re: #8 lostlakehiker

Rates should go up for land that has already been flooded once and figures to be flooded again. And again and again and again. This will prompt people who have already been flooded out to NOT rebuild, but to take the money they get from their insurance settlement and build elsewhere, on higher ground.

So to follow that logic consistently, people should stop living near water because of flood risk, stop living in the midwestern US because of tornado risk, stop living near forests because of wildfire risk, stop living in the southwest because of drought risk, stop living on the west coast because of earthquake risk…

re: #9 lostlakehiker

Insurance for fire and wind and rain damage ought to be priced to reflect the new realities of risk. This will impact everybody everywhere. But the risk itself is the reason that it impacts people.

Wait! You already considered that, and think its a good thing?!

Earth to lostlakehiker: Most people can’t afford to move on command, even with insurance payouts! Its easy to talk about building new places with more efficient technologies. But the who the hell can afford it? I can tell you who can’t: the majority!

Some of these subsidies go to small fish, but a lot of them go to rich people with second homes right on the beach.

The areas which suffered the most damage in NY & NJ were not wealthy, fyi. For all your complaints about “subsidies,” what you’re proposing would for all intents and purposes be a regressive tax. Meaning that it impacts lower-income people disproportionately hard.

Farmers should not get crop insurance for planting crops that are very likely to fail, when they do fail. Do we subsidize planting corn in Death Valley? No. It would be absurd. As the climate shifts, we’re going to have to encourage farmers to limit their risk, not by planting what they know won’t grow and cashing their insurance checks, but by planting, say, sorghum, in place of corn. Sorghum is more heat tolerant and more drought tolerant.

Telling farmers “plant something else” is a far cry from telling them “get the f*** outta here!” Analogy fail.

The U.S. cannot do all that much about climate change by building a major quantity of wind/solar infrastructure at today’s state of the art.

On the contrary, today’s state of the art would be alot more effective simply by adding efficient, large-scale energy storage, aka mega-batteries. And those are just around the corner.

Frankly, this is a far more practical and cost effective solution than mass-exodi. (yeah, I pluralized exodus)

Oh, and if people were to relocate en mass, that would sharply drive up property values, pricing many more people out of moving. That, and adding to sprawl would cause more environmental damage, potentially making the “mitigated” problems worse.

Have I finally made it clear why forcing practically entire cities of people to move is absoludicrous? Or why using free-market mechanisms to “nudge” people into moving is nothing but social darwinism?