The Real Reason State Farm Won’t Sell Home Insurance in California Anymore

“Climate shocks are making parts of America uninsurable,” the New York Times observed following State Farm’s announcement.While climate change might be in the zeitgeist, there are better explanations for State Farm’s exit.

Source: The Real Reason State Farm Won’t Sell Home Insurance in California Anymore - Foundation for Economic Education

State Farm is exiting California as an insurance provider. Many say that the reason relates to climate change even though State Farm themselves do not. This, of course, is because climate change (formerly known as global warming) is blamed for virtually every natural disaster these days and California has been having issues with wildfires.

However, if climate change is causing increased wildfires, it seems to be a climate change localized to California. Overall, there has not been an increase in the severity of wildfires in recent years. So what's different about California?

It turns out it isn't so much how the climate is changing in California but how the government manages land. Wildfires are nature's way of maintaining healthy forests. The more you suppress them, the worse they get when new ones occur. Here in the Southeast part of the country it has long been standard procedure to have controlled burns. This allows the underbrush to be thinned at a time when the weather is favorable and when you are prepared.

Unfortunately, the government manages most of the land in California and unsurprisingly they do a poor job of it. But California is often a leader (not in a good way), showing what eventually will come to the rest of the country.

Climate change may well be a real problem. However, the more climate change alarmists falsely blame climate change for things that are not the fault of climate change, the less people are going to pay attention. Then again, we do seem to be moving towards a society that greatly resembles that of the movie Idiocracy...