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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

(charleshughsmith.substack.com)
476 points spking | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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tobyhinloopen ◴[] No.42734903[source]
American, living in area prone to natural disasters: "Is the WHOLE WORLD becoming uninsurable?"

The answer is obviously "no" since there are other parts of the world that don't live on a hurricane highway nor build houses made from firewood in an area prone to wildfires.

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nejsjsjsbsb ◴[] No.42735252[source]
Climate change enters the chat...
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adrianN ◴[] No.42735264[source]
Even pessimistic scenarios don't predict threats to buildings (other than war, which to my knowledge never was insurable) in most areas of the world.
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agsnu ◴[] No.42735451{3}[source]
A significant portion of human structures are located close to the coast (seaborne trade having been a huge enabler of economic development for a few hundred years) and are exposed to flooding from rising sea levels, or built in valleys that are increasingly at risk from flooding due to far-above-long-term-historic-norms precipitation runoff (higher atmospheric temps lead to more energy in weather systems; see eg massive floods in Europe in the past few years).
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adrianN ◴[] No.42735672{4}[source]
Compared to the other challenges climate change poses those are fairly simple engineering problems. The Netherlands manage fine with large parts of the country below sea level.
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1. graemep ◴[] No.42735939{5}[source]
and sea level rises are slow enough that countries with more high ground than The Netherlands can just not rebuild/maintain old houses in vulnerable positions and build higher (often just a bit further in) instead.

Some buildings buy the coast (especially in port cities) and have steep rises anyway.

There is a huge threat of cultural loss - e.g. Venice.