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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

(charleshughsmith.substack.com)
476 points spking | 1 comments | 17 Jan 25 00:32 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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Animats ◴[17 Jan 25 04:28 UTC] No.42734092[source]▶
Not uninsurable, but buildings are going to have to become tougher.

It's happened before. Chicago's reaction to the Great Fire was simple - no more building wooden houses. Chicago went all brick. Still is, mostly.

The trouble is, brick isn't earthquake resistant. Not without steel reinforcement.

I live in a house built of cinder block filled with concrete reinforced with steel. A commercial builder built this as his personal residence in 1950. The walls look like a commercial building. The outside is just painted cinder block. Works fine, survived the 1989 earthquake without damage, low maintenance. It's not what most people want today in the US.

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Sabinus ◴[17 Jan 25 04:31 UTC] No.42734105[source]▶
If the market is allowed to price insurance correctly then we can motivate building designs to be more disaster resist. If the McMansion can't get insurance but disaster resistant, modest homes do, then people will adapt.
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rondini ◴[17 Jan 25 16:26 UTC] No.42739700[source]▶
Let's just consider Los Angeles for a second. For decades working class immigrants were pushed to the foothills in Altadena by redlining policies which placed them at risk for wildfires. Today their risk is exponentially greater due to the effects of unchecked climate change, and many cannot afford insurance even now.

How exactly do you expect these people to adapt? Many live in multigenerational households and could never afford to rebuild their house or move without uprooting their communities to another state.

Why are the victims made to adapt to the atrocious actions of the wealthy and powerful? Maybe our policy discussions should start from a place of compassion and work towards solutions from there.

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1. mempko ◴[17 Jan 25 19:05 UTC] No.42742029{3}[source]▶
People don't understand the exponential change. As you correctly stated, the effects of climate change are exponential. Why? Because if you take a normal distribution and shift it linearly, the area on the edges grows exponentially. This is why even a linear shift in temperature can lead to an exponential rise in disasters.

Math is hard for people, even on HN.