Overshoot, Insurance, and Sacrifice Zones
When I mention the insurance industry, what is the first thing that comes to mind? OK, maybe I don't want to know your answer. I'm certain that some of them might involve a bit (or maybe a LOT) of profanity, but what if you couldn't even obtain insurance? What kinds of issues would that cause? If you were unable to obtain a homeowner's policy, would this make you ineligible for a mortgage? What about a car? If you get caught without vehicle insurance, what are the penalties? How about renter's insurance? If you don't have it and a fire burns the apartment you live in or water damage occurs there, what kinds of consequences will you suffer?
These are all valid questions that should be asked; especially nowadays with insurers leaving certain states due to increased regulations, political instability, climate change, sea level rise (SLR), wildfires, drought, water and food security issues, financial collapse, bankruptcy, and other issues not listed here. Some insurers may still offer insurance but have limited the ways one can access said insurance by closing ALL their offices in a state. State Farm leaving California is just the most recent company leaving an area with Chubb and AIG discontinuing policies for high-end homes last year. As I was writing this, two more companies have announced that they have also either discontinued offering homeowners policies or have begun limiting the number of new policies being offered.
The situation in Florida is slightly different, with homeowners simply being charged considerably more for their policies, although the list of insurance companies in receivership is large enough and the number of closed companies which have completed receivership is huge. It is important to note that many of these are not recent closures and these are not all home insurers but also health insurers and other types of insurance. Needless to say, the places which are the safest from extreme weather events are also the cheapest places to insure your house and more risky locations are only going to get worse.
Of course, insurance is just one of the puzzle pieces of complexity that is beginning to simplify due to collapse. This article comes partially as a result of a place I visited while on my recent trip - Cairo, Illinois, located at the southern tip of Illinois between the Mississippi River and the Ohio River with their confluence just south of the city. My knowledge of Cairo until just recently was centered on it being the location of a river gage, specifically the last river gage for the Ohio River there (during the 2000s, I spent a great deal of time watching the explosion of river gage readings in the purple "major flooding" range with the levels constantly creeping upwards on most rivers and tributaries). Before the trip, I had watched a video of the city and was surprised to note that it had more or less become a ghost town. This video gives about the same highlights as the one I watched.
As usual, I wanted to know why Cairo was turning into a ghost town. Obviously, it had something to do with the rivers and the economy, but what else might have been part of the equation? Yes, part of it had to do with the rivers and flooding, with the entire city being evacuated in 2011 during the massive record flooding that year. The city looks worse now than in the above video, being that video was taken well over a year ago since it was released in April of 2022. Only a handful of businesses still exist in the city and the city has been fairly well hollowed-out with most buildings boarded-up, destroyed, burnt-down, or almost invisible behind trees and bushes overgrown from years of abandonment. Because the city has been whittled down to only a small fraction of what it once was and practically all the businesses have left, the city's infrastructure has also suffered due to a lack of tax base to support continued maintenance.
Two of the HUD apartment building complexes in the city were closed down in 2018. This video highlights the frustration of some residents and the conditions they were enduring. Residents in the large tower of apartments, known as the Connell F. Smith still in Cairo were notified last year that they will also have to move out due to concerns about the building's ability to handle an earthquake. They are now being spared of the worst by not being evicted on the original timeline. Apparently, in yet more proof of collapse, the government is finding it difficult to handle increasing utilities costs and at the same time take care of maintenance requirements and keeping buildings up to code. So, areas such as these are being cleared out, becoming more sacrifice zones such as Picher, OK and Centralia, PA. This documentary about Cairo explains how its decline actually goes back many decades and has a considerable amount to do with culture, racism, and money and power.
Many people have been fortunate enough not to have to live in such conditions or deal with outdated buildings slated for demolition or being evicted due to hazardous living conditions. But even places today considered "safe" may not be for much longer. Take one of the most popular places to move today - Phoenix, Arizona - and look at what is happening there now due to water concerns. This is actually a good thing and should have been done a long time ago in many desert locations in the southwestern US. Finally some common sense prevails. Building along coastlines, in arid regions where wildfire and/or water concerns are a major threat, in floodplains, and in other hazardous areas just doesn't make much sense. Of course, the reasons for building in those areas was because of nature's beauty, the original isolation of such areas, or short-term thinking such as the potential financial gain of doing so. Houses in fire-prone areas should be built out of brick, concrete, steel, and stone and have no exposed wood or other flammable materials. While this doesn't make them fireproof, it would go a long way towards making them more resilient in areas known to be prone to wildfires. The sad truth is that even in areas normally much wetter, once drought conditions get established and a windy day happens, all that is needed to create disaster is a spark to start a fire. The wind and dry conditions will take care of the rest, as noted in Michigan. For those wondering about wildfires in the US right now, visit this link and this link and this link and this link. Wildfire conditions in Canada are actually primed to set new records, and I'm sure other locations will also go up in smoke this year. We haven't even officially entered summer yet!
Sacrifice zones become endemic in societies which collapse. I posted these two videos here and here in a previous article regarding sacrifice zones. The Romans ceded more and more territory as time moved forward simply due to their inability to maintain the same living arrangements - the same complexity once enjoyed by all Romans. This is what is happening now to our own societies due to energy and resource decline, one of the consequences and symptom predicaments of ecological overshoot. All societies which collapse experience this same scenario due to the simplification of their living arrangements. I've mentioned Joseph Tainter's book, The Collapse of Complex Societies many times in this space, and now I am thrilled to offer a link to it for your reading purposes. This PDF is also available. Paul Mobbs provides one of his famous "A Book in Five Minutes" reviews here.
Artificial Intelligence will exacerbate this scenario, taking energy from what could otherwise be utilized for useful work and diverting it to yet more technology which cannot do anything but increase ecological overshoot, the predicament causing all the symptom predicaments, including collapse. Most people want to believe that AI will be a good thing or that it will help figure out a way to reduce overshoot, but AI has no wisdom, so in reality it is not intelligent - it is simply clever. That's it in a nutshell. So, beliefs aside, a quote I came across today from is rather poignant:
"Opinions are for barbeques; analysts make assessments via evidence."
Many people also believe in our ability to use technology to "undo" or "solve" what technology use has caused. Much of this has to do with a focus on emissions reductions or carbon capture, ignoring the root cause of ecological overshoot as the predicament causing climate change. Because technology use INCREASES overshoot, using it in an effort to reduce emissions is like prescribing eating more food to lose weight.
This new video from Sabine Hossenfelder sheds some new light on the issue and might help explain the situation better. Hopefully I have made the concept somewhat easier to understand.
Comments
Post a Comment