I used to live in Paradise, CA and I have been studying urban economic development with a focus on how to rebuild/adapt to climate change. my number one concern the past 7 years has been exactly this. the collapse of the insurance markets. and feeling like I'm going insane for the logical conclusions that we need to have dense settlements located in areas which are not high risk for fire and floods and other climate accelerated events. i'm especially worried about the re-emergence of redlining, eugenics policies, sundown towns, and refuge camps. I like the doughnut economics concept, but I strongly believe that the American version needs to integrate traditional ecological knowledge and traditional health knowledge to make it work.
I lived near the Almeda fire in 2020. I feel the exact same way. I moved north. I keep telling everyone in my new city that we need to prepare for fires now, because they will be here in ten years…or maybe less, but we will need ten years to prepare. I told my LA friends all about the fire, and they didn’t prepare or work for change. I listen to the news about how they will make everyone in CA whole again, but 3/4 victims of Almeda were denied FEMA aid; perhaps they are less worthy of rebuilding than Californians. My partner has rebuilt homes for people who lost them to fires, he specializes in a thermal block that can keep homes from combusting and will remain intact after a fire. He has plenty of ideas about how we can build in fire-resilient ways. No one is asking.
I was considering writing an essay along these lines, but you've more than covered it. Here are some thoughts I shared elsewhere, which echo many of yours:
I'm guessing that like with most things the pace of growth of our communities, as well as the risks of fire, have outpaced our willingness to pay for those risk mitigations. Many of the homes in this California fire just had their policies canceled last year by the insurance companies (score a win for their fire risk modelling, I guess). We're dealing with the same thing in northern New Mexico, where some have to use the "insurer of last resort," a state program, which has very minimal coverage. We may be on our way to a national program like we have with flooding, but that comes with its own problems (e.g., encouraging re-building in high-risk areas, though good legislation could prevent this). Or we're simply going to have to stop living in areas that are higher risk, or pay out-of-pocket if and when the day of disaster comes.
In dense cities that have burned down before (e.g., Chicago, New Orleans), the buildings are now built with fire breaks to prevent total destruction. I doubt the same design principles were used in those residential communities. They probably didn't anticipate a future of desertification, higher winds, and risk of total neighborhood destruction.
While we need to get to work on the big actions covered in this essay, this a relatively cheap and simple way to protect people's homes now. I'd love to see more funding and other resources directed to this purpose to better protect (especially lower-income) people in the short-term (though the long-term work is also essential).
NiMBYism—and the climate denialism attached to it—is as bipartisan as it gets. It’s crazy. Where I’m from, an “environmentalist” launched a nonprofit to plant trees throughout the city. That same “environmentalist” is a founding member of a “Neighborhood Coalition,” whose mission is to preserve single-family zoning and block proposals to increase density (ie build apartments).
I agree with more or less everything here. But the one thing I, as an European immigrant to North America, keep failing to comprehend, is why wouldn’t we just…. Make things from materials that don’t fall over? Our Eastern Bloc vibe apartment complexes maybe aren’t the most beautiful thing but goddamn they don’t fall over. There is no maintenance. Nobody has nor needs insurance because concrete just sort of…. Sits there. Forever.
There’s a photo from the LA disaster of a bunch of charred houses and among them one still standing, a little grayish maybe, with a caption saying ‘it’s not magic, it’s called concrete’. Maybe the problem is we have for far too long been building houses with planned obsolescence.
I think of this often! Not just in building but how we choose a lot of things. For example, lots of folks in rural communities has traditional wood stoves, pellet heaters, oil stoves. There's some interest in building what they call rocket mass heaters, but aren't those just homemade masonry heaters? They use a lot less fuel and heat more efficiently.
All that to say is Americans tend to think their "normal" way of doing stuff is the best way, including building, heating, etc. But it also tends to be a wasteful way of doing things. Anyway, great comment
Agreed!! There are those epic Polish traditional ovens that heat the whole house and serve as a stove and a warmed bed and all in one…. Time to start learning from people who have been handling disasters all along. Japan also comes to mind. Like this idea that buildings have to be made of matchsticks and paper is wild.
I rewatched the sound of music recently and even Maria has one in her bedroom. Although its funny you mentioned Japan because their traditional homes do have paper walls, but I think that's ease of building. There's so many other types of building - like a cob house- but they're not instagram able or are too foreign for Americans, so back to stick builds and deforestation we go!
Yeah Japanese used to build only from paper and wood until literally all of Edo (today’s Tokyo’ went up in flames in a single night…. Today they have incredible structures that can sway with earthquakes and never break. I’m pretty sure we could work this out if our only angle wasn’t ‘wait what’s the most profitable for us again?’
But but if we spent that money on sturdy structures would there would be any space or extra money for big cars? We'd have to take busses, like they do in San Francisco! We're not ordinary, we're American!
In Moldova people still have "sobas" which are a combination stove / oven / wall heating arrangement where heat travels through pipes in the walls. They also fired up their hothouses in February to get the tomatoes going. The drawback is lots and lots of pollution. If you're poor and burn fuel for heat, you'll pretty much burn anything that's flammable (i.e. trash, toilet paper etc.)
South Bay mutual aid is collecting $ to help out house cleaners who lost work bc their clients’ houses burned down. Put “limpiadores” in the message field to set aside your donation for that specific purpose. https://hcb.hackclub.com/donations/start/sbmacc
I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the last 10 years, since studying international agricultural development in graduate school. We studied how one shock can permanently drop a family below the poverty line, even for something as small as a few goats dying or losing a bicycle. Ever since then I’ve been acutely aware of how coddled Americans are by all kinds of insurances - including crop - and how differently we are going to have to engage with the world and each other when those insurances stop being economically sustainable.
I’ve been annoyed to see so many left-leaning posts this week about the fire in CA blame insurance company greed. Which, sure, greed is a real thing, but their profit margins are absolutely dwarfed by the cost of climate change.
Companies in general cannot be "greedy" - their purpose is to survive and grow. (Although we can probably apply the term to health insurance companies and banks that go overboard to manipulate every law and contract they can to exploit the vulnerable.)
Isn’t it possible though that politicians from all the disaster prone areas - California, Texas, Florida, the Carolinas, etc - will just form a coalition to keep the bailouts coming and a) that’s a lot of political power and b) it’s not important enough to the politicians from other states to block it? People go along with others’ spending all the time - look at agricultural subsidies, which get criticized a lot (used to, more) but a few intent senators can outweigh a larger number who have their own priorities, and CA/TX/FL are not 3 little midwestern states.
Currently, it looks like there's more political advantage to maintaining polarity. I have a facebook friend who's repeating some typical Facebook querulousity about why is everyone so worried about Los Angeles while the Appalachian victims of Helene are still struggling.
This is a fantastic piece. Hamilton I have been reading you since your Wonkette days and you have a pulse on the American political project in a way that I haven’t seen anywhere else. This NY times piece is especially on point: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/15/magazine/climate-crisis-migration-america.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare. Americans aren’t yet willing to abandon the places that will not survive the new climate reality. Of course the loss of your community, maybe of generations, is no small thing! What is being offered that will allow you to move and still have your childhood restaurants or your best friends who all live nearby or the park you like to go with your kids?
This essay puts into words so much that I've thought and seen. It's as if many Americans refuse to see what is literally in front of them. I moved from LA to Chicago recently. Chicago will be, I'm told, a "climate refuge". Its fire-safety measures (since 1871) plus its propensity for high density building and smart city planning, its somewhat battered-but-still effective public transit (which I use entirely, no car required), and, maybe more importantly, its access to a vast pool of fresh water, positions Chicago to be a magnet for "climate migration". When Miami is underwater, and Phoenix is out of it, Chicago (and other Northern cities) will hold the keys. Fear-mongering by the right-wing press has created a highly distorted view of a great and thriving city.
United Way has a great track record with disaster relief, CA Community Fund also a very good choice. Both know how to make grants to organizations doing work on the ground and know how to supply back-end capacity without interfering with frontline work.
Republicans take California fires disaster relief hostage. (26 second video). Learn how to make a rapid response video with the free Lumen5 app to make your point.
Yes, the crisis is already here, and this country has elected a bunch of people who don't give a damn about America and worship a man who is a destroyer in every way; who blames "the democrats" for the wildfires, while ensuring that the oil wells in the ocean thrive and that we invade Canada and take over Greenland. Insurance?? Only if you make a billion or two off the suffering of other human beings. The walls are crumbling. Is there any intelligence or decency to stop it?
Nothing of any substance will ever be accomplished with regard to climate catastrophe. Nothing. Everything is headed toward a death by a thousand cuts.
Overall a great essay, but you're missing a link in thinking temperature within cities is uncontrollable. This is not true. Green space, water, reducing asphalt, reducing VMT, all can significantly reduce the temperature of cities. This may not save Phoenix, but it can save some cities that will be on the precipice of unlivability
I used to live in Paradise, CA and I have been studying urban economic development with a focus on how to rebuild/adapt to climate change. my number one concern the past 7 years has been exactly this. the collapse of the insurance markets. and feeling like I'm going insane for the logical conclusions that we need to have dense settlements located in areas which are not high risk for fire and floods and other climate accelerated events. i'm especially worried about the re-emergence of redlining, eugenics policies, sundown towns, and refuge camps. I like the doughnut economics concept, but I strongly believe that the American version needs to integrate traditional ecological knowledge and traditional health knowledge to make it work.
I lived near the Almeda fire in 2020. I feel the exact same way. I moved north. I keep telling everyone in my new city that we need to prepare for fires now, because they will be here in ten years…or maybe less, but we will need ten years to prepare. I told my LA friends all about the fire, and they didn’t prepare or work for change. I listen to the news about how they will make everyone in CA whole again, but 3/4 victims of Almeda were denied FEMA aid; perhaps they are less worthy of rebuilding than Californians. My partner has rebuilt homes for people who lost them to fires, he specializes in a thermal block that can keep homes from combusting and will remain intact after a fire. He has plenty of ideas about how we can build in fire-resilient ways. No one is asking.
The relentless infantilization of the American mind has been remarkable to behold.
It's impacted every strata of society, and seems impervious to reality.
I was considering writing an essay along these lines, but you've more than covered it. Here are some thoughts I shared elsewhere, which echo many of yours:
I'm guessing that like with most things the pace of growth of our communities, as well as the risks of fire, have outpaced our willingness to pay for those risk mitigations. Many of the homes in this California fire just had their policies canceled last year by the insurance companies (score a win for their fire risk modelling, I guess). We're dealing with the same thing in northern New Mexico, where some have to use the "insurer of last resort," a state program, which has very minimal coverage. We may be on our way to a national program like we have with flooding, but that comes with its own problems (e.g., encouraging re-building in high-risk areas, though good legislation could prevent this). Or we're simply going to have to stop living in areas that are higher risk, or pay out-of-pocket if and when the day of disaster comes.
In dense cities that have burned down before (e.g., Chicago, New Orleans), the buildings are now built with fire breaks to prevent total destruction. I doubt the same design principles were used in those residential communities. They probably didn't anticipate a future of desertification, higher winds, and risk of total neighborhood destruction.
Regarding design principles, there is a interesting article about the homes that survived the fire and how much their construction/design with fire protection in mind played a big role in that (excuse the long URL, it includes the way to bypass the paywall): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-13/los-angeles-wildfires-why-these-homes-didn-t-burn?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTczNjg0ODA5OCwiZXhwIjoxNzM3NDUyODk4LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTUTE5VVJEV0xVNjgwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiI5QTkxMEU2NzJCQzM0OTQxQkI5QTg4NUVDRUJFMUFBMSJ9.g9QniTTtFZWElBRJIWKTnmviW_83LSKXfxM5gRud-I0
While we need to get to work on the big actions covered in this essay, this a relatively cheap and simple way to protect people's homes now. I'd love to see more funding and other resources directed to this purpose to better protect (especially lower-income) people in the short-term (though the long-term work is also essential).
NiMBYism—and the climate denialism attached to it—is as bipartisan as it gets. It’s crazy. Where I’m from, an “environmentalist” launched a nonprofit to plant trees throughout the city. That same “environmentalist” is a founding member of a “Neighborhood Coalition,” whose mission is to preserve single-family zoning and block proposals to increase density (ie build apartments).
I wouldn't be surprised at all if you live in California. NIMBYism is so rampant here and really does cut across political lines.
I agree with more or less everything here. But the one thing I, as an European immigrant to North America, keep failing to comprehend, is why wouldn’t we just…. Make things from materials that don’t fall over? Our Eastern Bloc vibe apartment complexes maybe aren’t the most beautiful thing but goddamn they don’t fall over. There is no maintenance. Nobody has nor needs insurance because concrete just sort of…. Sits there. Forever.
There’s a photo from the LA disaster of a bunch of charred houses and among them one still standing, a little grayish maybe, with a caption saying ‘it’s not magic, it’s called concrete’. Maybe the problem is we have for far too long been building houses with planned obsolescence.
I think of this often! Not just in building but how we choose a lot of things. For example, lots of folks in rural communities has traditional wood stoves, pellet heaters, oil stoves. There's some interest in building what they call rocket mass heaters, but aren't those just homemade masonry heaters? They use a lot less fuel and heat more efficiently.
All that to say is Americans tend to think their "normal" way of doing stuff is the best way, including building, heating, etc. But it also tends to be a wasteful way of doing things. Anyway, great comment
Agreed!! There are those epic Polish traditional ovens that heat the whole house and serve as a stove and a warmed bed and all in one…. Time to start learning from people who have been handling disasters all along. Japan also comes to mind. Like this idea that buildings have to be made of matchsticks and paper is wild.
I rewatched the sound of music recently and even Maria has one in her bedroom. Although its funny you mentioned Japan because their traditional homes do have paper walls, but I think that's ease of building. There's so many other types of building - like a cob house- but they're not instagram able or are too foreign for Americans, so back to stick builds and deforestation we go!
Yeah Japanese used to build only from paper and wood until literally all of Edo (today’s Tokyo’ went up in flames in a single night…. Today they have incredible structures that can sway with earthquakes and never break. I’m pretty sure we could work this out if our only angle wasn’t ‘wait what’s the most profitable for us again?’
But but if we spent that money on sturdy structures would there would be any space or extra money for big cars? We'd have to take busses, like they do in San Francisco! We're not ordinary, we're American!
Dangit 😅
In Moldova people still have "sobas" which are a combination stove / oven / wall heating arrangement where heat travels through pipes in the walls. They also fired up their hothouses in February to get the tomatoes going. The drawback is lots and lots of pollution. If you're poor and burn fuel for heat, you'll pretty much burn anything that's flammable (i.e. trash, toilet paper etc.)
For sure, everything needs to be balanced…
South Bay mutual aid is collecting $ to help out house cleaners who lost work bc their clients’ houses burned down. Put “limpiadores” in the message field to set aside your donation for that specific purpose. https://hcb.hackclub.com/donations/start/sbmacc
I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the last 10 years, since studying international agricultural development in graduate school. We studied how one shock can permanently drop a family below the poverty line, even for something as small as a few goats dying or losing a bicycle. Ever since then I’ve been acutely aware of how coddled Americans are by all kinds of insurances - including crop - and how differently we are going to have to engage with the world and each other when those insurances stop being economically sustainable.
I’ve been annoyed to see so many left-leaning posts this week about the fire in CA blame insurance company greed. Which, sure, greed is a real thing, but their profit margins are absolutely dwarfed by the cost of climate change.
Companies in general cannot be "greedy" - their purpose is to survive and grow. (Although we can probably apply the term to health insurance companies and banks that go overboard to manipulate every law and contract they can to exploit the vulnerable.)
Can we call them greedy if the executives sacrifice long-term growth for short-term profits?
Isn’t it possible though that politicians from all the disaster prone areas - California, Texas, Florida, the Carolinas, etc - will just form a coalition to keep the bailouts coming and a) that’s a lot of political power and b) it’s not important enough to the politicians from other states to block it? People go along with others’ spending all the time - look at agricultural subsidies, which get criticized a lot (used to, more) but a few intent senators can outweigh a larger number who have their own priorities, and CA/TX/FL are not 3 little midwestern states.
Currently, it looks like there's more political advantage to maintaining polarity. I have a facebook friend who's repeating some typical Facebook querulousity about why is everyone so worried about Los Angeles while the Appalachian victims of Helene are still struggling.
This is a fantastic piece. Hamilton I have been reading you since your Wonkette days and you have a pulse on the American political project in a way that I haven’t seen anywhere else. This NY times piece is especially on point: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/15/magazine/climate-crisis-migration-america.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare. Americans aren’t yet willing to abandon the places that will not survive the new climate reality. Of course the loss of your community, maybe of generations, is no small thing! What is being offered that will allow you to move and still have your childhood restaurants or your best friends who all live nearby or the park you like to go with your kids?
National Day Laborer Organizing Network fire brigade relief fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/lafires2025?recurring=true&utm_source=email_recurring_cta
This essay puts into words so much that I've thought and seen. It's as if many Americans refuse to see what is literally in front of them. I moved from LA to Chicago recently. Chicago will be, I'm told, a "climate refuge". Its fire-safety measures (since 1871) plus its propensity for high density building and smart city planning, its somewhat battered-but-still effective public transit (which I use entirely, no car required), and, maybe more importantly, its access to a vast pool of fresh water, positions Chicago to be a magnet for "climate migration". When Miami is underwater, and Phoenix is out of it, Chicago (and other Northern cities) will hold the keys. Fear-mongering by the right-wing press has created a highly distorted view of a great and thriving city.
Build a wall along the Mason-Dixon, anyone?
United Way has a great track record with disaster relief, CA Community Fund also a very good choice. Both know how to make grants to organizations doing work on the ground and know how to supply back-end capacity without interfering with frontline work.
https://unitedwayla.org/wildfire-response-resources/
https://www.calfund.org/funds/wildfire-recovery-fund/
Understand the Class War that can leave you homeless without insurance while CEOs make a fortune.
https://thedemlabs.org/2025/01/12/california-insurers-cut-policies-before-devastating-wildfires-while-ceos-get-richer/
Republicans take California fires disaster relief hostage. (26 second video). Learn how to make a rapid response video with the free Lumen5 app to make your point.
https://thedemlabs.org/2025/01/14/republicans-take-california-fires-disaster-relief-hostage-how-to-make-a-rapid-response-video/
Free Luigi
Yes, the crisis is already here, and this country has elected a bunch of people who don't give a damn about America and worship a man who is a destroyer in every way; who blames "the democrats" for the wildfires, while ensuring that the oil wells in the ocean thrive and that we invade Canada and take over Greenland. Insurance?? Only if you make a billion or two off the suffering of other human beings. The walls are crumbling. Is there any intelligence or decency to stop it?
Humans are truly a stupid species.
Nothing of any substance will ever be accomplished with regard to climate catastrophe. Nothing. Everything is headed toward a death by a thousand cuts.
It may be only a few big gashes. Not sure which is worse. We won’t get to decide, though.
Overall a great essay, but you're missing a link in thinking temperature within cities is uncontrollable. This is not true. Green space, water, reducing asphalt, reducing VMT, all can significantly reduce the temperature of cities. This may not save Phoenix, but it can save some cities that will be on the precipice of unlivability