Alright, so all of us political masochists watched the presidential debate, and a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth is happening surrounding who “won” or who had the best performance, but I think it is undebatable that the moderators had a bias for Kamala Harris. They did not interrupt or attempt to fact-check her as they did Trump, and it’s not because Kamala didn’t lie or make inaccurate statements.
I’ll focus on one particular example: Kamala’s comments on extreme weather and home insurance.
During the debate, the moderators asked the now-standard Big Climate Change Question, asserting that young Americans are worried about it. Kamala seemed well prepared, if misinformed (or lying) when in her response she claimed that people who live in states who “experienced these extreme weather occurrences” are familiar and right to be concerned about climate change, especially with regards to home insurance costs, which are high in hurricane-prone places like Florida.
Let’s examine that claim briefly.
There is not a state in the union that doesn’t experience weather extremes. There is not a state in the union that ever had a period of time where weather extremes did not exist. The point is, weather is not climate, however much the attribution scientists and public alarmists among us like to pretend it is when it suits them.
The claim that insurance premiums are increasing because of climate change is total nonsense, though it is a popular line pushed in the media and by big insurance profiteers. This claim is often tied to the “billion dollar climate losses” claims pushed by the Biden administration’s very own National Climate Assessment report.
Why would weather disasters be more costly over time? The most obvious answer is that areas that suffer from events like hurricanes have been seeing rapidly increasing populations and property values because of that demand. Property like cars and appliances and luxury goods are also more expensive, and not just because of inflation. Coastal development has skyrocketed.
A Category 5 hurricane hitting a barren desert island is going to cost a whole lot less than the same storm hitting an island occupied by a Disney resort; it doesn’t mean that the storm itself is worse in the latter case.
Insurance companies stand to make unbelievable profits off raising rates in the name of climate change, even and especially if the increase in extreme weather doesn’t actually occur (and it isn’t, especially when it comes to hurricanes). Is anyone actually surprised that insurance “experts” say that a rise in severe weather that does not appear in measured data is to blame for rising costs, and the best way to protect yourself is by spending more on coverage?
Kamala is not shaking the corporatist accusations that even the far left finds distasteful.
I’m not going to go into Trump’s answer, because honestly Trump didn’t really give an answer to the moderator’s question. Instead, he went on a tangent to correct the misleading claims about manufacturing that Kamala gave during her own answer, none of which the moderators seemed interested in challenging. I think Trump’s good track record on energy and environmental issues speaks for itself generally. However, it would have been nice to hear a straightforward account of it, and how he would reassert America-first energy policy in a new administration.
As it stands, Kamala’s answer was a whole lot of nothing too, and I am sure that it was not very pleasing to her green supporters either when she touted “historic levels” of natural gas production. Taking credit for oil and gas production that occurred in spite of the Biden administration and not because of it was an interesting tacking maneuver from Kamala, but it isn’t convincing to anyone with a functioning memory, an internet connection, and an IQ north of room temperature.
We will have to see where her flip-flopping on energy finally settles as we get closer to Election Day. But Kamala’s lies about home insurance and extreme weather are unlikely to disappear, which is why it is important that we keep reminding voters about it.
Linnea Lueken (llueken@heartland.org) is a research fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute. Twitter: @LinneaLueken