re: #5 lostlakehiker

One place a Blue State could take one for the team, right now, would be New York. It is madness to rebuild in the lowest-lying, most vulnerable areas. Flood “insurance” should not be available from the federal govt at below-market costs to persons living in regions that are very likely to be flooded. This is not to say the feds should welsh on existing policies, merely that they should not write a new one for the same plot of land/marsh/sandbar/tidal-flat/estuary.

First of all, this is pretty much the same rant that was made against rebuilding New Orleans. But relocating that many people is highly implausible. You’d have to essentially build a brand new city from scratch, on top of the logistical nightmare of transporting that many people and their remaining worldly possessions. And thats assuming they’re all able and willing to move in the first place.

Second, when I said “take one for the team,” I meant paying for trying to combat climate change by greening up the grid. As in fewer hydrocarbon burning power plants and more wind/solar/misc.

Third and final…

Flood insurance has already mostly become a federal gig, because the feds offer rates that bear no relation to the likely losses. Crop insurance, ditto.

…snip…

As likely losses skyrocket, insurers will have to raise their rates dramatically or face eventual ruin. Current regulations don’t allow for that. The business-friendly, reality-based answer to the predicament is to allow estimates of future losses to take into account projections from the climate scientists, rather than just historical experience.

In other words, rates should go further up. But here is a “reality-based” question: can everyone so adversely affected by climate change afford that?

Hell no! Not even close.

Whether you meant to or not, you just made a huge argument against “business-friendly” insurance. Unless you plan to relocate practically entire cities full of people, your proposal is just not going to happen. Oh, wait a minute…