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Opinion
Property Insurance Is the Canary in the Climate Coal Mine
We too have a little bird trying to call our attention to a major problem. That bird is the insurance industry with its army of actuaries.
Nov 18, 2025
As the cost of insuring our houses escalates around the United States and the world, it appears that property insurance is acting like a canary in a coal mine.
Canaries used to be taken into coal mines because they served as an early warning system if dangerous gases were building up. Since the canaries were more sensitive to these gases than people, they protected the miners from life-threatening conditions. When the canary dropped dead, the miners could still get out.
Like the canaries, the actuaries who interpret data for insurance companies are more sensitive than most individual people to changes going on in the world. Actuaries earn big salaries because the financial health of their employers depends on them.
Things have already gotten so bad that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) recently sponsored a webinar panel discussion: "Extreme Weather Events and Insurance: Households, Homeowners, and Risk." (This link will take you to a video of the event.)
Any coal miner who refused to evacuate a mine when the mine’s canary keeled over—perhaps saying, “I don’t believe there is any real danger here”—would not have been long for this world.
The panelists were located in the United States (Washington, DC and Madison, Wisconsin) and England (London and Cambridge). Climate changes are not limited to the United States, nor is awareness that we need to do something about them if we can.
The panelists were not grinding particular political axes. They were discussing the measured fact that an increasing number of extreme weather events are destroying valuable property—housing, commercial buildings, streets, bridges, etc.—requiring insurance company payouts to policyholders.
These insurance payouts must be financed by the premiums charged to people who are insuring their property. As damages increase, the premiums also have to increase. Although premiums may be regulated by state regulators, if they do not allow the needed increases insurance companies will pull out of doing business in that state.
As insurance companies pull out, it may become more and more difficult—perhaps even impossible—for people to insure their houses. But if a house cannot be insured, banks won’t finance a mortgage on it, and if it cannot be financed the owner may be unable to sell it.
For many people, their home is their primary investment, and they cannot afford to live in it if they cannot insure it. If it burned down or was otherwise destroyed, they would be wiped out financially. But if they cannot sell it, then the homeowner is a real pickle.
Disrupted housing markets can produce disastrous results for a country’s economy in general, as we Americans discovered during the recession beginning around 2008.
The impact of a world that is heating up is not being felt as much in the United States as in many other countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia which are suffering from unusually long bouts of very hot weather, flooding downpours alternating with extreme droughts, forest fires, etc. Some island nations may be literally wiped out as melting icebergs and glaciers increase sea level, putting them underwater.
But enough extreme weather events are already occurring in the United States that the insurance companies must make major increases in their prices.
Any coal miner who refused to evacuate a mine when the mine’s canary keeled over—perhaps saying, “I don’t believe there is any real danger here”—would not have been long for this world.
Americans who continue to politicize discussion of global warming—either denying its existence, its extent, its speed, or its seriousness—will be like that coal miner. We too have a little bird trying to call our attention to a major problem. That bird is the insurance industry with its army of actuaries. We ignore that warning at our own risk, and at the risk of our children and grandchildren.
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What the Pearl Clutchers of Congress Can Learn From Pritzker’s List
Why are members of Congress, with so few exceptions, so short on ideas for fighting back against Trump's manifold abuses of power?
Nov 18, 2025
On October 23, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker filed an executive order establishing a state commission charged with recording abuses inflicted by federal agents sent to tyrannize the streets of Chicago during President Donald Trump’s tellingly named “Operation Midway Blitz.” The point of the new commission was to give the abused somewhere to go with their bruises, smashed windows, and shattered lives, and to compile evidence that could be brought to bear in checking the abuse, and perhaps even (at some point) punishing it.
It is this last point, not made explicit in the executive order, that I find so encouraging about Pritzker’s executive order. It puts the Trump administration on notice that their days of reckless self-indulgence are numbered and that a case against them is being compiled.
Not only does Pritzker’s List send a message. It gives people something, if only a very little thing, to do. It reminds the abused citizens of Chicago that they, not the camouflaged out-of-state goons patrolling their streets, are in charge, and that they have a personal role to play in taking those streets back.
All of which causes me to wonder: Where are the JB Pritzkers of Washington DC? Why are members of Congress, with so few exceptions, so short on ideas—good at “pearl clutching” in response to the president’s manifold abuses of power (here, for once, Donald Trump isn’t lying), but so clueless about fighting back? Where, for example, is the commission that Senate democrats have set up to compile evidence of criminal abuses of power in Pete Hegseth’s extrajudicial killings off the coasts of Columbia and Venezuela? How have they not gotten around to founding it?
Had someone with a backbone and big ideas taken the lead in DC, they might have come up with a plan that would both hit back at the Republicans for their cruelty and bring some real benefit to those affected by it.
In fact, dozens of such commissions are needed to collect evidence of criminal malfeasance, and to create a public record of the dates, times, and details of the crimes, from those working in the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, and so on. All have been dragooned into abusing rights, flouting the Constitution, and telling Trump’s lies. If nothing else, the very existence of such de facto grand juries, organized by elected officials and helped by the efforts and evidence of affected citizens, will put the Trump administration on notice that a case against it is being compiled.
But Democrats don’t operate this way. They tell us that the midterms are looming, that something good is bound to happen in a year’s time, so “Donate Now”—as if we had that kind of time to waste, and as if there were nothing that they should be doing for us, and with us, right now.
Evidence of the DC Democrats’ well-meaning incompetence was on full display in their recent handling of the government shutdown. To their credit, they did manage to make Donald Trump look mean-spirited (as if that needed emphasizing), but the final cave-in made them look weak and, yet again, satisfied with just getting by, without a plan. The whole initiative ended up imploding because it depended on saner heads prevailing among the Republicans, and that was never going to happen.
With no Pritzker in sight, the dearth of ideas really showed. Had someone with a backbone and big ideas taken the lead in DC, they might have come up with a plan that would both hit back at the Republicans for their cruelty and bring some real benefit to those affected by it. The federal healthcare subsidies were scheduled to expire. Given the Republicans’ determination to see them dead, they were beyond rescue. So why not let Republicans bake that poisoned cake, then force them to eat it!
Here's how it might have worked. Subsidies expire and healthcare costs soar. That’s entirely on them. As a counter move, and to actually help those in need, Democrats could have undertaken to set up funds (via a consortium of state-sponsored and charitable efforts) to help those affected deal with, and cover at least some of, their soaring costs. But, in doing so, they could also make clear up front that this aid is temporary, merely a stop-gap measure, and that the charitable subsidies will expire, say, six weeks before the midterm elections next fall. They would then assure those depending on these subsidies that further help is both wanted and can be expected after the elections, but only if those in the House and Senate who supported Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” are voted out of office—“Oh, and here, by the way,” they would add, “are the names of those who voted for it.”
Now that would be hardball! But DC Democrats have nothing like this up their sleeve. They are quicker to tell you why any such plan could never work than to come up with one that can. But there are some out there, such as Pritzker with his list, who are writing a new playbook, one to “get going on” right now, based on fighting back, getting things done, and giving Trump and his conspiracy of fools far more to worry about than they can handle.
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Peaceful Protest—Not Polarization—Is the Recipe for Saving Our Democracy
Nonviolent movements attract a big tent—and based on research from the many successful nonviolent resistance movements against authoritarianism worldwide, we need a big tent now.
Nov 18, 2025
On a cloudy Wednesday in mid-April, Jared and Laurie Berezin, a couple in their 40s from Maynard, Massachusetts, pulled their car into the Macy’s parking lot at the Burlington Mall. Carrying a sign that said, “Just Say No To Harassing Immigrants,” the two stood by themselves outside Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s New England Regional Headquarters.
One week later, there were five people. Six weeks after that, there were 60. Earlier this month, at the 29th consecutive Wednesday protest, there were more than 700.
Singing and chanting, the crowd of grandmothers, ministers, war veterans, nuclear physicists, retirees, and many others offered hope and support as a handful of immigrants arrived for their deportation hearings. Using bullhorns, they decried injustices happening inside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility where hundreds of immigrants, many with no criminal records, have been detained for multiple days since January.
This is what peaceful—and pluralistic—civil disobedience looks like. And it’s happening all over Massachusetts—and the country. Polarization has no place in these protests. Respect for due process and the law does.
No Kings and protests like Burlington’s remind us that when we come together in solidarity, we can do amazing things.
In October, No Kings Day was touted as one of the largest peaceful protests in US history, second only to the first Earth Day in 1970. Here in Boston our organization, Mass 50501, estimated over 100,000 gathered on Boston Common to stand in solidarity for our Democratic Republic and against the rapid rise of President Donald Trump's authoritarianism.
As an organizer, I am often asked why there is so much energy and commitment to nonviolence behind this ever-growing national movement. There are two reasons: a deep devotion to the values this country was founded on. And the knowledge that history shows peace is more powerful and effective than other means in achieving change.
As a mother and an educator, I will not associate myself with violent protests. Nonviolent movements attract a big tent—and based on research from the many successful nonviolent resistance movements against authoritarianism worldwide, we need a big tent now.
We make space for all as long as we can remain respectful of each other and work together to hold up the tentpole of democracy. This is a perfect reflection of what our country was founded on.
That is why protests like Burlington’s last and lead to positive impacts such as the Burlington Town Meeting’s overwhelming vote in October for a resolution demanding that ICE end overnight detentions and overall “inhumane” conditions.
“Burlington should never be complicit in unlawful or inhumane detentions,” Town Meeting member Phyllis Neufeld, the resolution’s author, told a throng of protesters outside the ICE facility last month. “We are now on record demanding change.”
When our United States was formed, it was by people from different backgrounds and religions who were willing to work together to oust a British King and create a new political order founded on personal liberty and justice for all.
But our democracy has not always worked well for all people. Our history is rife with periods of systemic divides: Think of the Gilded Age and the Jim Crow South.
As happened then, we are now witnessing firsthand how easy it is to create wedges between us. This is exactly what has been exploited by this administration. Those who follow history know that this divide did not start with our 47th president, Donald Trump. It began nearly three decades ago when politicians such as Newt Gingrich decided to stop trying to reach across the aisle and instead use derision and polarization for power.
The United States of America—the country known for individualism—has been manipulated into teams of red and blue. Our politicians are elected to fight for the needs of all of their constituents, but now they vote down party lines instead of finding compromise and solutions on important issues such as affordable housing and healthcare.
Meanwhile, Americans are paying higher prices for goods and losing their benefits and social safety nets. Many of us are watching our neighbors being dragged away by masked men. Bills and blood pressure are up, while empathy and mental health are down.
This is the authoritarian playbook. They want us fighting each other. It makes us easier to control. No Kings and protests like Burlington’s remind us that when we come together in solidarity, we can do amazing things. We are building communities and rekindling our sense of belonging.
It is time to reunite. This will take work and daily action, but there is a place for everyone in this movement. We are writing American history right now—what will your story be?
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Trump: A Symptom of the End of the World?
The president of the United States is deeply involved in dealing with the two ways we human beings have figured out how to destroy ourselves (and potentially so much else on this planet): nuclear war and climate change.
Nov 18, 2025
When I began TomDispatch in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan, believe me, the world did not look good. But I guarantee you one thing: If you had told me then that, almost a quarter of a century later, the president of the United States would be Donald J. Trump (and had explained to me just who he was), I would have thought you an idiot first class or totally mad! Donald J. Trump as president of the United States, not just once, but twice? In what century? On what planet? You must be kidding! (And what a dreadful joke at that!)
Now, of course, I would have to put all of that in the past tense (and probably add yet more exclamation points)!!
Once upon a time, you could never have convinced me (or just about anyone else) that we would find ourselves in such a world. Living in it now, however, it’s all too easy to see—yes!—President Donald Trump as a (if not the) crucial actor (making up his lines as he goes along) in a potentially devastating planetary drama still distinctly in development. (And I’m not even thinking about the possibility that, in the not-too-distant future, he might actually order some kind of invasion of, or assault on, Venezuela!) What’s rarer is to imagine him as a genuine symptom of this world’s end (at least as we human beings once knew it).
(And yes, there are indeed a lot of parentheses in this piece so far, perhaps because, at almost 81 and a half, I feel increasingly parenthetical to this eerily strange world of ours.)
He’s clearly right that heaven will indeed be a problem for him, since he’s so intent on sending us all, himself included, to hell in a handbasket.
Okay, I know, I know, all of that couldn’t sound more extreme. And unfortunately, that’s not even the half of it. After all, at this very moment, the president of the United States is deeply involved in dealing—in a fashion that would once have seemed as unimaginable as Donald Trump himself—with the two ways we human beings have figured out how to destroy ourselves (and potentially so much else on this planet): nuclear war and climate change.
Think of “President” Trump, in short, as a twofer when it comes to potential planetary destruction. And once upon a time (twice upon a time?), who would have imagined that possible when it came to a president of the United States? I’ll say it again: the “president” (and given the strange circumstances of this world of ours, that word does seem to me to need quotation marks!) of—nowhere else but—the United States of America! (And yes, we do seem to be on a planet where exclamation points can’t be used too often!! In fact, we may truly need some new symbol for the extremity of this world of ours!!!)
Okay, let me calm down a bit. After all, so many years after he first entered the White House, it’s true that, if you check statistician Nate Silver’s website, the president’s approval figures are indeed dropping significantly. But that may not, in the end (and “end” is anything but an inappropriate word here), truly matter to the man who clearly thinks better of himself than anyone else on this planet and possibly any other planet, even if he does now worry about whether or not, in the next life, he’ll actually make it to heaven. (“I want to try and get to heaven, if possible,” he said recently. “I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole.”)
Nonetheless, I’d advise Saint Peter, if he’s still holding the keys to that kingdom’s gateway, to watch out. For his own safety, I’d urge him to consider burying those keys and stepping aside. (Oh, and let me use parentheses—and dashes—again here to suggest, sadly enough, that Donald J. Trump couldn’t be less dashingly parenthetical in this all too strange world of ours and, for all we know, the next one, too.) In fact, should he indeed surprise himself and the rest of us by making it to heaven, count on something else—and yes, I’ll need a colon here (lots of punctuation being necessary to deal with You Know Who): Expect him to tear down those ancient pearly gates and begin building a heavenly—or do I mean hellish?—version of Mar-a-Lago up there; in short, a new East Wing of heaven.
Living in a Sci-Fi World
In the 1950s and 1960s, from Brave New World and 1984 to Fahrenheit 451, I grew up on dystopian fiction and sci-fi, but honestly, there wasn’t a shot in hell of a chance that Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, or Ray Bradbury, amazing as each of them was, could ever have imagined Donald Trump. (Think of him, in fact, not as Big Brother but perhaps as Humongous Brother.) If any of them had done so back then, rest assured that they wouldn’t have sold a copy of a book with such a ludicrous, unrealistic character and plot line. It tells you something that former Vice President Dick Cheney, who died recently, the fellow who became “the Darth Vader” of the administration of George W. Bush and helped launch the disastrous post-9/11 American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, by opposing Trump, now seems almost like a positive figure by comparison.
After all, today, Donald J. Trump has his hands on (all over, in fact) the two distinctly apocalyptic and all too science-fictional ways we humans have discovered to do in ourselves and much of the rest of the planet. Only recently, he demanded that the US military start testing nuclear weapons for the first time since 1992. In fact, on Truth Social, just minutes before he met with China’s President Xi Jinping, he stated that he had ordered “the Department of War” to resume such tests. “I’m saying that we’re going to test nuclear weapons like other countries do, yes,” he recently told CBS’ Norah O’Donnell. “Russia’s testing, and China’s testing, but they don’t talk about it.”
Hmm, not only don’t they talk about it, but as far as anyone on this planet other than Donald Trump can tell, like the United States, neither of those countries has tested a nuclear weapon since the 1990s. But no matter. If President Trump wants to set off new nuclear explosions on Planet Earth, why shouldn’t he? What harm could he possibly do? (Admittedly, Russian leader Vladimir Putin is talking about responding in kind and is indeed already testing nuclear delivery systems.). And if it led to a future nuclear confrontation with either Russia or China, honestly, how bad could that possibly be? Well, yes, if such testing were indeed to lead to an actual nuclear conflict, there is the possibility of creating what’s come to be known as “nuclear winter” on Planet Earth, but let’s not go there. (Brrr…) And mind you, that’s the less likely of the two possible ways President Trump could bring end-of-the-world possibilities into the everyday lives of us all.
With Donald Trump in the White House, consider us lucky (after a fashion) that we haven’t yet come up with a third or fourth way to do this planet and ourselves in, because count on this: He’d be on it instantly.
The other way—what might be thought of as a future climate-change summer—would be a slow-motion version of atomic hell, thanks to the pouring of endless amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas, and so potentially heating this planet to the boiling point. Sadly enough, that possibility seems to fit Donald Trump’s skill set to a T. After all, though few may remember this anymore, he won his presidency the second time around on the stunningly blunt slogan “Drill, Baby, Drill,” which really couldn’t have been a more forthright promise about what he planned to do if reelected. Yes, let me say it one more time—pour greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels into our atmosphere in a distinctly hellish fashion. And give him credit, when it comes to campaign promises made in 2024, he’s proven (at least on this one issue) to be a man of his word.
After all, his record after only one term in office was impressive enough, although, on this strange planet of ours, he was anything but alone. (Good job, Vlad!) Just consider the fact that the last three summers have been the three hottest in recorded history, while 2024 was the warmest year on record (and 2025 is likely to come in second or third). In fact, a recent report found that a person somewhere on Earth is now dying every minute from rising global heat, thanks to the burning of fossil fuels. And none of that is faintly stopping Donald Trump from acting to ensure that the future will be so much worse. After all, barring a total surprise, he’ll have three more years to continue what he’s been doing from the first day of his second term in office: “unleashing” oil, natural gas, and coal in any way he can. (Mind you, to put things in even grimmer perspective, under Joe Biden, a president who claimed to be determined to decarbonize our world, US oil production hit a record high in 2024.)
Only recently, for instance, President Trump opened the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, which is estimated to hold billions of barrels of crude oil, to fossil-fuel drilling. And that’s just one—let me put this as mildly as I can, though I’m already sweating—modest act of his. Meanwhile, he’s been going out of his way to discourage the production of clean energy, especially wind power, in any way he can. As the British Guardian reported recently, a total of nine offshore wind projects set to provide electricity to nearly 5 million American households and create about 9,000 jobs in this country are already under investigation or have been paused by the Trump administration. Meanwhile, approvals of oil and gas drilling permits are—I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn—distinctly on the rise.
And give him credit for accuracy: He’s clearly right that heaven will indeed be a problem for him, since he’s so intent on sending us all, himself included, to hell in a handbasket. But here’s the thing when it comes to climate change: None of this should faintly be a surprise. All of it was apparent enough in his first term in office and yet Donald (“drill, baby, drill”) Trump was indeed reelected in 2024, despite what everyone should have known about his plans for this planet and the rest of us.
A Slow-Motion Version of a Global Nuclear Catastrophe
With Donald Trump in the White House, consider us lucky (after a fashion) that we haven’t yet come up with a third or fourth way to do this planet and ourselves in, because count on this: He’d be on it instantly. And yet, sadly enough, two ways are undoubtedly going to be plenty. Or even one way, since I must admit that I find it hard to believe that even Donald Trump is going to get us into an actual nuclear war. Unfortunately, with him, I certainly wouldn’t rule anything out, but somehow it doesn’t seem likely.
And yet, if you think about it, in some sense, we’re already in the equivalent of a nuclear war, since climate change just happens to be a slow-motion version of a global nuclear catastrophe. Think of the release of all those greenhouse gases as indeed a long-term version of that nuclear mushroom cloud, blasting this planet in a fashion that’s likely to lead to an all too literal hell on Earth in the decades to come.
And if we’re indeed heading into such a landscape, then consider Donald J. Trump a slow-motion version of Satan (as are Vladimir Putin and all too many other global leaders). Certainly, his policies are making a mockery of global efforts (however modest) to rein in greenhouse gases. In some way, what lends him such a hand is the very fact that, unlike a nuclear war, climate change, being a slow-motion version of global hell, is strangely hard to take in.
Whether Donald Trump makes it to heaven or not, there can be little question that his legacy on earth will be satanic indeed.
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