Could Flood Insurance Sink Us Before The Water Does?

Life Raft

Everyone knows flood insurance isn’t the most exciting topic. What this episode presupposes is: maybe it should be?

It’s not difficult to imagine a future in which climate change-fueled storms and floods depopulate our coastal communities. Generations of Louisianians have been moving northward for decades, after all.

But could the rising cost of flood insurance actually drive people away sooner? That’s the question we’re exploring this week. We talk to two experts who explain the history of flood insurance in the United States, where the program is headed, and why flood insurance affordability is a political problem.

Rebecca Elliott is an assistant professor of sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her book is called Underwater: Loss, Flood Insurance, and the Moral Economy of Climate Change in the United States.

Andy Horowitz is an assistant professor of history at Tulane University. His book is called Katrina: A History, 1915-2015.

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