Could This Lawsuit Ignite A Solution To Climate Change?

As we all make plans for our grandchildren to own seafront property in Indiana, one of the more intriguing lawsuits working its way through the system these days is occurring in Illinois. The Farmers Insurance Companyis suing200 cities and towns around Chicago. The lawsuit is based on the company's contention that these communities were negligent in that they failed to properly improve and maintain their infrastructure to deal with the increased rainfall and the increased severity of storms due to global climate change. The suit is a result of massive flooding in Illinois during April of 2013 that resulted in the federal government's paying out $218 million on 64,000 claims. Farmers, presumably, got socked with a similar bill. So the company is suing the communities to get back the money it paid out to individual policyholders.

This action is partly because insurance companies are infested with greedy gombeens who never like to pay out their money. But said gombeens are not stupid. They see the damage already being wrought by the Great Climate Change Hoax because it's costing them money, which is the most basic American measure of them all. And, while part of me sees some very shrewd rich people who have found yet another way to turn a buck speculating on futures in human misery, another part of me wonders if this might not be the best way to get the general public -- and then, theoretically at least, the country's politicians -- to take the problem seriously. After all, thanks to the legalized influence-peddling in our elections, and its celebration in the highest court in the land, we live in an entirely corporatized political universe. But even the 1% will drown if the water gets high enough. Maybe homeowner's insurance can win where tree-hugging has failed. At this point, I'll take anything.

(Of course, in this matter, we should all keep in mind the adviceof Mr. Winston Wolf. Corporate America is still going to ignore -- or minimize -- the problem, and some of corporate America is going to continue to finance actively the industry of climate denialism, which means that the corporate hive mind is either not going to connect the Illinois payouts with, say, our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, or it's going to pretend loudly that one is not connected to the other, but small steps are steps nonetheless. At least there's somebody at that level of American business that recognizes it's a damn problem.)

It's a long shot for the insurance companies, but it's not completely implausible, and if you have enough cases like this going forward it might build some helpful precedent," said Robert Verchick, who served on the Obama administration's Climate Change Adaptation Task Force He said insurance companies are vocal about the rising costs of global warming and want to push cities to invest in prevention as a way to avoid future lawsuits.

If Drew Pearson's fictional president, Ben Hannaford is correct, and the right things in America always get done for the wrong reasons, then maybe the insurance industry can be the reason why the country's political elite gives up on being deliberately stupid and calculatedly reckless on this issue. If it starts costing enough important people enough money, we might even start caring about the polar bears again.

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