One of the reasons home insurance in New Mexico is going up by leaps and bounds is our constantly increasing use of oil and gas. CO2 in the air traps heat. Since heat is energy, that energy translates into more energetic climate action: more violent storms, greater downpours, stronger winds. These energetic actions result in bigger and more frequent wildfires and floods. Most people who own property try to protect their investment by buying insurance, but the costs of wildfires and floods are outpacing the insurance companies’ ability to pay. So higher insurance premiums are not only here but what we have to look forward to as the climate heats up.
Climate change is not only here and causing us problems, but its pace is increasing. Ten years ago, the view was that people might slow it down by 2030, but the latest data (before the feds decided to get rid of the data) shows that we’ve just this year passed the point of no return. Climate change is going to keep speeding up. So forget about arguing about climate change. It is a done deal. That is the art of making a deal. We’ve made it, or, rather, our government has made it for us.
Part of the deal the government has made for us is not just higher home insurance. It’s no insurance at all, since the destruction caused by climate change at the present level is going to bankrupt insurance companies. These companies have already started pulling out of the market and/or cancelling policies throughout the Southwest. And that means that banks will no longer finance housing, since they want their investments insured. So, real estate and development will crash. Then, what?
The state legislature tried to address this problem last month, but the only result was the passage of Senate Bill 81. That bill revised the FAIR insurance program which finds insurance for those properties the companies refuse to insure. All the registered companies agree to share equally in insuring the uninsurables with the provision that they can get their costs back in three years through higher premiums. That helps a little, but it does allow higher premiums. The governor’s idea of having the state act as an insurance company seems to have gotten no traction, for good reason since with really accelerating climate change we would go bust trying to fund the increasing destruction.
What’s to be done? Our President has already taken the initiative to think for all of us. He’s decided to accelerate climate change even faster. He seems to think (pretty strange) that climate change is a bump in the road which you can get past and then there is just smooth road ahead. You burn up gas and oil as fast as you can, and then there isn’t any left to pollute the air and all will be fine. Unfortunately, once the energy is trapped in the atmosphere, it stays there. The acceleration of change keeps on going. You can’t go back again. That’s ok for all those rich folks running the federal corporation, but how many of us can just abandon our houses in Sierra County and buy another one in Greenland?
Check out the details and the facts here:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/05/02/absurd-scary-co2-emissions/
Climate, Risk, Insurance: The Future of Capitalism
https://www.kunm.org/text/local-news/2025-02-18/new-mexico-eyes-escalating-wildfire-insurance-costs
https://www.usnews.com/insurance/homeowners-insurance/local/new-mexico
That raises a question that keeps burbling up re the oligarchy’s total takeover of the U.S.A.
What air will their children and grandchildren breathe?
What water will their children and grandchildren drink?
What towns and cities will their children and grandchildren move around in what with the globbe being populated with desperate nothing to lose poor people everywhere?
Speaking of the desperate slave class, do the billionaires risk service work (maids, landscapers) to us?
What planet will their children and grandchildren live on when the oligarchs become the hunted?
Seriously..what’s the effing end game?
I have two answers for you. A friend who is a Freudian analyst said he’d like to have these guys on his couch to find out why they think they are not part of the people who live on earth. But I think we know why. People who spend their lives trying to get more and more money view money as a fetish. To them there is a religious feeling in wealth. They do feel that wealth and power are magic.
My second answer is about the end game. There is none if you believe as Machiavelli did that the history of governments is cyclical: aristocracies will become kingships as one family outdoes the others, kings will become tyrants, and when the people revolt, kingships will become democracies, which will become oligarchies as some families do better economically than others, and those families will perpetuate their wealth and create arisotcracies. What Machiavelli did not foresee is global warming.