Climate related disasters are intensifying everywhere. What's now "inevitable" may have been unthinkable when some of these folks moved there.
West coast best coast.
eventually seismic activity will pick up too.
I almost lost my fire insurance last year because my neighbor doesn’t keep his property up, for decades. The agent initially rejected my renewal due to pictures taken from an inspection they did that showed a ton of downed trees but they were across my property line.
But there are plenty of things that can be done to reduce the number of wildfires. Remember the fires caused by old and poorly maintained PG&E lines?
The Airport Fire that just burned in Orange and Riverside counties was started by some county public works employees pushing boulders around with a bulldozer (to build a barricade preventing motorcyclists from going into the canyons and starting a wildfire) on a red flag day, literally at the peak of the heat hottest day of the entire year.
This sort of shit should see whoever sent them out there fired for gross misconduct and potentially charged. I certainly wouldn't keep my job if I fucked up that badly.
So, it's an interesting idea to change the choice from: either "don't spend the money" or "spend the money on prevention and fixing our shit"
To: from "the money is spent either way, might as well fix our shit."
If there's also one state that has demonstrated a willingness to use economics to encourage "correct" choices/behavior in consumers, it's California, so they should be real sympathetic to this idea :-)
I don't know if I'd support such a proposal or not. That would require some serious analysis and consideration of the details, but I don't think we should just dismiss the whole idea.
Also, federal assistance programs largely transfers wealth from "blue" states to "red" states. Proposing less federal assistance or some kind of "fairer" tax program isn't going to persuade in the direction you think. It's just going to mean more money for blue states to handle their own internal matters.
They are under strict orders not to say the blunt truth as they put it "you have one exit and in the middle of an unstoppable fuel load. in case of fire,you are all fucked and will die".
Instead they have to say something along the lines of that they should do everything within their economic power to reduce their fire risk.
On the part of pollution from wildfires, I'm much more ambivalent. A smoke filled West Coast was the norm in fall prior to California fire suppression.
Genuinely curious for the evidence on this, if you have it.
It has been estimated that 5 to 12 million acres burned in California per year prior to 1850 [1], [2]. As a comparison, California’s 2000–2020 average burned acreage is 0.79 million acres per year [2]. 2020 was the largest wildfire year in California's recorded history, with nearly 4.5 million acres burned, which is on the low end for the historical average.
Last time I went down this rabbit hole I found several archival records and letters from settlers and surveyors describing California smoke and haze from the 1800's, but unfortunately I cant produce them for you. They described how the Sierra Nevada would be blanketed with smoke in the fall, and that it would linger in the central valley as a dim haze. If by chance you come across these, please let me know.
There is also ample biological evidence in the fire adapted ecology of California, where many plants require fire to reproduce and spread. This comports with the burn studies that estimates the burn interval for most California biomes to be between 3 and 20 years, with 3 years being typical for grasslands and steppes, 10 being typical for redwood forests, and 20 being more common for the pines forests.
Of course there is more to wildfire and smoke than simple acreage, and the quantity of fuel and hardwoods currently being burnt is greater as a result of our 150 year hiatus from wildfire. That said, the pre-1850 average was literally an order of magnitude greater than post 2000, which goes a long way in bridging this difference.
Here is a paper on Wildfire acreage:
[1] https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/Fi...
[2] https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/classic/cc/SB901_...
here is some information historic fire intervals:
https://fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10.4996/fireec...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228116866_Historic_...
How is this any different from selling people exploitive loans to desperate people?
Instead of providing assistance to rebuild, if the property is in a fucked place, provide money to move.
What you are suggesting is subsidizing people to live in economically impractical regions, specifically regions we know will get worse and more costly. I don't see the logic there at all.
We get this mess. Local governments selling building permits in flood and wildfire zones because they get cash in the short term while others pay in the long.
We’re seeing in Florida, for example, a recapitulation of the financial crisis, down to bogus ratings of undercapitalised insurers allowing risky mortgages to be passed along to banks, Fannie and Freddie [1].
[1] https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/24-051_f1329bc3-...
Personal insurance must cover 100% of personal property loss, not governments (at any level) which are obliged to serve the population fairly and uniformly. Local government alone is responsible for rebuilding lost local infrastructure -- roads, power, sewer, and schools. Presumably state government would marshal emergency response from outlying communities, and perhaps coordinate financial resources to rebuild.
Federalizing recovery will pass along the cost of disaster recovery to everyone, not just those who build homes in the paths of hurricanes or in low lying areas which flood frequently. That is the role of personal property insurance. The companies who insure against flood, fire, and wind damage are a far better source of indemnifying the risk incurred by each home and neighborhood than is any government. Then the homeowner can choose to insure or not. But no government should pass along the costs of higher risk by some to others who chose a lower risk. That would clearly be unjust.