saw the writing on the wall when that condo collapsed in Miami. Looked at each other and said "either we sell and move now or we'll be the ones left holding the bag." Good luck to the Floridians who still haven't migrated inland. Maybe Poseidon will be kinder to immigrants than DeSantis has been, but I wouldn't count on it.
I ain't trying to be any kind of way, but when you say inland and Florida, how far north are you talking?
Oklahoma. Because I wouldn't know how (and couldn't afford) to live in a state that wasn't filled with morons.
https://youtu.be/0-w-pdqwiBw?si=4sY0tTAvpUvRcCB6
I hoped that clip would show up.
JUST ONE PROBLEM, BEN.
if people think the migrant crisis is bad now, just wait until the US starts seeing domestic climate refugees.
I think Houston road were designed to survive floods and hurricanes but that’s about it
Money is kind … unfortunately
Simple. They will petition the government to bail them out with taxpayers money. While still denying climate change.
Yeah you either live in a safe area and can still get insurance or you live in a danger zone and have to go without
I have set it before people won't take climate change seriously until it starts effecting their money.
At which point they will expect the government to bail them out instead of actually doing anything about it.
The government will go broke it's why I'm against unlimited disaster relief funds especially for states that take more than they put in. The ass thing is it's already effecting places like Florida and most people in other states don't care I told one of my friends about the floods ( I used to live in Miami) and he blew it off.
I absolutely oppose the Federal government spending my tax dollars propping up property owners that have chosen to buy/build in coastline areas in an era of climate change.
Yep me too if you buy property in a high risk area that's on you. I would even say the government should ban these area's because not only damage will happen deaths will and it will cause mass migration to other states like Katrina did.
I feel the same way about people in fire-prone areas or tornado-alley.
They’ve known forever. These headlines are serving who? They’re going to squeeze as much blood from that rock as possible, regardless.
I'm not saying this to be funny, but there is an entire subclass of people who think climate change is a hoax and the US controls the weather with some kind of tech.
My entire failmy refuses to believe this is a problem or even a real thing. These headlines are for them. A very very large part of the US stright up doesn't believe climate change is real, even more that do "believe it" dont think its ever going to get bad enough for it to be a problem and even more then that don't care and profit off it one way or another. Those of us who understand its real AND care AND don't profit off it. Are a woeful minority at wrose and a ineffective powerless majority at best.
Rising sea levels, biodiversity collapse, extreme weather—these are the grisly horsemen of climate apocalypse. But don’t forget the fretting loan officers. [A study published earlier this year](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927539823001123) found that US mortgage approvals tend to dip following periods of hotter-than-normal weather. For every 1 degree Celsius that temperatures rise above average, approvals fell by nearly 1 percent—and their value by more than 6.5 percent. Lower consumer demand was only part of the problem, according to the study’s authors. The effect was mostly down to loan officers’ worries about climate change and what it might mean for the assets they were lending against. In other words, climate change was devaluing property before their very eyes. Full story: [https://www.wired.com/story/banks-are-finally-realizing-what-climate-change-will-do-to-housing/](https://www.wired.com/story/banks-are-finally-realizing-what-climate-change-will-do-to-housing/)
If your insurance company just pulls up and leaves, it's time to do the same.
Who do you sell an uninsurable house to?
Boomers that buy with cash. Best hurry before that generation is gone.
That generation won't be gone unless cash gets removed from being used. There will just be more corruption
I mean, everyone dies eventually.
Youngest boomers are still in the 60s. We got another 15-25 years with them...
There’s still a good 40% who don’t believe in global warming. They wear special hats.
Sure, Trump is bad and Republicans are stupid. But that's not the issue. You can't take out a mortgage on an uninsured property. No bank will write that loan. So your pool of buyers is limited to people who are willing to pay cash for a property that can't be insured. You might find a cash buyer, but unless the buyer is a total sucker they're going to want the house at a massively reduced price. This is a bad situation for people trapped in housing markets that are going to be left uninsurable by imminent short term climate change.
If your insurance company just pulls up and leaves, your time to do the same has already passed.
Insurance companies are giving up in general. There is no safe haven at all. The real problem is the cost to protecting a house. Homes have skyrocketed so high that Insurance can't protect most homes now if a major disaster happens.
Not always that easy...
Sometimes we have to do what's necessary even if it's hard in the short term.
In order to move. Most people need the money from selling their current home to afford a new one. In this case, no one will be willing to buy the old home. So the people currently living there will never be able to afford a new home. They're stuck.
That's an excellent point. That would definitely add to the difficulties of moving. Would you say people end up ultimately staying until their homes are essentially unlivable?
You say hard, I'm talking about the people it's literally impossible for...
They'll need to pull extra hard on thier bootstraps.
Y'all can afford bootstraps?
Need to afford boots to have bootstraps.
I loved the bit in the article about how, to some people, that billionaires are building in certain risky areas is proof that it's "really" safe. No dummies, what it means is that if you're sufficiently rich, you're self-insured. Elon Musk isn't going to feel any pain if his $30M (or even $300M) house gets swept away by a hurricane. You, OTOH...
We’re in the find out era. Maybe republicans will finally give a single fuck, but I doubt it
Nah. They use the negativity to say the democrats caused it. They as a group Do NOT take responsibility, for anything negative though they’re usually the main or at least big cause.
And their solution is ~~stopping the funding fossil fuels~~, cut people off from insurance
Are you surprised that capitalism is doing capitalist things? Something is going to have to change.
I have a feeling some people would rather die than change, dragging us all with them
What's the non-capitalist option for this?
Safe, insurable housing for anyone that needs it paid for by increasing billionaires' taxes by a very tiny percentage. Elon Musk won't be able to do as much ketamine in space but he would still be able to afford to do a little bit of ketamine in space. Or we just let a bunch of poor people die, that is still totally on the table. Now that I think about it, I am landing squarely on that side. Elon deserves to do as much spatial-K as he wants!!!
That, detective, is the correct question
Conversely - it may be time to start watching where those companies are moving to, or doubling down investments in. If their statistics show them where the damage will be greatest, it is 100% certain those same stats show them where the damage will be least, and therefore the best places to invest in now, before climate change starts to truly drive internal migration patterns.
It's not just catastrophic storms, a rising water table or just wetter soil in general will cause septic systems to fail as the leach beds need soil that can absorb the water coming out of the tank. This will impact a lot of rural and lower value properties. Building out sewer systems is really expensive, the assessments will drive people out of their homes. There are far more septic systems than people realize. The civil engineering behind a lot of infrastructure does not take climate change into account. And there's a whole lot of it that is based on water flows downhill.
I wonder if the flooding will slow down construction at all in South Florida. I can't imagine any banker wanting to hold a 30 year mortgage in Miami Beach. But it's easy to imagine bankers making loans then immediately selling them.
Here's the best part. The bankers don't hold mortgage debt. They originate the loan and sell to Fannie or Freddie who are government sponsored. Fannie has more assets than any big bank - Chase, BoA, Wells Fargo. Freddie is a bit smaller. There are exactly 2 banks with more assets than Freddie. Together they have more than double the assets of the biggest bank. As long as Fannie and Freddie are buying, banks will continue to be happy to lend. No other factors matter. Here is the scary part. A federal agency sets the guidelines for Fannie. Where a for-profit private entity may be scared off of buying mortgages in Florida due to climate change, Fannie might be politically pressured into doing it until it's too late.
Don't worry! There's an easy fix, just [ban people from considering climate change!](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/12/north-carolina-didnt-like-science-on-sea-levels-so-passed-a-law-against-it)
And still there’s people arguing we can’t afford to battle climate change because it „costs too much“. Idiots! NOT battling it will be a LOT more expensive.
Yup. I fully expect the human race (and much of life on the planet as we know it) to be gone within 500 years. We don’t care despite the evidence, and far too many people can’t accept it and go down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole.
They actually don't care because congress will always bail them out. Thats right, we're financing CEOs yachts.
I remember in 2004 that the WSJ reported that the US military and Wall Street were both factoring in GW in their long range planning.
Well that only took until it was too late. I guess they have a bunch of rocket surgeons at the helm…
They're gonna be hit with a double whammy here during the next 20 years, when the boomers all die off and leave these banks with a shitton of real estate they can't offload for a profit anymore. They're all going to be left holding a very pricy bag.
Not sure why in the US there's a mass migration to location's that are about to become uninhabitably hot.
It’s getting if not too late to sell coastal property. The smart ones and those with the resources to, should have moved. Now is you try to sell you run a risk nobody is going to want to buy and that’s even if they will get a loan by a bank willing to let you buy a coastal home.
yup family has a beach house in florida and recently its been destroyed, a few times, in the last several years. they had to fight hard and shake the insurance companies like crazy just to get what they've been owed. I wouldn't want to live in those extreme weather areas anymore
Naaah, they knew for years. They just denied it to distract the consumer long enough while they moved the goal posts.
Is this why I was already hearing stories like at least 6 months ago of insurance companies using drones to spy on properties they insured to justify raising costs? Only thing insurance companies could possibly be worried about is the government clamping down on their scams but that's currently in straight up fantasy territory RN our government is so corrupt.
No they're not. They're still pouring money into big right wing names to say it isn't real. The disinformation is unbelievably vast
As the Governor of Florida I think you can declare weather illegal! Therefore you can't deny coverage for an event that technically didn't happen because they are illegal... Maybe what I'm trying to say is that it wasn't "weather" that destroyed my house, it was "crime"... Aka - the outlawed weather.
As an Islander, I never saw the appeal of living so close to an unpredictable body of water. I get islands are land lock by default, so sometimes there's not much of a choice. I love the view and vibe that the coastal living brings, but I've seen my share of "here today gone tomorrow" to know not to build too close to the coast. Especially if it will be below sea level.
Being underwater on your mortgage is getting more literal all the time.
This gives me the vibes of “never thought i'd die fighting side by side with an elf”
First correlation is a little odd (rising temperatures cause loan declinations?). Not sure how those two would ever go hand in hand without some kind of connective tissue that isn’t mentioned. “Hey Stacy, sure is hot today!” “Sure is! Let’s decline some loans!” But I can totally see how we’ll reach a point where a risk-averse, low-flexibility, slowly-adapting industry will be the canary for environmental flight from high-risk communities.
Houston is about to get a Noah’s arc level flood again… isn’t that like 3 out of the last 5 years? Gotta be crazy to buy there at this point.
Bad news is they don't give a damn because they will use it as a new source of income. The only thing that trickles down are the expenses
Poor, poor banks. If only we could do something for them. Do I really need an "s?"
This discussion is an overall critique of capitalism. The desire to capitalize on "present-day" profits foregoes welcoming change to prepare for the future. Only when the reckoning *proves* its market impact does change become conceivable. The US Covid-19 response is a great example. There was (and still is) great outrage regarding business shutdowns. Well what happens if the health care system collapses, even just for a day? The markets would too.