with elections Because of Donald Trump, we are facing a climate catastrophe.
We know because we are already in that crisis now. We don’t talk about it that much. Mostly because we don’t want to admit what it means.
To some extent, many of us recognize that we have entered a world of superstorms and rising sea levels. drought and crop failure; deluge and deluge; Huge fires and smoke-filled orange skies; Life-threatening heat waves and power outages; Invasive insects that spread infectious diseases and the loss of native ecosystems. We might try to adjust it, but we know it’s bad.
But the fact that we built this country for physical conditions that no longer exist has not been overlooked. We have experienced a break with the past, a threshold where what used to work no longer works, a point where what we knew no longer makes sense. Systems that were once robust are breaking down more often. Places that were once safe will become disaster zones. No part of our lives will be left untouched. Some places are safer than others, but no place is safe. Even communities like Asheville, North Carolina, can suffer from extreme weather.
Hundreds of millions of Americans will come into conflict with the reality of our planet. We are already seeing the impact on insurance and finance. Insurance depends on the ability to accurately price risk and accurately measure future value. And the truth is that much of America is far more dangerous and seriously overvalued than we thought.
A conservative estimate of the homeowners insurance gap puts the discovered risk at $1.6 trillion. This is largely borne by people who are relatively poor or live in known flood and fire areas. Everyone in the insurance industry expects this gap to grow as risks are transferred and priced into policies. Even if insurance is still available, it eventually becomes too expensive for many people to afford. Soaring insurance premiums are too high for homeowners. But insurers are concerned they won’t be able to charge enough to cover the growing risk. The climate crisis has already made entire communities and even regions uninsurable.
Uninsurable property is often uninsurable. Typically, getting a mortgage depends on whether the bank agrees to lend you money and that the home you buy will retain its value for 30 years. Millions of American families do not. A home that can only be purchased with cash (or a shady commercial loan) is a home that may decline significantly in value. This is as true in mountain towns surrounded by combustible timber as it is in cities on the Mississippi River floodplain or coastal communities on the Gulf Coast.
The Trump crowd doesn’t see climate chaos as a problem, they see it as an opportunity.
This pricing of unrecognized risk to our communities will be a watershed moment that extends to nearly every type of real estate and local industry. Ignored climate vulnerabilities – characteristics that are easily damaged by climate extremes but difficult to correct – are being exposed. Revealing vulnerability means losing value.
A 2023 study published in the journalnatural climate changeThe overvaluation of housing was found to be measured.Just being exposed to floodingIt reached $237 billion. Considering all the combinations of risks facing a community, this could easily amount to trillions of dollars. The scale of known risk magnified by future uncertainty is so great that the Treasury Department called it a “threat to America’s financial stability.”
Sooner or later your brittle shoes will fall off. Destruction and discontinuity will undermine the ability of many communities and local governments to respond to these challenges, creating a vicious cycle of risk, loss and partial recovery until little value remains in the most vulnerable places.
Already, some people are finding they have no choice but to leave. Some are displaced directly by fires or floods (as we have seen in California and Texas). More people will find themselves unable to sustain their lives in declining communities. While the market is still dormant, others are getting out. There is evidence that home price growth in safe communities in the Great Lakes and Northwest is beginning to be driven by (usually wealthy) newcomers fleeing climate change.
If millions of Americans begin to flee the hardest-hit places, we will see climate pressures on housing in relatively safe communities. Rising costs could lead to secondary dislocations, leaving less advantaged communities vulnerable to climate change. The only way we’re going to see a new housing crisis is construction on a scale we haven’t seen in a generation.
I do not believe that the United States yet has the option to make an orderly transition. We will have to fight tooth and nail to achieve rapid decarbonization.whileWe consider climate change America’s challengeandWe continue to fight intergenerational problems of poverty and oppression. The next decade was always going to be chaotic.
The next president could declare a climate emergency and initiate a national climate response. We can invest heavily in climate science, forecasting capabilities, and improving worker skills. We can create a national insurance strategy that combines tax cuts for household adaptation measures with local disaster preparedness and large-scale investments to stabilize insurance costs in areas where insurance is still available. We can undertake wartime-scale efforts to build clean energy, strengthen critical infrastructure, and defend places that are relatively safe from the worst threats. We can invest in extensive managed resorts (particularly coastal areas) along with large-scale relocation assistance for people living in communities where we cannot afford them. We must lay the foundation for equitable growth so that people emerging from climate chaos have a place to live, our roads and water systems are working, and our schools, hospitals and social services are ready to meet significantly increased demand. You can make it happen. We can go all in and use this disaster as a spur to building a stronger framework for a better country.
That is not the case now that Donald Trump has been elected.
The Trump crowd has already shown that it does not see the acceleration of climate chaos as a problem.opportunity.
Yes, there is still rabid climate denial in the Republican Party, but that is not the real driver here. Trump is supported by major domestic oil companies and Russian oil dictator Vladimir Putin. Climate policy will be set by those who benefit from perpetuating the problem. Dirty industries will realize hundreds of billions of dollars in profits that they would have given up if America had made an honest effort to keep the ice caps from melting.
The Trumpists’ ambitions are further strengthened by extending the predatory delay that has been so beneficial to tainting profits into what we might now think of as a predatory response. as follows:new york timesJennifer Szalai writes that Gop donors like Charles Koch “have learned to treat the Trump presidency like a natural disaster: an eruption of volatility to prepare for and exploit.”
The risks were so great that the Treasury Department called it “a threat to America’s financial stability.”
If we could divert our attention from the concentration camps and military tribunals we have been promised, the first thing we would see would be our existing climate capabilities spewing out of the back chute of a wood chipper.
Pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, as he did last time, would be just the beginning. Every oily fossil fuel executive, sprawling developer, and factory owner on every corner in America is lining up for a jamboree of lawlessness and impunity. Project 2025 has identified hundreds of regulatory and administrative targets that need to be destroyed. A society collapsing from one incompetently managed disaster to another provides ample opportunity for corruption, corruption and profiteering. Corrupt incompetence remains one of Trump’s real, reliably produced outputs.
Effective climate response requires three fundamentals: evidence-based decision-making, competent institutions, and public trust. You have to know what to do, have the means to do it, and be able to work with the public to get it done effectively.
Trump has already come for all three on his first visit to the White House. With unchecked presidential power, a submissive Congress, a compliant Supreme Court, and armies of followers in the governor’s mansion and state legislatures, Trump will be in a position to do much worse this time around.
Don’t expect the national media, which lags far behind in climate reporting, to suddenly make clear the growing danger we face. MAGA pundits already have a well-developed strategy to prevent accurate reporting of reality. As Steve Bannon said, “to fill the area with shit.”
Forget state-funded climate science and solutions research, too. Universities will be under extreme pressure to get over the line or have their funding cut off. Instead, look for all sorts of major institutions to decide that climate work is no longer essential. Even before the election began, many people were already demonstrating a willingness to “submit in advance,” as historian Timothy Snyder puts it.
Trump will be in a position to eliminate wholesale federal regulations, punish uncooperative officials, withhold aid to recalcitrant countries, cut off public access to information, and spread official disinformation to the American people. It will.
The main goal is to create a sense of hopelessness, further destroying public trust in institutions. Lincoln Steffens quoted a corrupt politician from over 100 years ago. “We know that public despair is possible and that it is good politics.” Of course, in the 1920s there was no Truth Social, no YouTube, no 8kun. Getting people to give up is easier than it looks.
Of course, disaster victims can be manipulated much more easily. Anti-Semitic weather control conspiracy theory? Are there rumors that FEMA is destroying communities? A warning that disaster first responders are looting and robbing? People whose brains have been wrecked by fear of loss and exploitation are often ready to believe crazy things. The irony is that believing these things sets them up for exploitation on a whole new level.
You can make a fortune through corrupt disaster relief and recovery, shoddy infrastructure repair and utility privatization, fraudulent insurance and exploitative credit offers. If you liked the privatization of prisons, you’ll love the second Trump administration’s privatization of disaster response. Imagine a huge new climate response device. But imagine a device where denial is rampant, run by political appointees, implemented through corrupt deals, and only nominally accountable. Can you take out a few hundred million dollars? Just thinking about it makes me shudder.
The scam doesn’t end there. Parasites thrive in muddy water, and there will be plenty of opportunity to rob hard-hit communities of any remaining money before informal abandonment proceedings take place. Where it collapses, businesses may struggle with security contracts and civil emergency services.
The inability to agree on observable facts or trust the institutions we rely on to solve key problems is leading a divided and paranoid America into our worst climate catastrophe. It’s an almost unthinkably bleak future.
Maybe this is the future we face.
