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Sleepless and Fearful When Hurricane Milton Made Landfall
There are important moments when fear is a crucial resource. And the fear of a planet where the old rules no longer hold is the ultimate fear—because then how do you even think about the future?
Oct 10, 2024
Since I couldn’t sleep, I figured I might as well write. I couldn’t sleep because of the picture in my mind—that tightly coiled ball of physics we’re calling Hurricane Milton as it tracks mercilessly across the Gulf of Mexico, headed toward a landfall tonight along the west coast of Florida. It scares me, for two reasons.
The first is the unrivaled speed with which it spun up, from tropical storm to Category 5 monster inside a day. This “rapid intensification” has become an increasingly common feature of hurricanes, because the heat content in the ocean is so high that the old models no longer suffice. We live, more and more, in a world of instant chaos: where wildfires can “blow up” in a matter of minutes because the fuels that feed them are so desiccated, where “flash” floods can, in minutes, turn a record rain into a street clogged with bobbing cars. These things have always been possible, but now they are common: we have in our minds the idea that the world changes at a geologic pace, moving in stately fashion through epochs and eras. But right now—as carbon dioxide accumulates more quickly in the atmosphere than at any point in the last 500 million years—”geologic pace” is measured in months. Hell, glaciers—our metaphor for moving slowly—disappear from one winter to the next.
And the second reason is: this speeded-up physics is increasingly crashing into the heart of the civilizations that we’ve built. Given the size of the planet, it’s more likely than not that a disaster will happen in somewhere sparsely populated—the boreal forests of Canada burned last summer, displacing Indigenous people of the north but mostly avoiding cities. Even Hurricane Helene last week came ashore in the Big Bend country north of Cedar Key, where people are thin on the ground. But just as California’s wildfires eventually and inevitably started taking out whole towns, Milton is aimed at one of the most built-up and vulnerable landscapes on earth. I think—from this morning’s bearings—that the very worst outcome may be dodged: if the hurricane comes in just south of Tampa Bay, its counterclockwise winds will work to drive the storm surge off that body of water. But if so it will mean sheer agony for somewhere further south, somewhere almost as overbuilt. Sarasota? Port Charlotte? And in very short order that will mean deep trouble for the insurance industry, already tottering in Florida
(It’s worth noting, if only in passing, that the two places Americans of my age thought of as refuges, idylls, dreams of the easy life were California and Florida. No longer).
We’ve spent some time in recent years worrying that there was too much fear-mongering and doom-saying in the way we talked about climate change—that it was wearing people out. And indeed there’s truth there—if we’re going to do what we must, the story in the years ahead needs to be as much about the adventure of turning our planet solar as the dread that we’ll turn our planet Venus.
But there are important moments when fear is a crucial resource. A week ago, in the wake of Helene, the veteran climate activist and North Carolina native Anna Jane Joyner wrote this dispatch from New York’s “Climate Week”
There were fancy parties, cheerful sun imagery and giant signs reading “HOPE.” The dominant theme was: We can solve this! We need to tell hopeful climate stories! But there’s no “solving” a hurricane wiping out western North Carolina, hundreds of miles from the sea. Only focusing on optimism is like telling a cancer patient that everything will be OK if they just stay positive. At best, it comes across as out of touch; at worst, it feels callous. Yes, we can still prevent the worst impacts and must demand our governments scale solutions and act urgently, but we cannot minimize the horrors unfolding now, or that it will get worse in the coming years.
And yesterday, on air, the veteran Florida weatherman John Morales let his fear show through. As Cara Buckley recounted in the Times,
“It’s just an incredible, incredible, incredible hurricane,” Mr. Morales said of Milton, closing his eyes and slightly shaking his head. “It has dropped. …”
His voice faltered. He looked down, drew a shaky breath and continued, “… it has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours.” For viewers who didn’t understand the staggering implications of this barometric plunge, Mr. Morales’s choked delivery said enough. “I apologize,” he said in a quavering voice. “This is just horrific.”
This kind of fear is entirely useful—there are, I have no doubt, people who left their homes and drove north towards Georgia after hearing the break in Morales’ voice. He saved lives. And he did it entirely honestly. “You know what’s driving that,” he said to viewers. “I don’t need to tell you. Global warming. Climate change.” It’s honest fear, driven by deep understanding. As Morales wrote in an essay in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists last year
“As the temperature of the planet increases, my confidence in forecasting storm intensity is decreasing… Today I am no longer as comfortable in putting everyone at ease in regard to the strength of a storm. I am afraid of rapid intensification cycles happening at the drop of a hat.”
The fear of a planet where the old rules no longer hold is the ultimate fear—because then how do you even think about the future? And that’s as true as politics as it is in meteorology. The deep fear that wakes me up at night has only partly to do with the weather weather; it’s the political fronts moving through America that scare me just as much. In the wake of Helene, absurd lies about FEMA spread across social media, fueled of course by the GOP nominee. Josh Marshall, one of the finest trackers of political craziness in this country, reports this morning that the news currently circulating on the right is that Milton and Helene were the result of “weather manipulation” by Democrats designed to…something.
That, of course, is dishonest fear, driven by dishonest people. And those dishonest people may well end up in control of our country. We have 26 days left, and every one of them counts. We need to hold our nerve, do the work, and see if we can bring America safely through Hurricane Trump. That won’t deliver us to safety, but it’s a start.
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Helene, the Climate Emergency, and Insurance Industry Hypocrisy
Homeowners should not be forced to bear the brunt of both the physical destruction and the financial fallout from climate change.
Oct 09, 2024
Hurricane Helene decimated much of the southeastern United States last week, causing widespread destruction and claiming the lives of more than 230 people across six states after it made landfall in Florida. North Carolina bore the brunt of the damage caused by the climate change-intensified storm.
As North Carolina homeowners face a future of rebuilding, they are also staring down the barrel of an insurance crisis. Hurricane Helene exposed not only the vulnerability of communities to extreme weather but also the flaws in the U.S. insurance system.
The Deluge: Another Climate-Driven Disaster
Catastrophic flooding devastated western parts of North Carolina, destroying vital infrastructure and leaving tens of thousands of residents without power or running water more than a week after the storm.
This deluge is indisputably a result of climate change: global warming enables hurricanes to hold more water vapor, producing more intense rainfall. Hurricane Helene dumped some 20 trillion gallons of water on Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Florida — 50 percent more rainfall than it would have without climate change, according to experts.
Hurricane Helene has demonstrated that no part of the United States is safe from the climate crisis. Asheville, North Carolina, was once seen as a climate haven — safe from the increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events caused by global warming. Now, the bucolic town is inundated with murky brown floodwater, and its water supply system, which serves more than 150,000 people, is badly damaged.
As the floodwaters begin to recede, the staggering costs of rebuilding homes and communities are starting to come into focus. Homeowners in North Carolina may face even more financial pain if the state allows property insurance companies to raise their rates once again.
US Insurance System Failing Homeowners Amid the Climate Crisis
As if the destruction from Helene wasn’t enough, homeowners in North Carolina face the looming threat of skyrocketing insurance premiums. On October 7, a little more than a week after the storm, the state’s Insurance Commissioner, Mike Causey, began hearing arguments and evidence into a proposed 42 percent rate hike for homeowners insurance, with coastal areas facing increases of up to 99 percent if the increases requested by the North Carolina Rate Bureau (NCRB) are approved.
Insurers are claiming that rising costs mandate the massive premium increase. But in North Carolina, insurance has been profitable every year for the past decade, except for 2018. The current Insurance Commissioner has raised property insurance rates 16 times over the last eight years.
Many North Carolina homeowners and renters simply cannot afford the exorbitant premium payments. However, even those who do purchase property insurance may have no recourse to private insurance payments if disaster strikes.
Despite believing they had comprehensive insurance coverage — with policies marketed under names like “all peril” — many North Carolina homeowners and renters hit by Hurricane Helene will not receive an insurance payout. Catastrophe risk modeling firm Karen Clark & Company (KCC) confirmed that insured losses from Helene will be lower than anticipated because most damaged properties are not insured for flood. Only 1 in 200 homes in Western North Carolina, the area hardest hit by Hurricane Helene, have flood insurance, according to a Reuters analysis of federal flood insurance data and census data compiled by the University of Minnesota. The average homeowners insurance policy covers damage from wind but not flooding.
Increasingly, whether those facing losses from climate-driven storms will see a penny from insurers depends not on whether their homes are damaged but how. The damage caused by Hurricane Ian, with its record-high wind speeds, generated $63 billion in private insurance claims. In contrast, 2018’s Hurricane Florence primarily caused water — not wind — damage, leaving uninsured flood losses estimated at nearly $20 billion and letting private insurers largely escape liability.
Flood risk is typically left to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). But despite climate change resulting in heavier and more intense rainfall inland, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood risk maps are limited to coastal or riverside areas and do not include rain-induced flooding like that caused by Hurricane Helene.
The Insurance Industry’s Hypocrisy
North Carolina’s proposed rate hikes highlight a broader issue: The insurance industry’s role in exacerbating the climate crisis and profiting from the industry driving it while shifting the burden of climate consequences onto policyholders. Insurance companies claim that they must raise premiums to cope with the escalating costs of extreme weather events, threatening to exit the home insurance market in areas vulnerable to climate hazards, as many have already done in California, Florida, and Louisiana.
Yet while insurers work to limit their own risks related to climate-induced weather events by raising premiums, reducing coverage, or pulling out of vulnerable areas, they continue to facilitate the worsening climate crisis — and profit from the industries driving it — by investing in and underwriting fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels are the overwhelming source of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) driving climate change. The production and combustion of fossil fuels have increased the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere to its highest level in at least 800,000 years.These GHGs have caused global warming, increasing the average global temperature in 2023 to 1.45 °C (± 0.12°C) above the preindustrial average, and 2023 was the hottest year on record.
Nevertheless, U.S. insurance companies have investments of more than $500 billion in fossil fuel-related assets, including coal, oil, and gas. Globally, insurers received some $21 billion from premiums for underwriting fossil fuel projects in 2022, enabling those projects to move forward.
Time for Accountability
In assessing the NCRB’s request for a rate hike, Commissioner Causey should evaluate the insurance sector’s contribution to the climate crisis. No rate increase should be granted to insurance companies actively increasing the risks their policyholders face by continuing to invest in and underwrite the fossil fuel activities driving climate change. At a minimum, any concessions to the insurance sector should be contingent on insurers reducing their investments in and coverage of the fossil fuel industry.
Hurricane Helene is a stark reminder of the climate emergency’s staggering toll. Homeowners should not be forced to bear the brunt of both the physical destruction and the financial fallout from climate change. Insurers must stop profiting from the climate crisis they help fuel and start contributing to the solutions needed to mitigate future disasters.
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US Healthcare Failures Prove 'We Need' Medicare for All, Says Jayapal
"This for-profit system leads to higher rates of death and disease and lower life expectancies—all while Americans spend more and more trying to get the care they need."
Sep 20, 2024
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal on Thursday night responded to a new analysis exposing the failures of the for-profit U.S. healthcare system by renewing her call for Medicare for All.
Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are the lead sponsors of the Medicare for All Act. When they reintroduced the bill last year, they highlighted research showing that it could save 68,000 lives and $650 billion per year.
The Commonwealth Fund report—titled Mirror, Mirror 2024: A Portrait of the Failing U.S. Health System and released Thursday—adds to the mountain of evidence that, as Jayapal said in a series of social media posts, "our healthcare is broken."
Noting that "41% of Americans hold medical debt" and "millions are uninsured," the Congressional Progressive Caucus chair declared that "we need universal, single-payer healthcare: Medicare for All."
"America's healthcare system is in dire need of an overhaul. It is largely run by private insurance companies who only care about increasing their profits and limiting choices for consumers."
As Common Dreamsreported, the latest Commonwealth Fund analysis focuses on 70 health system performance measures in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
"All the countries have strengths and weaknesses, ranking high on some dimensions and lower on others," the report states. "Nevertheless, in the aggregate, the nine nations we examined are more alike than different with respect to their higher and lower performance in various domains. But there is one glaring exception—the U.S."
Jayapal made her case for Medicare for All with some details from the report, pointing out that "despite spending more, the U.S. ranked last in equity, access to care, and health outcomes—including acute illnesses, chronic diseases, and death. Of the countries studied, Americans live the shortest lives and face the most avoidable deaths."
"This is wholly unacceptable," she argued. "America's healthcare system is in dire need of an overhaul. It is largely run by private insurance companies who only care about increasing their profits and limiting choices for consumers."
"They refuse to pay for certain doctors, even as the average American spends tens of thousands of dollars every year on copays, deductibles, and private insurance premiums," she said. "Sometimes, they even have their own doctors override decisions about what you need for your own healthcare."
The congresswoman continued:
Medical debt and exorbitant costs regularly keep people from seeking necessary care, with a growing population of "underinsured" Americans—those who have health insurance but still aren't getting the care they desperately need.
This for-profit system leads to higher rates of death and disease and lower life expectancies—all while Americans spend more and more trying to get the care they need. In the richest nation on the planet, this simply should not and cannot be the case.
We need a system with comprehensive care for all, regardless of employment status, with no copays, deductibles, or private insurance premiums. A system where the [government] provides your insurance and doesn't allow private companies to override what your own doctor says you need.
We need comprehensive and improved Medicare for All that covers mental health, long-term care, reproductive care, dental, vision, and hearing. No hidden fees, no premiums, no copays, no deductibles. Just healthcare—when you need it, where you need it, so you can stay healthy.
"I'm so proud to be the lead sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, and I won't stop fighting until everyone can get quality healthcare without having to worry about what it might cost. Thank you so much to the 100+ members who have cosponsored our bill, H.R. 3421!" she added. "It's time for a healthcare system that actually works. Let's get Medicare for All done."
The bill, which has 14 co-sponsors in the Senate, has no chance of advancing in the current Congress and would likely face difficulty in the next one, even if Democrats won both chambers in the November election. Republican former President Donald Trump spent his first term attacking the U.S. healthcare system, while Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris has dropped her support for Medicare for All, saying recently that she wants to "maintain and grow the Affordable Care Act."
Still, patients, providers, and progressive lawmakers continue to demand a transition to a public system that serves all Americans—and Jayapal wasn't alone in pointing to the Commonwealth report as proof of the need for a major overhaul.
The other nine nations analyzed "have found [ways] to meet residents' basic healthcare needs, including universal coverage," University of California Health executive vice president Dr. Carrie L. Byington stressed on social media.
"The only clear outlier is the [United States], where health system performance is dramatically lower," Byington added. "Americans deserve better. #HealthcareForAll."
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