Home insurance, we’re all supposed to have it, but many homeowners are dropping their home insurance because of the expense. And insurance companies are dropping home insurance for persons who live in high risk areas. This is not just on the coast but in places such as West Virginia, Texas, and Oklahoma.
In 2021 Biden ordered the Treasury Department to examine the threat that climate risks pose to home insurance. Companies opposed that; after all, if you don’t have the data, the problem doesn’t exist. Right? Four days after the report showing that ordinary people face losing insurance, Trump revoked the order. Now the problem doesn’t exist.
This decision will impact the ordinary people who voted for the man who now wants to prevent them from knowing that climate risk will impact their lives – not in the future, as it surely will, but now. Without information, data, we are all in the dark. Isn’t that the way the new regime wants it, anyway?
Prayer for the Day
O God of tenderness and compassion, we are often bewildered,
For we see such violence and callousness toward one another,
Afflicted by our careless acts of selfishness against the Earth,
We are confused and uncertain of the goals we set.
Save us from our false pride that admits no wrong,
And teach us humility and forgiveness.
In the name of the One who teaches humility,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
The numbers show how climate change is eroding the underpinnings of American life by making home insurance costlier and harder to hang on to, even as wildfires, hurricanes and other calamities increasingly threaten what is, for many people, their most valuable asset.
Christopher Flavelle & Mira Rojanasukai, The New York Times (1/16/2025)
Homeowners’ insurance is where many Americans are now feeling the financial effect of climate change directly, in their pocketbook. Nature doesn’t really care whether people are living in a blue state or a red state or another state, or whether you do or don’t believe in climate change.
Ethan Zindler, climate counselor at the Treasury Department
Even the jackals offer the breast and nurse thheir young,
But my people have become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.
Lamentations of Jeremiah 4: 3