The fires in Los Angeles cannot be ignored.
First, I express my heartfelt concern for those who have suffered, will suffer and will need to rebuild their lives. This is a life-changing experience. For some, it has cost their lives. One cannot help but feel for their suffering and distress.
Second, let's deal with the politics of this. First, there is massive market failure at play here. In the last year or so, seventy per cent of the properties now being destroyed (because this is ongoing, and no one knows when it will stop) lost any access to affordable insurance, or even insurance at all. The market, presumably, knew the risks and has left people high and dry. The cost, so far, is estimated to be $150 billion. A large part of that will fall on the US state or the state of California. I gather there is a fallback state scheme.
This makes clear the cost of neglect. Trump, Musk and others have spouted utter nonsense on who and what is to blame. Climate change and the failure to react are the real issues. Let's not pretend otherwise. Trump, meanwhile, denies climate change is an issue, meaning a reaction is not possible.
Third, this will happen again. Those who survive these fires—and I suspect most will—will eventually experience other disasters in LA and beyond.
Fourth, those disasters will happen here. Why, for example, we are not damming the Wash from North Norfolk to Lincolnshire right now so that vast amounts of Eastern England are saved from inevitable destruction by seawater flooding in the next thirty years or so beats me. And yes, I know some wildlife locations I treasure will be lost. Those objecting for that reason need to smell the coffee: they will be lost anyway if action is not taken, and new ones will develop.
Fifth, there is no one but the state who can manage this. To pretend, as the far-right does, that we now need a small state is not just absurd; it literally threatens our survival. We can only manage what is coming as communities, as nations, and as cooperating countries. The small-state and even no-state logic of the far-right, coupled with their denial of climate change, massively increases our risk at present.
Sixth, we need to spare a thought for those suffering a worse fate than this in Gaza. Innocent suffering is not limited to rich parts of the USA. Those who wish to argue otherwise will be banned from this blog, whoever they are. I think it is only fair to make that clear in advance.
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well said as usual Richard
For years vested interests have subsidised anti-climate change propaganda. IMHO they seem to think their wealth will protect them from the effects. Perhaps California shows it doesn’t.
To add to consideration here is the Reform Party’s UK energy policy:-
https://reformbcp.co.uk/reform-our-energy-policies
Every time this comes up – the first question should be – why are we still subsidising fossil fuels, and pumping out CO2 which we dont need to be doing – and how much Co2 was emitted last year this year next year- and how far are we off track in stopping CO2.
There was a piece on R4 WATO yesterday – not a thing about this – only about mitigation against flooding, fires et etc – implying this is all inevitable – we are doing all we can or weve given up
To pretend that there is no relationship with carbon and the environment is one thing; to not plan strategically to cope with these new threats is another.
It is like a doubling down on denial, a sure sign if you ask me of the autocratic times we are living in.
There was a picture on Twitter
Burning house in the background
Socialism is the arrival of the Fire Brigade
Capitalism is having your fire insurance revoked
And what us it called when you take out insurance instead of changing the behaviour that makes insurance necessary? The conflagration in California is directly affecting the wealthiest parts of the wealthiest State in the wealthiest country on the planet. The wealthiest are the biggest contributors to global warming. There is math to be done here, though as millions of cubic meters of climate-destroying concrete & steel are produced to ‘repair’ the damage, I suspect it won’t be of the right kind….
In 2022, during Hurricane Ian, we were completely flooded out. Our house was flooded with 21 to 36 inches of water based on the water marks on the wall. Nothing has returned to the pre-Ian normal.
We are lucky in that we only lost possessions and chattels.
I have experienced what many in Los Angels are going through but the Angelinos have it must worse.
Fire is much more comprehensively destruction than water.
It’s a massive personal loss for many people who have been unhomed.
I do believe that the state should help them to be rehomed.
However I do question who would be helped with a huge state sponsored rebuild program.
If we assume a couple of things (which could be wrong) firstly that many of these houses were mortgaged and secondly that the previous valuation of these houses didn’t take into account the externalities of the risks to the property.
The insurance market got out of this while it still could but the finance could not extract itself so easily.
If the state is paying to restore properties that are essentially owned by the banks it seems much more like a bailout than a humanitarian relief effort.
“If the state is paying to restore properties that are essentially owned by the banks it seems much more like a bailout than a humanitarian relief effort.”
The above statement is not going to happen.
No USA bank or financial institution will give you a mortgage unless you carry insurance on the house equivalent to the original gross amount of the mortgage. Example: I secure a mortgage for $500,000.00 to buy a house and buy said house. In ten years, I pay down the balance of mortgage to $250,000. The bank still REQUIRES that I carry home insurance coverage of $500,000 or greater until the mortgage is paid in full.
So LA is a city of no mortgages?
How?
Is it really that rich?
Richard,
I do not really know anything about the California mortgage-wild fire problem.
People may abandon their properties as, even if your house is burnt down to the grown, you must continue to make your mortgage payment. Most people, even rich “wage earners” in California, cannot a afford a mortgage payment and a rent payment at the same time.
So, there is a crisis
No one is talking about it yet
They will
Defunding and deregulation of the state contribute towards an increase in risk.
Musk is complaining how there are too many laws and regulations, and more need to go.
Clearly the market does not knows best.
We will look forward to insurance companies doing everything they can to not pay out to policy holders.
Its a no brainer to understand that a prolonged period of drought in California, due to climate change and everything gets tinder dry, fire will come at some point. The chief executives of Exxon, Shell, BP and the rest of the fossil fuel cabal may not like the obvious truth, but their initial denial (even though Exxon research scientists knew this was going to happen as far back as 1982) , continued resistance to a transition to renewable energy is holding all our lives to ransom. Also agree about the danger of sea rise flooding from the Wash in England. The Thames barrier was built to save London, so a Wash dam should be built as soon as possible as the polar ice caps are melting fast and significant sea rises are certain now.
The Thames Barrier is fast becoming useless.
The Thames Estuary is a vast floodplain, the river is bounded by saltmarsh and swathes of low-lying land. Within the next 10-15 years (approximately) the rising sea level and a spring tide with a longshore wind will breach the banks.
The salt water will flow *around* the Thames Barrier. London will be inundated – as will all the riverside towns and villages.
“My world, my Earth, is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and gobbled and fought until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destoyed ourselves. But we destroyed the world first. … You can see the old cities still everywhere. The bones and bricks go to dust, but the little pieces of plastic never do, they never adapt either.”
~ Ambassador Keng, from ‘The Dispossessed’ 1974, Ursula K. Le Guin
1974 – 50 years we’ve had to prevent this.
Agreed
And some of us have had a go
Time to face up to the fact human beings may well be a “blind alley” species in the universe. We desperately need to change our attitudes in many ways to prove otherwise!
Climate change is clearly contributing to the frequency and severity of extreme weather events and “natural” disasters. As was predicted.
This supertanker is nor going to turn quickly and we are blasting past the 1.5 degree limit but there is much we can do to adapt and increase resilience.
Buildings in areas prone to wild fires need to be resistant to burning down. It should not be possible for entire urban or suburban city blocks to burn down in minutes.
Similarly buildings in areas prone to flooding should should be resistant to flood damage. Yes it increases the up-front cost, but that is so much cheaper than rebuilding or remediating the damage.
The fact that we don’t do that – that house builders throw up new buildings that only just meet minimum regulations, and then become uninhabitable after a predictable fire or flood – shows the market is failing.
Regarding the proposed dam across the Wash these were the contributions of two environmentalists
However, Tammy Smalley, from Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust, said the scheme would prevent some animals, such as seals, from feeding off the coastline.
“You’ll lose the birds, you’ll lose the seals, you’ll lose the fisheries,” she said.
“You’ll lose habitats that also sequester – capture carbon – like salt marsh. They’re more effective at capturing carbon than trees. So it’s a wholesale change for wildlife that’s highly unlikely to survive.”
Steve Rowland, from the RSPB, added: “It’s just not needed and it’s absolutely bonkers. There’s already a Wash shoreline management plan to protect the people in the industries of The Wash.”
There is more comment here, mainly from locals
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/23905554.norfolk-locals-make-3bn-wash-barrage-bid/
If a planning application is submitted then get behind it, for you will be few.
What will the people of Bedford say when the6 are under water?
I belong to the RSPB and Naturalists Trusts. They are seriously wrong on this.
This flood risk map is an interesting tool:
https://coastal.climatecentral.org/
The area around the Wash projected to be below annual flood level is extensive. Kings Lynn, Boston, parts of Peterborough will be under water well before the end of the century. Ely will be an island.
Agreed
Very likely
But the area spreads far inland and destroys farm land which provides a great deal of our food – which will be useless once salinated
Having served as a medical volunteer after natural disasters, I can genuinely sympathise with those who have lost everything in these uncontrollable fires. However, I was greatly relieved to hear you mention Gaza. Every time I see the well publicized devastation out in California, with the eleven lives lost so far, I cannot suppress the deep anguish I feel for those poor desperate surviving Palastinians being systematically erased in Gaza. Why is the global empathy for their plight fading, as those of us who still care dread the potential toxic intervention of Trump.? Sadly, I doubt that our Government will vehemently protest when Trump vigorously backs whatever sadistic final solution Israel chooses to inflict on those last remaining souls trapped within Gaza’s brutal razor wire.
Will Trump succesfully gag the ICJ to get genocide charges against Israel thrown out, just as he has managed to subvert the US justice system by becoming America’s first convicted felon President? Will Trump use Elon Musk’s disinformation network to rehabilitate the destroyed reputation of war criminal Netanyahu? The illogical exceptionalist example of US support for Israel has already set a very dangerous precedent. The next ruthless dictator will defend their territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing by declaring an obvious bias. If the global community doesn’t prevent or sanction Israel’s aparthide regime by failing to end and prosecute the Gaza genocide, future perpetrators will reason that it is unfair to target their abuse and violsation of totally discredited human rights law!
We should greatly fear such a horrific scenario unfolding after President Trump demands control of the Panama Canal as well as Greenland, and considers forcing Canada to become another US state!Trump has not read the blatantly clear message posed by these devastating California fires. Our planet is already burning up as he continues to promote: “Drill baby drill”! While we anticipate with dread that Trump will drag the US out of the Paris Climate Accord, we must also fearfully brace for his decimation of the Geneva Convention on Human Rights. His massive blind spot on the growing Climate Crisis and the financial carnage he intends to precipitate, are far from the only very real dangers this insane narcissist poses to the global community. Devastating wild fires, floods, and other natural disasters will likely be matched by further brutal acts of genocidal extermination if we fail to conclusively prosecute and bring the current, well protected, Israeli perpetrators to justice.
I agree here with everything you have said.
But I think its important to realise that Trump is an avatar, a puppet operated by deeper, undemocratic and nastier concerns and whose direction of travel is determined by them. Finding out who these people are would be really useful.
The thing is, the U.S. has been operating like this for years – even to the point of killing people to ensure that they could (for example) dominate the trade in a fruit like banana’s in South America. If they could stoop so low just for that, then quite frankly they would stoop so low for anything.
Some 30 years ago I moved to Ireland to take up a job, I made a list of requirements and the last on the list was to be 110m above sea level to ensure the house would survive global warming. But global warming will put more energy in to storms with stronger winds an heavier rain. I note there is no discussion about these.
I was involved in rehabilitating a tailings dam and one of the very sensible specification by the authorities was it had to cope with a 1 in 10.000 year storm event. I reinforced the out flow from the site limit the out flow while alowing the excess water to be contained. The tailings dam area has been designated as a nature reserve.
I note the UK is still using a 1 in 40 year event for construction in the UK. Note the the I in 40 year event is based on historical data and wonder when it was last up dated.
Worrying
Every time there is an horrendous fossil fuel driven climate disaster I think this will be the one that will kick start the emergency action to stop climate collapse. It never does. And I don’t suppose this one will. That’s almost the worst part. Most will carry on as if everything is OK.
I do remember the Suffolk coast floods of 1953, when the school (in which my sisters were incarcerated – I started there in 1954) could only be reached by boat. Then consider the Ruanda floods in 2000, Greek, Portuguese, Italian fires and floods, Sudan and other parts of Africa, many other places and of course California which has suffered with very little rainfall followed by torrential rain. Then consider how the glaciers are melting in the Alps. Yesterday I noted the following statistics from Buxton weather station (Buxton Derbyshire), taken inside a cabinet (a ‘Stevenson Screen’ – designed in 1984 by Thomas Stevenson who was the Father of Robert Louis Stevenson) – coldest first = 12 December 1882 minus 18.9°, 21 January 1940 minus18.3°, 7 March 1886 minus 17.1°, 13 February 1902 minus 15.9°, 27 February 1945 minus 15.9°, 23 January 1979 minus 13.6°, 8 January 1979 minus 11.0°, 4 January 2010 minus 10.7°, and 10 January 2025 minus 8.7° = we thought that it has been cold in the last few days, but by comparison, not so – I sincerely hope that the Government does not realise this and take away WFA from more people – they could use global warming as their next excuse.
1784?
whoops – yes! I’m not good with figures.
I’ll go for around 1864
The lack of insurance isn’t a pure market failure. In a free market increased fire risk would lead to insurance companies charging higher premiums. In California there’s a law that prevents this. Here’s an extract from yesterday’s Noahpinion;
“Insurers can deal with this in two ways. First, they can raise premiums, based on models that take the worsening fire environment into account. Second, they can use reinsurance — they can buy their own insurance from truly giant insurance companies, so they don’t go bankrupt in a bad year.
Except in California they can’t actually do either of these things! In 1988, California voters passed a ballot proposition called Proposition 103, which says that if insurers want to raise their premiums, they have to get the raise approved by the government first. This means that if premiums go up, California voters will blame the insurance commissioner, who is democratically elected. So naturally, the commissioner tries to keep voters happy by forbidding insurance companies from charging higher premiums. In recent years, insurance companies have been begging California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara to let them charge higher premiums in order to account for the increased risk of large fires, and for the reinsurance premiums they now have to pay. But Lara forbid them from doing so. … ”
Here’s an X thread giving more detail https://x.com/kimmaicutler/status/1877539080315220210
“
Sadly I just see disasters like this pushing the world into more right wing extremism.
“Why, for example, we are not damming the Wash from North Norfolk to Lincolnshire right now so that vast amounts of Eastern England are saved from inevitable destruction by seawater flooding in the next thirty years or so beats me”.
Isn’t that the location where King Canute demonstrated 900 years ago that in a battle of humans versus the sea, the sea will win? (To be fair, historians argue about the location).
Like Ely, the area we live is a few metres above what in mediaeval times was marshland at some times of the year, and may well be again if later drainage schemes and flood defences are overwhelmed.
No one doubts that technically the Wash could be dammed, but the dam would need to go four miles inland in Lincolnshire to work.
Thank you for your sixth point. If only the BBC would take the same view.
Here is the lesson from history (the one nobody ever learns, because they think we live in a smarter age, but just as typically, a dumber one; we don’t learn from history). I have extracted the following from sound sources:
“Early on 18 April 1906, an earthquake and a four-day inferno of fires following destroyed 80% of the buildings in San Francisco, California and killed about 3,000 people. One estimate puts the total cost at $500m in 1906 money, a massive 1.8% of US GDP. Twenty insurers were driven into bankruptcy, but in total 243 insurers paid claims of $225m, more than the entire profits of the US fire insurance industry for the previous 47 years combined.
The Hartford’s initial reserve was $7m, but it ultimately paid $11m. Fireman’s Fund’s claims were $11.5m, against capital of $7m. It reformed, and paid half the value of outstanding claims in new shares (ultimately a good deal). Some 43 US and 16 foreign insurers delayed claims, sometimes for years. German insurers had a particularly bad record: four simply ignored the claims and left the US. British companies had the largest share of the losses. London’s indemnity bill was about £23m, or $108m in local money.
The Times calculated total British insurers’ losses at $87.9m, excluding Lloyd’s.
……
The earthquake had a major, positive impact on Lloyd’s and the wider British insurance sector. It cemented the market’s reputation as a reliable insurer. Cuthbert Heath’s syndicate of twenty Names led Lloyd’s international earthquake policies (based on rates in his handwritten ‘Earthquake Book’, still held in Lloyd’s vaults). Famously, Heath cabled his agent in San Francisco with the simple instruction to ‘Pay all our policy-holders in full irrespective of the terms of their policies.’ His agents set up makeshift stalls in the streets of San Francisco to sell ‘aftershock insurance’. Heath Names shared an average profit of £431 on the year. Lloyd’s reputation in the United States was made.” (Dr Adrian Leonard, Insurance Museum, 2021).
“Through its prominent underwriter, Cuthbert Heath, Lloyd’s played an important part in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Not only that, the aftermath of the quake had a dramatic and lasting effect on Lloyd’s and the insurance industry as a whole.
During this era, governments were not expected to supply relief funds, so the burden of losses fell on the insurance industry.
As one of Lloyd’s leading earthquake underwriters at the time, Heath faced an enormous bill, but he honoured it and famously instructed his San Franciscan agent to “pay all of our policyholders in full, irrespective of the terms of their policies”.
The earthquake ended up costing Lloyd’s over $50m – a staggering sum in those days and equivalent to more than $1bn in today’s dollars.
Heath’s attitude over the San Francisco claims was rewarded, to the benefit of the London insurance market. His actions had highlighted Lloyd’s excellent reputation for paying valid claims – a reputation that still stands today – and business boomed.
Until the 1906 earthquake, the placement of insurance risks overseas was viewed with some wariness. Now, Heath had succeeded in cementing Lloyd’s position in the US market and other markets would be sure to follow.
The losses incurred challenged existing perceptions about risk and its management, but it also saw the industry embrace advances in these fields as a result. There are now sophisticated building and risk modelling practices in place that help protect against the devastating effects of natural disasters.
In most cases, earthquake risk is still excluded from standard homeowners or business insurance policies in the US. However, fire resulting from an earthquake has been included in the majority of policies since 1906.
Just as there are lessons to be learnt from the earthquake, there’s also inspiration to be gained from the way that cities can be reborn with the help and financial backing of the insurance industry” (Lloyds of London, ‘San Francisco Earthquake’).
We learn lessons; then we forget them. It is proof of precisely how clever we are.
Thabks John
Fascinating
On Los Angeles I recommend reading City of Quartz by the late , great Mike Davis.
Los Angeles was always a precarious enterprise.
But on French TV yesterday the combustibility of homes was attributed to wooden houses , clad in plastic.
Mexicans built houses in stone and mud.
As for balancing the interests of people and nature people vote for people. I dont think the Netherlands are planning on restoring their country to swampland.
Maybe it’s just the timing, but – as is my habitude at this early evening time (18h-18.30h) in France – I have just watched the so-called News on BBC World. It usually includes informative reporting from various parts of the world, but for the nth consecutive day, the whole half-hour was entirely devoted to live coverage of the updates by the LA officials. Not one word about Gaza or anything else going on in the World. And of course no mention of climate change.
While I have every sympathy with those who have lost their homes in these devastating fires and fully appreciate the importance of these regular situation updates for local residents and their families, I fail to see why they need to be broadcast live on BBC World, which is surely not where US residents look for them.
Agreed
Correction – it was 17h-17.30h, but I guess the 18h News will be similarly skewed towards USA.
yes, the fires are devastating but I too am glad you brought in the much bigger, deliberate and longer suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, much of it at the hands of the Americans. At least Californians are not pulling their dead children out of the wreckage while being bombed and starved. Of course there are no comparisons like this being made in our media, Gaza fades out of sight while Trump arrives with his “drill baby drill” mantra and threats that “Gaza will be hell” as if it isn’t already. Some areas of the world are even lamenting the drop in the birth rate of their local populations when the last thing we need is more people when the world is swamped by desperate migrants looking for a chance at a normal life. Sometimes I despair!
Me too