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Rev. Richard Killmer is a retired Presbyterian minister living in Yarmouth.
Our human inclination is to fix or replace what is broken. If a household item is broken, we repair or replace it. On a more devastating scale, if our house is destroyed by fire, water or wind, we rebuild. For many, there is insurance to help pay for repairing or rebuilding.
What do you do, though, if you live in an area where there has been a history of wildfires or hurricanes? And what do you do if your insurance company stops covering your house.
In May, State Farm General Insurance Company said it is no longer taking applications for homeowners’ insurance in California, because of the growing risk from wildfires and other catastrophes and the high cost of rebuilding. This increased risk is directly related to climate change.
State Farm’s change in policy is not new and other insurance companies are no longer insuring homes in California. Their action and similar ones by other insurance companies have been a years-long challenge in California. Wildfires in California and other states have been worsened by the extreme heat and the drought brought on by climate change and the climate crisis is going to get worse as the world heats up.
California has experienced an average of over 7,000 wildfires each year. Over 2 million acres has been burnt according to the governor’s office.
“State Farm General Insurance Company made this decision due to historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure and a challenging reinsurance market,” the insurance giant said in a recent statement. The ban on new policies is for both personal and business properties, setting the stage for increased uncertainty for property owners.
There are two kinds of actions that nations and individuals can take to respond to the damage caused by the climate crisis. The first is adaptation, which includes actions that repair something that has been damaged by wildfires or hurricanes or the other climate events caused or exacerbated by climate change.
The U.S. government pays a large amount for adaptation expenses. Most people expect that the government or insurance companies will pay for those rebuilding expenses.
The second is called mitigation, which responds to the root cause of the destruction. For damage caused by climate change, mitigation means reducing the greenhouse gases that join the gaseous blanket that surrounds the earth. That blanket blocks the heat bouncing off the earth which makes the world warmer and causes or exacerbates climate events which produce the destruction.
Many countries, especially European ones, pay for mitigation expenses and support various steps that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Biden administration has been able to pass several bills, including the Inflation Reduction Act, which is paying for electric vehicle chargers and other items which reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the bill provides the most money ever by Congress to mitigate the climate crisis.
It is not easy in the U.S. for Congress to pass mitigation efforts to respond to the crisis. It is much easier to provide funds for adaptation efforts than it is for mitigation ones. Fixing brokenness is easier than preventing it in the first place. That seems backwards. Why spend money for repair when it is possible to spend money to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions which are the cause of the climate crisis?
Better yet, but why not tie adaptation to mitigation? Why not tie any funding for repairs to funds needed to reduce the risk?
We need to continually find ways to stop the climate crisis and reduce climate risks. Making the connection between stopping climate change and repairing the impacts would increase the amount that is spent by all nations on mitigating the existential challenge that is the climate crisis.
Many people believe that the ultimate worth of any legislation is the value of that bill for future generations. Stopping the climate crisis would be quite a gift.
