Insurance crisis and global warming by gimleteye

For shame.
Once again, the Miami Herald short-changes its readers. This time, in an editorial that fails to connect the insurance crisis with its real cause: the costs of global warming.

On today's editorial page, the Miami Herald adds to the chorus of complaint against the insurance industry, whose business risk models have been radically revised to accommodate future storm losses. The paper calls for a "national catastrophe insurance fund."

What does that really mean?

What a national catastrophe insurance fund really means is that US Senators and Congressional representatives from low-lying coastal states want consumers, taxpayers, and homeowners in the rest of the nation to hedge our risks by living where we do--in places highly vulnerable to global warming.

Where are these same senators and congressmen--or, Florida newspapers' editorial boards-- in calling for policies to address the costs of global warming now, like radical reform of the US Army Corps of Engineers permitting processes, that are a pathetic rubber-stamp for politically influential developers and land speculators in low-lying wetlands? Nowhere.

During the recent campaign for governor of Florida, we were shocked that neither candidate made the connection for voters between global warming and the insurance crisis.

The mainstream media could have forced the question forward: what about global warming? But didn't.

Well, it is Governor Crist's turn to stand up on global warming. The time is now, to pull Florida's head from the sand.

Insurance industry executives are some of the sharpest business minds on the planet. Their daily news clips are filled, no doubt, with stories that profoundly impact their choices, and our wallets, but rarely make it to the editorial pages.

A 2003 report by the US Government Accountability Office reported that erosion and flooding affect 86 percent, 0r 184 of 213 Alaska villages to some degree. That statistic popped up in a widely distributed AP report just a few days ago.

Yesterday, the mainstream media reported a 2005 event in the Candadian north, when an ice sheet the size of 11,000 football fields broke from the Artic ice shelf.

Who thinks the insurance industry is making today’s decisions on rate hikes based on last year’s information on global warming, or, three years ago?

You would think that Florida, with trillions of coastal real estate values at risk, would be THE FIRST state to address global warming, and so would our newspaper editorial boards.

You would be wrong!

So, here we are at the end of 2006 and Miami Herald editorial board again rattles its pen about the insurance crisis without calling it for what it is, or, calling for changes in local policies governing land use that might diminish, looking forward, losses incurred by building in low-lying flood plains. (Today's Washington Post does the same, in a news report that also refers to the rate hikes as a result of predictions of stronger hurricanes--without mentioning global warming.)

We hate our insurance bills. But we wouldn’t ask the rest of the nation to pay our bill, without first leading the way to concrete steps leading us away from the risks of global warming.

But you haven’t read this point of view in the Miami Herald. And what you are hearing from US Senators like Bill Nelson or Mel Martinez is more of the same.

We know what’s coming for Florida. It looks a lot like what is happening in Alaska. We just don’t know how quickly. But the insurance industry, planning to be in business long after we are gone, is taking the guesswork out of that question.

Today’s insurance industry executives have been loudly proclaiming global warming for what it is: the biggest threat to the world economy. A recent British government report calls global warming the biggest market failure in world history. We agree.

On global warming, America has its head in the sand. That would go for the Miami Herald, too, that continues to write about the insurance crisis in Florida without also calling for concrete steps to show the rest of the nation we are serious about changing the habits that got us into this mess in the first place.