Hacker News Reader

Comment by phs318u | Hacker News Reader

Having worked in general insurance for a number of years a decade or so ago, it is no surprise to me that this is happening and while California being a canary may relate to their own particular regulatory regime, the underlying fact is that localised impacts of climate change across the world has been and will continue to drive insurance premium increases. If you really want to peek through a window into the future when it comes to risk, just look at what insurance industry actuaries are predicting.

View on HN

I mean, I was born in California and lived there as a young kid and until recently moved out. Climate change may be playing a part, but nobody wants to admit that the towns that burned down were tinder boxes. I’ve been to Paradise many times years before it burned and the many others in the Sierra, I always thought, this whole place is going to go up in flames, why would you build here? Of course, it did.

You might still be able to go to the library and pull up the microfilm, the old newspaper articles show wildfires were a regular occurrence and many of the same towns burned down a century ago. Either this has buried on purpose or property owners don’t want to confront uncomfortable facts.

> property owners don’t want to confront uncomfortable facts.

This seems to be a constant around the world. Just look at how many towns have been built closer to Vesuvius than Pompeii: https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=40.75&mlon=14.49

California has intentionally been building up more and more organic material to burn due to neglectful forest management. The state government has a budget the size of Finland, but they don’t know how to spend money effectively.

A. Most of the forests are national forests not state land. The 10 o’clock rule was a nationwide wildfire policy.

B. Every western state is facing the problems with increased wildfire.

Oh but let’s bash California because its in vogue.

> just look at what insurance industry actuaries are predicting.

Could you recommend a good source for that? Preferably also for Europe?

North American actuaries have developed two localised indexes - the Actuaries Climate Index and the Actuaries Climate Risk Index [0].

“The Actuaries Climate Index (ACI) measures the frequency of extreme climate events over recent decades for the U.S., Canada and 12 sub regions in North America.”

“The Actuaries Climate Risk Index (ACRI) illustrates the economic impact of climate risk and its evolution over time.”

There is work being done to develop a European ACI [1]. Australia has its own AACI [2].

[0] https://content.naic.org/cipr-topics/actuaries-climate-index

[1] https://web.actuaries.ie/development-european-actuaries-clim...

[2] https://www.actuaries.digital/category/climate-change/aaci/

I had expected these rate increases to come a decade ago, to prevent losses. Why do they end up being purely reactive ?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com