Posted on 11/14/2018 6:43:53 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
Yesterday an entire California town burned down. Paridise, CA has (had) 27,000 residents and over 1,000 buildings, and now it’s pretty much gone. A fire started nearby on a windy day and within hours everything was ash and cinders.
That fire and several others are still expanding across the state, threatening tens of thousands of homes. The sets of the TV show WestWorld are gone. Malibu has been evacuated. And dry, windy conditions persist, so the story is nowhere near over.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because massive, sometimes uncontrollable California wildfires are now an annual occurrence, due in part to gradual warming and persistent drought which combine to suck the moisture out of vegetation and turn the landscape into a tinderbox. Here’s a chart showing the recent take-off in the number of fires reported in the state (2013 was most recent year I could find, but the trend is clear – and since then the number of fires has apparently soared).
The reason this rates coverage in a financial blog is population. We’ve been moving millions of people into a place that has always had and always will have wildfires. California’s population is now about four times what it was in 1950, and the influx continues.
Fire is a crucial part of that and many other ecosystems, clearing out dead plants to make room for living. But add 40 million humans along with their buildings and vehicles, and a healthy, resilient semi-desert becomes a hellscape.
A very expensive hellscape. What does it cost to rebuild a town of 27,000 people from scratch? A back-of-the-envelope calculation (1,000 buildings at $100,000 a pop, 15,000 cars at $25,000 per, $10,000 per person for roads, sewers, landscaping, etc) yields several hundred million dollars. For one little town.
Is California budgeting for this? Are the insurance companies? Is Washington? All probably say they are, but only the insurance companies actually are – and even they are probably under-reserved for the past few years’ natural disasters.
This is a massive public planning failure, and yet another unfunded liability – that is, a future cost incurred but not saved for – to go alongside public pensions, government debt and multiplying environmental time bombs.
The result: A future of unpleasant surprises, in which governments are constantly saying “Oops, there’s this huge new expense that no one could have foreseen, and we’re all going to have to tighten our belts to cover it, sorry about the bad roads and closed libraries” – or – “Oops, there’s a huge unforeseen expense and we’re going to have to create a trillion new dollars to cover it, sorry about the inflation.”
But isn’t this mostly a private sector issue, between homeowner and insurance company, you ask? In many cases that’s true. But insurance companies have to make a profit, which means homeowner policy premiums have to be high enough to cover expected losses. As the latter rise, so necessarily do the former. Which means the part of our cost of living that’s devoted to insurance will soar as a direct result of California’s asleep-at-the-switch population management policy.
Are California wildfires as big an unfunded liability as the one resulting from the Right Coast’s soaring Hurricane Alley population? Probably not, because fires, even big ones, are smaller than tropical storms. Still, it could easily exceed a trillion dollars (let’s see what today’s fires end up costing) which – hitting a state that’s already overburdened with unfunded pensions and crumbling infrastructure – will probably end up being added to the federal government’s balance sheet via some kind of bail-out.
All of which makes a currency reset that much more likely in the not too distant future. Paying off this mountain of debts, promises and “guaranteed surprises” with current dollars is mathematically impossible. But after a 70% devaluation the numbers might work.
I wonder why the Enemy Media never dwells on the price tag on the disasters that befall us? I mean, insurance claims need to be paid - people need to rebuild...and we ALL end up paying for it in the end.
Wisconsin had some SERIOUS problems with flooding this season and last. Lots of damage, but it seems someone from Mother Government just comes along and writes us a check! Thanks!
Is there a way to actually SEE how much natural and/or man-made (I don't mean Global Warming, relax!) disasters cost, 'We The People' every year? ALL OF US are paying for the CA wildfires, the tornadoes, the hurricanes, the flooding, etc.
I've honestly never thought about it...
(Charts referred to are at the link; I couldn't get them to post. Sorry!)
Over 10,000 structures in Paradise are destroyed, likely 3,000 or so remain in either a partially damaged state or untouched.
And the answer, according to some in California, is simply sue PG&E out of existence and sell off all the assets to pay for the damages. ‘course, that really doesn’t work, but that’s their current plan.
Serious consideration needs to be paid in this country to actually implementing disaster planning including evacuation routes and how to make that information accessible to multiple agencies on an instantaneous basis during an emergency.
LOL... this kinda thing used to bother me. But since Ocasio -Cortez got elected things don’t seem so complicated. All we have to do is “just pay for it”. The answer was right there under our noses all along.
I can’t wait to see what else we learn from her.
I feel SO much better now, LOL!
Ask that retromingent jackass Moonbeam who vetoed a bill allowing clearance of more than 100 million dead trees. Sue that phony “christian” bastard first.
Mud slides, wildfires, mud slides, wildfires, mud slides, .... Do we really need CA?
It’s not all a liability. New construction means jobs. Americans bounce back and build it better than it was before, or we used to. What is the alternative, just give up and let the land return to a natural state?
Besides, the premise of global warming as being responsible for the uptick in fires already puts the judgement of the writer in serious question. How about we look at the watermelon policies that prohibit controlled burns, firebreaks and clearing undergrowth when you decide that pristine conditions for some turtle are worth roasting a few score citizens for.
Relax, we are paying for each others healthcare and retirement. That cost makes the natural disaster costs puny by comparison.
The real estate in United States is valued at 31.8 TRILLION. Our GDP is $19.4 Trillion EVERY YEAR. That $1 Trillion cost of natural disasters over several years is nothing to lose sleep over.
That is the problem with bloggers. They exaggerate to draw attention. My blog would actually quote real numbers and my conclusion would say no worries. I am afraid no one is going to read my blogs.
But there is much more serious danger really lurking out there, which is debt world wide. China alone has debt = 4 X their GDP which is not puny being the world’s second biggest economy at the moment. Then add debt by all governments (Japan takes the cake there), add debts by nearly bankrupt states like Illinois and others, add debts by counties and cities.
Natural disaters? Meh!
Huh? The last time I looked, the owner/operator of this web site lives in Fresno, California.
its “whack-a-doodle” until it happens. We are nearly $22 Trillion in debt. That will only get repaid by severely reducing it via inflation or default.
I’ve told Jim that when the time comes, they can move all operations to my barn in Wisconsin, LOL!
It sure would’ve been nice to have had past Presidents who gave a rip about our national debt.
Curious to see if President Trump touches it. I know he did a few things right off the bat to save us some $, but so much more needs to be done.
Oh goodie, another liberal bastion that couldn't see fit to re-elect Walker. A long-time friend and co-worker, who moved back from California to Wisconsin (born and raised there) after he retired recently is seething after this election. There is little escape, and no one seems interested in a civil war. The liberals and progressives will win with very few shots fired.
Re: “But after a 70% devaluation the numbers might work.”
I always shake my head in disbelief when the Federal Reserve says its “Target” inflation rate is 2%.
At a 2% compounded inflation rate, the US Dollar loses one half of its value every 35 years.
Some other root causes of the problem beyond population growth:
From the serious Leftists at Mother Jones from 2017:
A Century of Fire Suppression Is Why California Is in Flames
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/12/a-century-of-fire-suppression-is-why-california-is-in-flames/
Archive in case they disappear the article:
http://archive.today/0Qai2
How Feminism Wrecked the U.S. Forest Service
https://www.thinkinghousewife.com/2012/06/how-feminism-wrecked-the-u-s-forest-service/
It would be nice to have a current president who cares about the debt, too.
Trump's Fiscal Year 2018 budget collected record taxes, but he had a $800 billion deficit.
Obama’s Fiscal Year 2017 budget had a $665 billion deficit.
On Zillow, you can still see the houses that were for sale.
Yep jimrob is in Fresno
I live in Marin co
We ain’t gonna have no fires that kill nobody
90% is Parks. The rest is small towns with big fire mgmt
And we have the oldest water district in the state with seven reservoirs all 5-10 miles long 500 ft deep and full all the time
It’s called proper management
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