Climate change could crash the financial system, says Senator Whitehouse

6 comments

1. Believable.

2. This is v important anchor to the conversation,

   Whitehouse: There are very significant indicators and it’s going to be big, national, and even global. A number of studies show a very high risk to the world economy from calamities — and insurance is at the heart of that.

   The Florida insurance market is more or less circling the drain right now in the way in which Freddie Mac’s chief economist predicted: that with the danger of sea level rise and coastal storm activity, coastal properties become increasingly expensive to insure and then they become uninsurable.

   And once they become uninsurable, they become unmortgageable. And once buyers can’t get mortgages for those properties, the values crash — because you’ll now only have cash buyers on the demand side.

   And that was predicted by Freddie Mac to produce a systemic nationwide economic shock, akin to or greater than the [2008] mortgage meltdown

3. Are you f*ing kidding me? A single virus almost destroyed the entire financial system. What climate change has in store for us will make Covid look like a Disney vacation.

4. Duh!

5. Yeah, but, climate change will destroy the economy *later,* but fighting it will hurt the economy *now.*

   /s

6. Could lead to a [hyperinflationary depression](https://www.collapse2050.com/how-to-collapse-hyperinflationary-bust/) or a [70%+ economic crash](https://www.collapse2050.com/report-summary-the-emperors-new-climate-scenarios/)