The system will keep bending, and bending, until it breaks. Where that will happen is anyone's guess. The insurance industry collapsing. Mass migration of climate refugees. Global shipping choked off by drought-plagued canals. War over scarce water supplies. Likely more than one breaking point. And all will wonder, why didn't we do more while we still could?
Excellent article. The insurance industry in North Carolina is requesting a 40% increase in home insurance costs! Eventually this will cause low income and those dependent on fixed income to sell their homes. As the climate crisis worsens, the value of homes will begin to collapse.
Some of the best, assimilative, muckraker journalism, ever. Hats off to Bill McKibben, whom I've followed and supported since the early 2000s. About 12 years prior, after organizing the first "No Blood for Oil protest" in the US in 1990, going to jail for that, then successfully pleading with the judge to change the charge from "disturbing the peace," to "obstructing traffic," my heart is set on workforce education and opportunity, with teachers at the heart of pathways for climate resilience. I have recognized for a long while, and Bill documents it astutely, that Increased risk and prohibitive insurance are among the many bipartisan drivers of good, greening jobs with a living wage. PS and, by the way, nearly any objection one might state portrays a new career path. Thank you, again, Dr. McKibben, for journalism, activism, amd humanity at their finest.
I’m pleased you have written about an issue I’ve noticed; increasingly unaffordable housing insurance or no new policies at all. And of course the salaries of the CEOS are all in the millions regardless. I note as well that service on policies has dropped to an unacceptable level. Increasing the monthly outflow of dollars 💵 for those of us in the low to middle class lucky enough to have secured mortgages years ago but not long enough to abandon insurance on the unpaid balance. The policy I had rewritten in 2020 was the lowest amount State Farm would write and they have ripped me off financially for years on auto, homeowners, and life which I gave up. Sadly, one cannot drive a car without liability at least. I’ve forfeited all coverage otherwise so if I wreck my paid off car, I’m toast. Insurance is for losers and suckers TFG might say but required by the auto licensers and banks holding what’s left on mortgages!
The “deductibles” are outrageous and to submit a claim comes with the warning that doing so will raise premiums.
Sorry, no sympathy for the insurance industry here. One homeowner claim in the amount of $2,000 with a $1,500 deductible? And one auto accident one car (hydroplaned) in 50 years with the company that takes my 💵💵💵 so eagerly every month but would not know me from my house cat.
I am curious about one thing Bill, Are the CEO's of these Insurance companies refusing to insure certain States willing to take a comparable percentage cut in total income that they are requesting in increased premiums?
So grateful for your work, but please consider moving your substack newsletter to another platform. While I deeply appreciate your work and read your newsletters faithfully, often sharing them, I will no longer support a platform that, literally, is OK with Nazi/neo-Nazi voices. Numerous other substack newsletters are moving; I am moving with them.
Bill, why do you think "climate change" even exists, never mind that it will "slow the machine"?
The UN is plainly lying to us. The hockey stick graph (fully factchecked!) shows that the temperature of the world never did anything strange until the Industrial Revolution. Just a steady decline until then. So it follows that any increase since then must indeed be down to us.
But this is the ACTUAL graph showing the changes in the world's temperature since 900 AD:
Another area of concern for insurance, farming. How will farmers stay in business? I wonder how many people have a grasp of how this house of cards is going to fall?
Most people would think of New Zealand as being a place they could if pushed by climate change, move to. Sorry to disappoint but we have exactly the same problems outlined in the posting. Areas becoming uninsurable, unrestricted fossil fuel usage, governments of left and right burrowng their heads in the sand and ignoring what the country needs etc. etc. Currently we have one of the highest property and rental cost per capita in the world. Immigration is at nearly 2% per annum but government will not agree so will not build the infrastructure to cope. So if you are coming, best of luck!
I wish some brilliant economist would take a stab at modeling a range of scenarios for eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels, testing critical metrics for actually #RetireRefineries #OnePerWeek and concomitant abandoning oil and gas fields plus and minus around the 6% per annum admonished by James Hansen et al. back in 2013 in the paper”Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature” (Bit.ly/Hansen3Dec13).
The model would certainly not be perfect, but reasonable assumptions would give us clues as to the order of magnitude of global discomfort, suffering and death that could arise from the failed social and economic foundations of civilization.
As it is, we are driving the tractor-trailer headlong into the darkness of night, a daunting fog-enshrouded snow covered Vermont mountain road with no guard rails, reflectors or shoulder and center line “rumble strips.”
Dear Bill, Please offer these newsletters directly in a website, not substack
I, pres. of Humane Civilization Worldwide (HCW) WOULD LIKE TO COMMUNICATE DIRECTLY WITH YOU. Is it not long overdue that influential people show to people and demand from governments effective responses to the crisis - capitalism or business-as-usual-with-incentives will never work. We need an effective movement that presents real solutions, governments restricting bank lending and funding/working with public-private partnership nonprofit enterprises to rapidly develop transportation systems other than electric cars and air planes, effective ways to sequester CO2 in all parts of the world (organic material oaked in stagnant water, mainly dead zones in lakes and the sea and 'artificial bogs, organic material kept dry or in freezing temperatures, etc. Please see
I was wondering why there can't be law suits either in the U.S. or the international criminal court of justice against oil companies for endangering humanity or any related charges. There is a suit by Swiss women as well as many suits here in the U.S. by youth. Why can't we do this?
There is no crisis... there are however solutions to the problem.
In 2008 I filed the patent for what I believe is a keystone in Human Evolution...
It is a Train using advanced Scramjet technology has no moving parts and is capable of continuous permanent acceleration between any given point A to B inside a stable environment.
It is capable of theoretical infinite speed.
Furthermore it is the only Absolute Zero Emission Technology in this world.
And given the current "Climate"... shall I say "debate"?... there is no debate.
We are being Lied to by everyone of the Government and in the Industry and especially by those connected to the WEF.
With my Invention I can reduce all exhaust emissions by Aviation and Trains to Absolute Zero Emissions forever whilst providing a better Transportation and Logistic environment for everyone.
Travel would be fast and cheap the air and water clean and as a result the Human health would increase.
It would benefit every Human on earth.
Furthermore It is at the same time an Infrastructure support System that would provide Internet Electricity and education to every part on this planet.
That would make Aviation obsolete and free space which are now Airports.
All Airports can be converted into Cities (NOT Smart Cities) but living space for each and everyone.
This Invention is capable to reduce any journey say Paris to Hong Kong or LA to New York in under 1h.
Elon Musk has taken my Invention in 2010 / 2011 copied it and put it into a tube and claimed it the "Hyperloop".
Yes... I am the original Inventor of the Hyperloop.
But my Invention is so much more capable... so much better than anything else.
It is the base technology for Interstellar Space Travel...
As our major ("affluent"- that's most us) sources of greenhouse gas emissions (heating, cooling, driving, flying, meat-eating) continue year after year, only a tiny portion of our population embrace and tenaciously promote the following message.
"Consumers (individuals, organizations, businesses, governments) must promptly minimize their greenhouse gas emissions to bridge the gap while we work on long-term green technology and infrastructure. Less heating and less cooling (none between 13C-30C/55F-85F, https://greenbetween.home.blog). Less driving. Less flying. Less meat-eating. Less population growth (2 children max). Do it yourself. Tenaciously encourage others to do it."
Embrace the message and tenaciously introduce the message "business card" to all you encounter. (Print the business card 12 per 8.5x11 using a file from the Promote page of the website.)
The system will keep bending, and bending, until it breaks. Where that will happen is anyone's guess. The insurance industry collapsing. Mass migration of climate refugees. Global shipping choked off by drought-plagued canals. War over scarce water supplies. Likely more than one breaking point. And all will wonder, why didn't we do more while we still could?
Excellent article. The insurance industry in North Carolina is requesting a 40% increase in home insurance costs! Eventually this will cause low income and those dependent on fixed income to sell their homes. As the climate crisis worsens, the value of homes will begin to collapse.
Some of the best, assimilative, muckraker journalism, ever. Hats off to Bill McKibben, whom I've followed and supported since the early 2000s. About 12 years prior, after organizing the first "No Blood for Oil protest" in the US in 1990, going to jail for that, then successfully pleading with the judge to change the charge from "disturbing the peace," to "obstructing traffic," my heart is set on workforce education and opportunity, with teachers at the heart of pathways for climate resilience. I have recognized for a long while, and Bill documents it astutely, that Increased risk and prohibitive insurance are among the many bipartisan drivers of good, greening jobs with a living wage. PS and, by the way, nearly any objection one might state portrays a new career path. Thank you, again, Dr. McKibben, for journalism, activism, amd humanity at their finest.
I’m pleased you have written about an issue I’ve noticed; increasingly unaffordable housing insurance or no new policies at all. And of course the salaries of the CEOS are all in the millions regardless. I note as well that service on policies has dropped to an unacceptable level. Increasing the monthly outflow of dollars 💵 for those of us in the low to middle class lucky enough to have secured mortgages years ago but not long enough to abandon insurance on the unpaid balance. The policy I had rewritten in 2020 was the lowest amount State Farm would write and they have ripped me off financially for years on auto, homeowners, and life which I gave up. Sadly, one cannot drive a car without liability at least. I’ve forfeited all coverage otherwise so if I wreck my paid off car, I’m toast. Insurance is for losers and suckers TFG might say but required by the auto licensers and banks holding what’s left on mortgages!
The “deductibles” are outrageous and to submit a claim comes with the warning that doing so will raise premiums.
Sorry, no sympathy for the insurance industry here. One homeowner claim in the amount of $2,000 with a $1,500 deductible? And one auto accident one car (hydroplaned) in 50 years with the company that takes my 💵💵💵 so eagerly every month but would not know me from my house cat.
I am curious about one thing Bill, Are the CEO's of these Insurance companies refusing to insure certain States willing to take a comparable percentage cut in total income that they are requesting in increased premiums?
Bill McKibben - I am hoping to finally meet you in a DC jail in early February. Peace, John Vail sendnomoney.org
So grateful for your work, but please consider moving your substack newsletter to another platform. While I deeply appreciate your work and read your newsletters faithfully, often sharing them, I will no longer support a platform that, literally, is OK with Nazi/neo-Nazi voices. Numerous other substack newsletters are moving; I am moving with them.
Bill, why do you think "climate change" even exists, never mind that it will "slow the machine"?
The UN is plainly lying to us. The hockey stick graph (fully factchecked!) shows that the temperature of the world never did anything strange until the Industrial Revolution. Just a steady decline until then. So it follows that any increase since then must indeed be down to us.
But this is the ACTUAL graph showing the changes in the world's temperature since 900 AD:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8364a449-efa6-48c2-b63d-1f84ee53d690_360x179.png
It shows the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ace Age, which are not in the hockey stick graph.
If their most important "proof" is a lie, then why believe anything they say about "climate change" at all?
Another area of concern for insurance, farming. How will farmers stay in business? I wonder how many people have a grasp of how this house of cards is going to fall?
Most people would think of New Zealand as being a place they could if pushed by climate change, move to. Sorry to disappoint but we have exactly the same problems outlined in the posting. Areas becoming uninsurable, unrestricted fossil fuel usage, governments of left and right burrowng their heads in the sand and ignoring what the country needs etc. etc. Currently we have one of the highest property and rental cost per capita in the world. Immigration is at nearly 2% per annum but government will not agree so will not build the infrastructure to cope. So if you are coming, best of luck!
I wish some brilliant economist would take a stab at modeling a range of scenarios for eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels, testing critical metrics for actually #RetireRefineries #OnePerWeek and concomitant abandoning oil and gas fields plus and minus around the 6% per annum admonished by James Hansen et al. back in 2013 in the paper”Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature” (Bit.ly/Hansen3Dec13).
The model would certainly not be perfect, but reasonable assumptions would give us clues as to the order of magnitude of global discomfort, suffering and death that could arise from the failed social and economic foundations of civilization.
As it is, we are driving the tractor-trailer headlong into the darkness of night, a daunting fog-enshrouded snow covered Vermont mountain road with no guard rails, reflectors or shoulder and center line “rumble strips.”
“Homeowners unable to get affordable insurance is a problem in and of itself”.
Enthusiastically disagree.
It’ll further inspire “we the people” to advocate for real change in their local communities affecting the state etc.
Dear Bill, Please offer these newsletters directly in a website, not substack
I, pres. of Humane Civilization Worldwide (HCW) WOULD LIKE TO COMMUNICATE DIRECTLY WITH YOU. Is it not long overdue that influential people show to people and demand from governments effective responses to the crisis - capitalism or business-as-usual-with-incentives will never work. We need an effective movement that presents real solutions, governments restricting bank lending and funding/working with public-private partnership nonprofit enterprises to rapidly develop transportation systems other than electric cars and air planes, effective ways to sequester CO2 in all parts of the world (organic material oaked in stagnant water, mainly dead zones in lakes and the sea and 'artificial bogs, organic material kept dry or in freezing temperatures, etc. Please see
https://humanecivilization.org/climate-emergency/
Heinz Aeschbach, MD
I was wondering why there can't be law suits either in the U.S. or the international criminal court of justice against oil companies for endangering humanity or any related charges. There is a suit by Swiss women as well as many suits here in the U.S. by youth. Why can't we do this?
There is no crisis... there are however solutions to the problem.
In 2008 I filed the patent for what I believe is a keystone in Human Evolution...
It is a Train using advanced Scramjet technology has no moving parts and is capable of continuous permanent acceleration between any given point A to B inside a stable environment.
It is capable of theoretical infinite speed.
Furthermore it is the only Absolute Zero Emission Technology in this world.
And given the current "Climate"... shall I say "debate"?... there is no debate.
We are being Lied to by everyone of the Government and in the Industry and especially by those connected to the WEF.
With my Invention I can reduce all exhaust emissions by Aviation and Trains to Absolute Zero Emissions forever whilst providing a better Transportation and Logistic environment for everyone.
Travel would be fast and cheap the air and water clean and as a result the Human health would increase.
It would benefit every Human on earth.
Furthermore It is at the same time an Infrastructure support System that would provide Internet Electricity and education to every part on this planet.
That would make Aviation obsolete and free space which are now Airports.
All Airports can be converted into Cities (NOT Smart Cities) but living space for each and everyone.
This Invention is capable to reduce any journey say Paris to Hong Kong or LA to New York in under 1h.
Elon Musk has taken my Invention in 2010 / 2011 copied it and put it into a tube and claimed it the "Hyperloop".
Yes... I am the original Inventor of the Hyperloop.
But my Invention is so much more capable... so much better than anything else.
It is the base technology for Interstellar Space Travel...
And Investors out there that have a brain?
https://fritzfreud.substack.com/p/suing-richard-branson-and-elon-musk
As our major ("affluent"- that's most us) sources of greenhouse gas emissions (heating, cooling, driving, flying, meat-eating) continue year after year, only a tiny portion of our population embrace and tenaciously promote the following message.
"Consumers (individuals, organizations, businesses, governments) must promptly minimize their greenhouse gas emissions to bridge the gap while we work on long-term green technology and infrastructure. Less heating and less cooling (none between 13C-30C/55F-85F, https://greenbetween.home.blog). Less driving. Less flying. Less meat-eating. Less population growth (2 children max). Do it yourself. Tenaciously encourage others to do it."
Embrace the message and tenaciously introduce the message "business card" to all you encounter. (Print the business card 12 per 8.5x11 using a file from the Promote page of the website.)