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Comment by DesiLurker | Hacker News Reader

I am as democratic/left as it gets on most issues but I'd argue that its time to defund FEMA Insurance programs and let the private sector free market factor in the cost of impending destruction because of climate change. IMO that would put a hard dollar figure on the 'cost of doing nothing'. Which will (hopefully) translate into some kind or carbon taxes.

Or another alternative would be fund insurance through carbon tax dollars and return the rest as refund.

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There are no disaster-free zones. I've looked. They don't exist.

It's a case of "pick your poison." Which disaster is least reprehensible to you?

In the Deep South where I grew up, you can set your watch by the summer afternoon thunderstorms. The last time I lived there, our TV and Wii got fried while turned off and plugged into an uninterupted power supply that was supposed to protect them from any electrical issues. To this day, my mother will say "Can't talk. A storm is coming. Bye!" when I call because the electrical storms are awful in Georgia.

When I lived in Kansas, it was tornadoes.

In California, earthquakes. Worse, California has fire season, not a season I ever want in my life again, ideally.

Etc ad nauseum.

Human development tends to have a strong correlation to flood zones because water is essential to human survival and human civilization. We need to drink to live. We need water for crops and flood plains have rich soils. We use rivers and oceans for transportation of goods. Major cities have a tendency to be coastal and sitting on a natural harbor that has been artificially enhanced.

Sure, floods cause problems. But having no water is generally vastly worse.

Life's a bitch. Then you die.

Well, in Toronto, Canada you get taxed to death, but that's about it.

I know you're mostly joking, but you do not get taxed to death. Taxes in Canada (and Ontario) are reasonable on global standards. Your housing costs in TO are too high, but that's not taxes at fault.

Also, Toronto gets its fair share of flooding.

Not to encourage anyone, but effective income tax rates in California are far above those in Ontario.

Relative to cost of living, I'd pick Ontario any day of my life.

Which is actually partly artificial, because they're not allowing lake Ontario to drain: https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/38580/201...

But the "flooding" is NOTHING like What Houston/etc got. It'll cause bad traffic and some highway closures one day per year but the actual damage is negligible relative to what an actual flood causes. It's a minor nuisance, not a catastrophe.

There's also freezing to death on the sidewalk. Sadly, it happens to some people every winter.

Pittsburgh, PA is pretty close to natural disaster free. Some parts of downtown will flood from the rivers, and there have been a couple very small landslides in the last two years from too much rain. But for most of the city, there aren't natural disasters really. No earthquakes, the mountains pretty much prevent tornadoes, no hurricanes, and flooding is not an issue unless you live on the bank of the rivers. Elevation increases pretty quickly as you move away from the river banks.

There are more options than “the current bad system” and “shut it down violently”. The FEMA insurance program can be modified so payouts have a lifetime cap, and/or once they reach a certain level, a buyout is required. It would allow people to relocate and over the long term (i.e. a generation or two), the accounting works out.

As a society who has completely failed addressing climate change, having “all of us” help pay for it is not a completely unfair way to address it.

Areas with high risk of catastrophic natural disaster should be identified and FEMA insurance should not be given to any new residents or new dwellings in these areas.

Once you include tornadoes in the flat places, drought in the farm places, hurricanes on the coast places, and earthquakes in the earthquake places there really not much places left.

Government bureaucracy is absolutely the right kind of answer for things like earthquakes and other one-in-a-hundred-years events. But any time a location wouldn't be considered habitable but for the presence of FEMA, Government bureaucracy is the wrong answer.

Alright, so who gets to relocate about a dozen major cities?

Exactly

The problem is that vulnerable populations would be hurt the worst. It's an ugly issue that will be hard to deal with, and I think we need to start looking at more widespread preparedness regulation as well as systems for moving people out of at-risk areas.

Where do you move people out of "at-risk" areas for tornadoes? Essentially, the entirety of the central and eastern US are at risk for significant (EF2+) tornadoes for at least some portion of the year [1]. And then the places that aren't at risk of tornadoes have their own substantial risks for natural disasters-- earthquakes and fires out west, hurricanes and flooding closer to the coasts, blizzards and winter weather up north and into the Rockies, water supply issues in the southwest, etc.

That's why we have FEMA, because "just" displacing people after a natural disaster doesn't work.

[1] https://www.spc.noaa.gov/new/SVRclimo/climo.php?parm=sigTorn

Luckily tornadoes are not actually that destructive on a broad population scale. Out of ~1000 tornadoes per year, there are only about 80 deaths per year on average [1] and the national cost of the damage is around $10-$14b per year [2].

Hurricanes are a lot harder to talk about deaths since hurricanes are so big and cause such widespread damage (although Hurricane Maria is supposedly responsible for around 3,000 deaths), but the economic impacts are much, much larger. Just one hurricane can cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage [3].

I'm absolutely not arguing in favor of getting rid of FEMA, but there are definitely the costs of some natural disasters that could be avoided by relocating population centers. Although tornadoes are not one of them, in my opinion. The cost and death toll just isn't that high for a tornado.

[1] https://www.depts.ttu.edu/nwi/research/DebrisImpact/Reports/...

[2] https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-tornadoe...

[3] https://coast.noaa.gov/states/fast-facts/weather-disasters.h...

I was thinking more about floods and hurricanes.

if you look at the distribution of folks most opposed to any action on climate change, they are also the most vulnerable to the effects of it (red state + poor). So I am not opposed to them feeling some heat (no pun intended) for their actions. if things get dire then IMO they'll less opposed to a tax on big corp that gives then some relief money. this may be a good way to nudge them into supporting action.

I mean even at a very base consumer level, why does someone buys a big V8 truck that's really bad for environment if they are poor. its because the price of polluting environment is not included in their operating costs. so other values take over their decision. if you change that equation, the people who have least amount of headroom are the ones having hardest time adopting. this is true for any equilibrium. So in short this argument can be used to attack any positive change. IMO it has no bearing & IMHO its better to remedy the effects by another positive change rather than discarding the original well built idea.

> So I am not opposed to them feeling some heat (no pun intended) for their actions.

I hear you, but you have to remember that these are averages. Even in the deepest red parts of the country, there are large minorities of progressives.

This was one of the big arguments I heard against a sugar tax too, I'm sure it's true for raising taxes on gas, consumables, etc. But it seems to me like every regressive tax could be offset with another progressive subsidy like a tax cut, as a potential solution.

The science doesn't support a sugar tax harming vulnerable people - really quite the opposite. Getting rid of FEMA without a lot of care is an entirely different proposition.

Not speaking of tornado zones, but most of the FEMA insurance goes to homes that make of beach/water front property.

I'd love to see the hordes of poor people that live on the beach.

> FEMA’s research found that low-income households are less likely to purchase flood insurance than higher-income households, even though low-income families are more likely to live in high-risk flood zones.

[1] - https://www.nrdc.org/experts/joel-scata/flood-insurance-subs...

You should come to southern California. Loads of poor ppl living on the beach. Generation after generation. I'm not judging because that's my roots. Even in exclusive neighborhoods the poor, even dirt poor, outnumber the top of the food chain by dozens to one. Living close to the beach without an insurance company backing you is a normal thing here

I'm not saying we shouldn't fix our response to disasters: I'm tired of subsidizing luxury houses on the Outer Banks, for example. My point was only that getting rid of FEMA outright will harm people living in floodplains etc., who generally are poorer than average.

It's a tautology to state that "vulnerable populations would be hurt the worst" in any circumstance.

Incorrect. Vulnerable populations, when properly accounted for in disaster planning, would not be "hurt the worst."

For those unfamiliar with disaster resilience, vulnerable populations generally refers to the poor, elderly, mobility-limited, homeless, etc.

As an example: if an earthquake happens and your disaster resilience plan accounts for these groups, there would be specific triage to take special care of them. Similarly, if a heat wave happens and a power outage occurs due to disaster, many elderly risk losing their lives. This wouldn't be captured as a dollar amount to private industry. Organizations such as FEMA take special care to plan for these kinds of vulnerable populations.

The comment you responded to was getting at the idea that gov't has a responsibility to take care of their citizens and do this kind of due diligence / triage for the vulnerable. If you "leave it to the private sector" then people with money will be hurt less than people without, and people who need special advocacy would not find themselves having it.

You make a fair point about effective disaster resilience planning, but optimizing for the poor, elderly, mobility-limited, homeless, etc (while virtuous) would merely make that group less vulnerable than those otherwise capable populations, thereby making a new group the most, by the simple definition of the term vulnerable... Thus a tautology.

The point is to prioritize assistance for people who otherwise would not be able to take care of themselves as much as less vulnerable people.

Prioritizing care for the elderly doesn't necessarily make them less vulnerable than otherwise capable people, after all: they have more risk factors that can't be fully minimized. There's not some kind of straightforward calculation like you imply that you can make here.

Right, in this context, for example, it could mean people who are not able to stockpile several days of food and water, versus people whose biggest concern is the Whole Foods spoiling in the fridge if power is out for too long.

I can only say that I've witnessed some of these situations first-hand, with tragic conclusions. But I'd in no way diminish the importance of addressing the most pressing needs discussed here.

Direct tornado damage is covered by private insurance. Damage from flooding (which will often accompany a large storm) is not.

https://www.allstate.com/tr/home-insurance/insurance-for-tor...

Subsidized insurance can maybe still make sense, if it is taking on the role of a deep pocketed reinsurer. Still, it should at least be structured to discourage people from living in the most flood prone areas, and carefully monitored to make sure it is administered as intended (inaccurate maps lead to incorrect rates).

Dude. This idea is actually fantastic.

It will add political pressure to the discussion too.

Write a letter to your Senator. This is actually a great idea. Could be a great push to help quantify the climate change issue.

FEMA insurance could be to pay for relocation only.

It bothers me they continue to build straw houses in tornado alley. There really needs to be strict regulations for construction methods for buildings in areas prone to tornadoes. I'm talking two feet thick rebar reinforced concrete. We rebuild that area every year using insurance money taken from everybody else.

The average interval between tornadoes for any given point in the most tornado-prone areas is still a couple thousand years. Building all houses to withstand such a rare event doesn’t seem likely to be cost effective.

The problem is showing a direct correlation between disasters and climate change. I'm in the boat with ppl who think this stuff may be caused by human activity but I think that the science is not exactly clear on this. There is so much info and dis- info it's hard to find enough clear data to take a side.

Agreed. Let the actuaries at the insurance companies figure it out. Some companies will figure it out, some won't, and the best will flourish and the worst will die and free up resources for better stewards.

> it's hard to find enough clear data to take a side.

It's really not.

Actually, when it comes to the link between natural disasters and climate change I think the science is still significantly less settled. There are certainly suggestions and indications that a warming world will increase the likelihood or intensity of certain weather-related disasters, but I think for many of them there's still a fair amount of uncertainty. For instance, my understanding is that hurricanes may be made more likely/more intense due to increased available thermal energy but that this may be counterbalanced by other factors such as changes in wind shear, and that historical trends aren't yet enough to indicate much one way or another.

Flooding may be one exception to this, though, since I think there's strong evidence that one result of warming will be an increase general weather variability and strong precipitation events.

I think there's still a lot of active research going on here, though, so if someone has more up-to-date information I'm happy to be corrected!

I'm not arguing with you as you seem to have already made up your mind on this issue. Please I ask you- enlighten me on this golden source of info that caused you to be so one sided. Drop some links from reputable sources?

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