Saturday, September 15, 2018

How Many Hurricane And Flood Deaths Are Due To US Flood Insurance Subsidies?

From The Wall Street Journal, Opinion, "The U.S. Is Rich, So Storms Are Worse: Donald Trump’s thought processes may be a mystery, but better hurricane policy isn’t." by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr:
[H]ow should aid be conditioned so it doesn’t become an artificial incentive to live and build in high-risk places?

A 2016 study ["The Perverse Effects of Subsidized Weather Insurance" by Omri Ben-Shahar & Kyle D. Logue, Stanford Law Review, Volume 68, March 2016] published in the Stanford Law Review pointed out what everybody in Washington quietly knows: “We call weather-related catastrophes ‘natural disasters,’ but the losses” are often due to “questionable government policies.”

... the National Flood Insurance Program, which long ago turned into a perverse subsidy for coastal development.
***
As the respected insurance consultancy AIR Worldwide put it in 2015, not climate change but “the growing number and value of coastal properties is the largest factor impacting hurricane risk today.” A whopping $17 trillion in property now exists inside the U.S. storm-surge zone.

... one could even legitimately ask how many have died over the decades as a result of artificial subsidies for Americans to locate in harm’s way.

No comments:

Post a Comment