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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

charleshughsmith.substack.com

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Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#381

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

igravious wrote: post #361
phtrivier wrote: post #325

Former CEO of AXA, a major French insurer, famously announced that a world at +4°C would be "uninsurrable" [1]. That was 10 years ago. It's true that most predictions about climate are wrong - most of the time, they're optimistic. (Not always, fortunately [2]) [1] https://www.leparisien.fr/economie/business/special-cop21-un... [2] https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/emissions-are-no-longer-fo...

+4°C is to the upper end of projections if it did (which is not probable) happen it'd take until the end of the century if we were to get there the entire world will be a different place; everything will have advanced so we won't be insuring our present world with our current knowledge and current tech but a future world with future knowledge and future tech

Not everything advances. We still have houses built in the 1800s/1900s that are usable in predictable/similar climates/circumstances. A changing climate changes that.

Sure, we could bulldoze everything and build new stuff that can handle a +2C, +3C, +4C, etc... world, but that's expensive.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#382

Post by thrance »

Again, insane that the president elect does not believe in climate change and chose to blame supposed DEI practices in California's firefighters while the fire was burning.

Nothing will change, houses will be rebuilt the same way in the same place.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#383

Post by vasco »

Panzer04 wrote: post #259
_tariky wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Yugoslavia, in 1969, one of the biggest earthquakes occurred, destroying several cities. After that, the country’s leaders decided to change building codes. Even today, although Yugoslavia no longer exists, the countries that adopted those codes have homes capable of withstanding earthquakes up to 7.5 on the Richter scale. My main point is that if we face major natural disasters, we need to take action to mitigate…

Why bother building a better home when it's cheaper to buy insurance and rebuild later? This is why prices are important - sometimes it's sensible to build cheaper houses without these safeties if the risk isn't there, but if the risk does exist then it needs to be priced right to provide that incentive.

The key thing to understand is that you don't get to choose when the house gets destroyed or get advanced notice. Which means you might be in there, or your kids, or all your belongings. But yes, after you're dead in the rubble someone else can rebuild your house and it might be cheaper.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#384

Post by graemep »

adrianN wrote: post #360
agsnu wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A significant portion of human structures are located close to the coast (seaborne trade having been a huge enabler of economic development for a few hundred years) and are exposed to flooding from rising sea levels, or built in valleys that are increasingly at risk from flooding due to far-above-long-term-historic-norms precipitation runoff (higher atmospheric temps lead to more energy in weather systems; see eg mas…

Compared to the other challenges climate change poses those are fairly simple engineering problems. The Netherlands manage fine with large parts of the country below sea level.

and sea level rises are slow enough that countries with more high ground than The Netherlands can just not rebuild/maintain old houses in vulnerable positions and build higher (often just a bit further in) instead.

Some buildings buy the coast (especially in port cities) and have steep rises anyway.

There is a huge threat of cultural loss - e.g. Venice.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#385

Post by lores »

swiftcoder wrote: post #346
adrianN wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even pessimistic scenarios don't predict threats to buildings (other than war, which to my knowledge never was insurable) in most areas of the world.

I don't know about that. The Iberian peninsula is not historically at much risk for natural disasters, and we now suffer alternating forest fires and floods pretty much every year...

I remember forest fires yearly in northern Spain in the 80s. Are they more violent now?

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#386

Post by thrance »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #176

This is silly, and overcomplicating the issue. The world is very insurable, at a price. The property and casualty business is competitive as hell in almost all parts. The government needs to just stay out of it.

When the cost of premium surpasses what people are able to pay, companies will just leave. That's the point of the article, you can only ignore material reality for so long.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#387

Post by graemep »

phtrivier wrote: post #325

Former CEO of AXA, a major French insurer, famously announced that a world at +4°C would be "uninsurrable" [1]. That was 10 years ago. It's true that most predictions about climate are wrong - most of the time, they're optimistic. (Not always, fortunately [2]) [1] https://www.leparisien.fr/economie/business/special-cop21-un... [2] https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/emissions-are-no-longer-fo...

> most of the time, they're optimistic.

Evidence? Has anyone collated predictions over time and compared them with outcomes to date?

I can remember a number of specific predictions (e.g. that snow would be unknown in most of the UK by the early 2000s) that were pessimistic. Of course, I recall those because they got a lot of media attention at the time and the media reporting is biased to the most extreme predictions so its not a fair sample.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#388

Post by itake »

Snoddas wrote: post #356
itake wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They bank it as any insurance company should do. Invest it cautiously. I hope they aren't investing that capital. AFAIK, insurance capital needs to be liquid, for it to be ready for a payout. You still didn't address my point is that $25m/yr is a drop in the ocean. "investing $25m properly" will have zero impact on the business.

It will have atleast be > than zero, and doing it every year instead of giving it away to some overpriced CEO will it will accumulate.

State Farm’s revenue was $104.2 billion for 2023. His payment was 0.02% of the revenue. That’s basically a rounding error.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#389

Post by HPsquared »

john01dav wrote: post #292
Animats wrote: post #107

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…

I'm curious how the roof is constructed on your cinder block house. That kind of cinder block construction seems obviously superior to me, but I can't think of any roof that would be so obviously superior.

There are a LOT of fireproof roofing materials; the US is quite strange in covering most houses with these asphalt shingles. Clay/concrete tiles are pretty standard; slate or metal also options. There are presumably different ways of dealing with the gaps and ventilation to keep out embers.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#390

Post by lm28469 »

igravious wrote: post #361
phtrivier wrote: post #325

Former CEO of AXA, a major French insurer, famously announced that a world at +4°C would be "uninsurrable" [1]. That was 10 years ago. It's true that most predictions about climate are wrong - most of the time, they're optimistic. (Not always, fortunately [2]) [1] https://www.leparisien.fr/economie/business/special-cop21-un... [2] https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/emissions-are-no-longer-fo...

+4°C is to the upper end of projections if it did (which is not probable) happen it'd take until the end of the century if we were to get there the entire world will be a different place; everything will have advanced so we won't be insuring our present world with our current knowledge and current tech but a future world with future knowledge and future tech

It's just a matter of time at that point

> if we were to get there the entire world will be a different place; everything will have advanced so we won't be insuring our present world with our current knowledge and current tech but a future world with future knowledge and future tech

That's a very convoluted way to spell "famine, wars and mass immigration". Techno-solutionism has become a religion, you don't even have to understand or look at the problem, just repeat "tech will save us all, in tech we trust".

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