Is the world becoming uninsurable?

It's just a matter of throwing a couple hundreds $ of metal and cement every few rows of bricks, like this: https://www.pointp.fr/asset/27/07/AST212707-XL.jpg when you see how much american spend on houses it's a drop in the ocean.

FYI a two storey 10x10m house will run you less than 10k euros in bricks for the external walls, and that's with 30cm wide honeycomb bricks which probably provide enough thermal insulation as is for LA. Add 10k of rockwool insulation and you're good to go for most places.

You use wood for simple reasons: it's widely available, that's the only thing your workers are trained on, it's cheaper so builders make more money, it's faster and allow crazier design (mcmansions). Same thing for asphalt shingles, nobody uses that, it needs constant replacement, but it's cheaper, easier/faster to install.

In europe we mostly build rectangles with simple two pitch roofs, ceramic tiles that last 50+ years, most of them are made of bricks, even in seismically active countries like Italy.

Europe: https://www.philomag.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_...

US: https://www.reviewjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/950...

https://www.preventionweb.net/news/not-drill-how-1985-disast...

California is not very hospitable on its own but with human intervention it was made liveable. But that is now running out, because e.g. the water supply is no longer adequate for what is used.

But this is the difficult situation we find ourselves in; due to climate change, hospitable areas are no longer hospitable, and while you can throw money at the problem, it becomes exponentially more expensive to continue to live there. If this continues, it will trigger a (mass) migration. This can be applied everywhere, and the phrase "climate change will trigger mass migrations" has been uttered many times already. It however feels like people only considered this to be a problem in e.g. the global south, affecting poor people because they don't have the financial means to shape the earth and their living conditions by throwing money at the problem.

I live in the Netherlands that for hundreds of years has thrown money and resources at the problem that it's below sea level and prone to flooding. We're still managing, but still get flooding in some places due to e.g. heavy rains deeper in Europe. But if the sea level goes up enough, either we'll have to spend billions in building higher sea walls... or abandon regions entirely. The worst case predictions mention a 2.5 meter sea level rise by 2100, that'll definitely test our infrastructure to put it mildly.

(this comment was a reply first but moved it to a top level one because I added my main article comment as well).

Floods, storms, droughts, fire? They appear to be getting worse.

More restrictive codes designed for better fireproofing buildings, for instance, can solve a number of problems in California in fire prone areas. Another thing that has a political solution is forest management. Lack of water can be solved by desalination, which becomes an energy problem rather than a water one. Very dry areas can benefit from solar panels because they reduce water loss from evaporation, thus reducing the pressure on water supplies.

It is expensive, but that's another problem.