Shelter from the Storm

I appreciate the sentiment behind Del. David Rudolph's plan to force insurers to cover coastal homeowners, but it seems misguided to me. (Background: Some major insurance companies, including Allstate and Nationwide, announced a while back that they would stop writing new policies for certain parts of the mid-Atlantic region, citing the increased probability of hurricanes due to higher ocean temperatures -- i.e., global warming.) Besides undercutting the whole basis of insurance -- you can't mitigate risk, after all, if you have to throw down money on almost-certain losses -- it also strikes me as a denial of the situation we're in. Even if we start aggressively limiting our carbon emissions now, we still have to develop policies for living with the consequences of global warming, stronger and deadlier hurricanes being only one aspect.

Much of the debate on global warming focuses on the supply side -- energy policy, mainly. Just as consequential, I think, will be our land-use policies, which perhaps due to their intensely local nature, don't get as much media exposure. This means not only developing less energy-intensive communities, but also making sure communities are able to cope with a changing climate. It's not exactly Smart Growth, but it's in the same vein.