That Giant Sucking Sound? It’s Climate Change Devouring Your Home’s Value.
As the compounding impacts of climate-driven disasters take effect, we are seeing home insurance prices spike around the country, pushing up the costs of owning a home. In some cases, insurance companies are pulling out of towns altogether. And in others, people are beginning to move away.
One little-discussed result is that soaring home prices in the United States may have peaked in the places most at risk, leaving the nation on the precipice of a generational decline. That’s the finding of a new analysis by the First Street Foundation, a research firm that studies climate threats to housing and provides some of the best climate adaptation data available, both freely and commercially. The analysis predicts an extraordinary reversal in housing fortunes for Americans — nearly $1.5 trillion in asset losses over the next 30 years.
Insurance rates are where the systemic economic risk comes in. Not long ago, insurance premiums were a modest cost of owning a home, amounting to about 8 percent of an average mortgage payment. But insurance costs today are about one-fifth the size of a typical payment, outpacing inflation and even the rate of appreciation on the homes themselves. That makes owning property, on paper anyway, a bad investment.
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The NYT reports:
E.P.A. Tells More Than 1,000 They Could Be Fired ‘Immediately’
A spokeswoman for Lee Zeldin, the new head of the agency, said the goal was to create an “effective and efficient” federal work forceThe Trump administration has warned more than 1,100 Environmental Protection Agency employees who work on climate change, reducing air pollution, enforcing environmental laws and other programs that they could be fired at any time.
An email, reviewed by The New York Times, was sent to staff members who were hired within the past year and have probationary status. Many of those employees were encouraged to join the E.P.A. under the Biden administration to rebuild the agency, which had been depleted during President Trump’s first term. Others are experienced federal workers who had taken new assignments within the agency.
Many had been hired to work on programs that Congress created through two recent laws, doing things like helping communities replace lead pipes, mediating toxic sites and funding clean energy projects aimed at reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are heating the planet.
“As a probationary/trial period employee, the agency has the right to immediately terminate you,” the email states.
Molly Vaseliou, an E.P.A. spokeswoman, said in a statement that “our goal is to be transparent.” She declined to answer questions about the email [the opposite of transparency = opacity], though, including whether Lee Zeldin, the agency’s new administrator, intended to terminate employees and, if so, for what reason [probably no reason will be given = opacity].
What DJT means by an “effective and efficient” federal work force is one that is ineffective and hostile to the concepts of global warming and environmental protections and regulations. This comes as no surprise.
Conclusion: DJT and MAGA will serve special interests at the expense of the public interest, including the environment.
