$50 BILLION!
That is the damage estimate – so far – and these fires are still, for the most part NOT contained! Insurance companies are going to be hit for about $20Bn (again, so far) in damages but this is far, far from the end as THIS IS THE COST OF IGNORING CLIMATE CHANGE! At the rate we’re going (past the 1.5° C mark in 2024 that was supposed to be the line in the sand for 2040) this will be New England and many other places in the US that are a drought away from total catastrophe.
9,000 homes have been incinerated so far and, while that doesn’t sound like much, as I noted on Wednesday, we’re talking 9,000 x $3M, which is $27Bn in homes alone but then there’s contents and infrastructure and commercial… It adds up pretty fast. And that’s just destruction as there is also damage and this is occurring in an area that already has a severe housing shortage so rents are projected to jump at least 10% in 2025.
Now, if I were a city planner, I’d call this Pacific Palisades cliff a total loss and, rather than issue a building permit to rebuild 20 homes, I’d authorize a 2,000-unit low-income housing development like NYC did with the Frederick Douglas Houses (22.5 acres) and the Baruch Houses (27.6 acres) in the 50s and 60s (there were about 10 of these projects in total).
Building structures with modern building standards can reduce the overall insurance risk in the county (a major issue in LA at the moment) and allow for more efficient use of firefighting resources while also creating permanent, affordable housing stock (those NYC projects are still going strong over 60 years later). Biden’s disaster declaration provides immediate funding leverage LA should take advantage of.
Rather than simply rebuilding the inequitable mistakes of the past, why not take the opportunity to truly address the issues that plague the region?
This disaster serves as a stark warning about the accelerating costs of climate change, with Munich Re’s Chief Climate Scientist noting “The physics are clear: the higher the temperature, the more water vapor and therefore energy is released into the atmosphere. Our planet’s weather machine is shifting to a higher gear. One record-breaking high after another – the consequences are devastating. The destructive forces of climate change are becoming increasingly evident, as backed up by science. Societies need to prepare for more severe weather catastrophes.”
Economic losses due to climate change were estimated at $2,328 TRILLION ($2.3 Quadrillion) between 2025 and 2100 under a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario. If global temperature increase is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius (which we just passed), climate change losses during the same period could have been lowered to $1,062 TRILLION. This could have resulted in over $1,200 TRILLION in avoided losses when compared to the BAU scenario. Less than $300Tn of climate finance would have been required WORLDWIDE between 2025 and 2050 for adaptation and mitigation, or roughly 20 percent of avoided losses.
Wake up people! There is a COST to inaction. There is a cost to not maintaining your car, there is a cost to not educating your children, there is a cost to not vaccinating, there is a cost to many, many things in life that are easy to put off now but will end in disaster later and THESE are the consequences we are already facing – and it’s only 2025. We really can’t afford 4 more years of inaction – no matter how good it may feel at the moment!
This is NOT a one-time event, this is the first inning of a game we are playing for our survival on this planet – and we’re already behind…
Our “thoughts and prayers” go out to the people of California but we’ve seen what “thoughts and prayers” do to stop gun violence so I don’t hold up much hope with that strategy.
We need to do better – please.
— Phil
Oh, and this was great on The Daily Show:
