Homeowners Insurance, Light Pollution and Forever Fertilizers: What I’m Reading This Week
This week has been filled with much anxiety and anticipation, often in the same event.
For example, planning a wedding is equal parts exciting and overwhelming; there are so many details to consider, and decision-making can be exhausting.
I know my trials pale in comparison to what other people are experiencing, such as those Angelenos who have lost so much in the fire. Perhaps that’s why seeing a couple find their wedding ring amid the ashes and rubble has left such a strong impression.
This year, I am challenging myself to find the commonality, the humanity and the good in others when it feels like animosity toward our fellow man is at an all-time high. I challenge you to do the same, because I believe only when we work together can we solve great problems like the high rate of serious injuries and fatalities in the workplace.
Until next time, keep healthy, stay safe and be kind!
Homeowners Insurance
The latest sector roiled by climate change: homeowners insurance.
Insurance companies are increasingly denying coverage or altogether leaving areas of the country at greater risk of natural disasters due to climate change. As a result, millions of Americans will not have protection should something happen to their greatest asset. They’re one fire or storm away from potentially losing everything. They’re also at risk of their property value tanking, hurting the local services and infrastructure that rely on those tax dollars, meaning whole communities could be devastated long before Mother Nature.
Mira Rojanasakul’s piece for The New York Times paints an overarching, albeit grim, picture of the homeowners landscape. The California wildfires, which started after this article’s publication, are a devastating example of what’s at risk.
Since 2018, more than 1.9 million home insurance contracts nationwide have been nonrenewed, or dropped, according to a congressional investigation. That nonrenewal rate is not equally distributed; in more than 200 counties, the nonrenewal rate has tripled or more. Swaths of counties in Florida and California are seeing 1 in 25 nonrenewals, but so are portions of the Gulf Coast, Carolinas, Hawaii, New Mexico and Oklahoma.
“The climate crisis that is coming our way is not just about polar bears, and it’s not just about green jobs,” said Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse during a December hearing on the investigation’s findings. “It actually is coming through your mail slot, in the form of insurance cancellations, insurance nonrenewals and dramatic increases in insurance costs.”
Rojanasakul details how residents in one New Mexico town are grappling protecting their properties and way of life.
Read the full story here.
Light Pollution
Last night, I turned out the bedside lamp, then got up to look out the window; I couldn’t believe how bright it was outside, and I couldn’t even see the moon. I was reminded of a story I heard a few weeks ago on All Things Considered.
I think there’s something most of us can agree on: We don’t like to sleep with the lights on. Light disrupts sleep-wake cycles, part of the circadian rhythm that governs many daily processes, such as appetite and hormone production.
This is true for other animals—and coral reefs.
Researchers from the University of Bristol set out to study the impacts of artificial light on coral reef ecosystems. They exposed normally dark reefs to bright lights and observed the community with infrared cameras.
After a few weeks, they found a 103% increase in the number of active species. That is, light attracted some species that weren’t normally in that area, more daytime fish foraging when they ought to have been asleep and an increase in the number of predators. Scientists don’t know what the long-term consequences are for coral reefs, which are already feeling the impacts of climate change.
Lately, I’ve been reflecting on an exhibit I had the privilege to see at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, “Lights Out: Recovering Our Night Sky.” The exhibit reminded me that we have only been burning the turning the lights on for a couple hundred years. Even so, it has completely changed our relationship with nature and the other creatures we share this Earth with.
I know it’s a small thing, but rather than burning the midnight oil I’m resolving to turn the lights out and lean into nature’s time and season.
Listen to the All Things Considered broadcast (or read the transcript) here.
Forever Fertilizers
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has, for the first time, warned that the per- and polyfluoraklyl substances (PFAS) present in sewage sludge used as fertilizer can pose human health risks.
While the agency asserts that the general food supply isn’t threatened, the contaminated fertilizer contained PFAS levels that exceeded the EPA’s safety thresholds, “sometimes by several orders of magnitude.” PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, do not break down in the environment. “When tainted sludge is used as fertilizer on farmland, it can contaminate the soil, groundwater, crops and livestock,” Hiroko Tabuchi writes for The New York Times.
For decades, the E.P.A. has encouraged the use of sewage sludge for fertilizer, and it has not limited how much PFAS it could contain. That could change, or it could not.
The Biden administration has set limits on six kinds of PFAS in drinking water and designated two kinds of PFAS as hazardous chemicals, according to the Superfund cleanup law. It is unclear what the incoming Trump administration will do with the knowledge from this new report.
Of course, the biggest challenge is curbing the amount of PFAS in wastewater in the first place. The majority of PFAS stems from upstream sources, including industry runoff and human waste, and then flows through the wastewater treatment facilities.
Read Tabuchi’s fully story here.
