Personal climate resilience is more important than ever

With climate change steadily worsening and Trump and Musk torching government capacity, homeowners are on their own

New Jersey house destroyed by Hurricane Sandy

We’re really in it now, folks.

The Trump-Musk shock-and-awe assault on American democracy and governing capacity remains on full blast. They are eviscerating federal agencies, programming backdoors into highly sensitive government code bases, and exacting revenge on their enemies. The fog of war is pervasive. Much of what they’re doing is illegal, but in many cases the line between constitutional and not is fuzzy, and nobody is sure how much the distinction will ultimately matter. Amid this fascist frenzy, people are already choosing to keep quiet to avoid Trump’s attacks, an ominous dynamic frequently seen in autocratic takeovers.

In parallel, Trump is aligning the U.S. with Russia and other tyrannical states, while threatening our traditional democratic allies in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. NATO, which has kept the peace in Europe since WWII, is a dead letter. And it is rapidly dawning on our allies that the U.S. is no longer a trustworthy friend. The second and third order effects of these tectonic shifts are impossible to predict but sure to be far-reaching.

And yet, hope is very much alive. There’s a quote I can’t find that goes something like, “With the people on your side everything is possible; without them nothing is.” This is mostly true in democracies, and also true to a surprising degree in non-democracies. It’s difficult for presidents to meaningfully consolidate power if a majority of their people oppose them. This is cause for optimism.

Despite having been elected twice, Trump has never been popular. He won this time by one of the narrowest margins in history. He’s been in office less than two months and already polls show his approval slipping, growing doubts about his economic leadership, and escalating hostility toward Elon Musk’s conflicts of interest-looting. Voter discontent is also showing up at Republican town halls¹ and in growing protests of Tesla, Musk’s car company.

Rising grassroots discontent with Trump is the best reason to be optimistic about America’s future.² It isn’t much - certainly a lot less than we’d like - but it’s something to build on.

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In this socio-political context, the line between seeing things clearly and cognitive doom-scrolling can be awfully fine. I’m therefore somewhat reluctant to call attention to other difficult topics, but unfortunately the crisis of American democracy doesn’t let us press pause on climate change. Moreover, electing a sociopathic climate denier president makes it more urgent, not less, to make sure your life is resilient to growing climate impacts. This can mean a number of things, but most people’s biggest vulnerability is their home.

Your home is both a large financial asset and the practical and emotional center of your world. Homes are also exposed to the destructive weather events that climate change is making more frequent and powerful. If you had to keep your 401k lashed to the roof of your car with bungee cords, where its value could be eroded by extreme weather, you’d start to get close to the conundrum of your home being a financial asset that’s also your first line of defense against intensifying weather.

To fully understand the threat climate change poses to homes, we have to think systemically about how physical risks manifest financially. As I explained in a 2023 article on this topic, there are three ways intensifying climate impacts will drive down the value of vulnerable homes:

1. Under-insured physical damage - Un- and under-insured physical damage from a climate-fueled extreme weather event. If a storm causes $100,000 in damage to your house and your home insurance policy pays out $60,000, the value of your home has decreased by $40,000 (not counting the inevitable increase in your future insurance costs).

2. Rising cost of ownership - Climate change is already driving up the cost of home insurance, property taxes, and repairs and maintenance. As this happens, a home’s value falls. I explained why and showed how in this 2022 piece, Climate change and housing bubbles.

3. Decreasing market demand - As awareness of the implications of climate change grows, buyer preferences will shift toward resilient homes and demand for relatively vulnerable homes will decrease. Fewer potential buyers means lower sale prices for homes with high exposure to climate impacts.

The main takeaway is as straightforward as its implications are far-reaching: in the years ahead, climate vulnerable homes will decline in value relative to less exposed homes. At the same time and for the same reasons, the value of climate resilient homes will increase disproportionately.

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Now that climate disasters are familiar to those of us paying attention, it’s easy to feel like you have a solid grasp on what to expect in the years ahead. You may, but it’s possible your instincts are misleading you somewhat. That’s because as we keep pumping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the world keeps getting hotter.

The unfortunate upshot is that however severe the worst storm/flood/wildfire you’ve experienced where you live, worse is likely coming. We’ll have more catastrophes in the next five years than we had in the last five - that’s a lot - and more still in the five years after that.³

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Moreover, Trump is going to actively impede climate action, degrade weather and climate monitoring, and defund disaster response. This is one of those areas where Trump is so radical that if you describe in plain language many of his administration’s actions, you end up sounding like a nut. So I won’t attempt to explain that Trump’s FBI is moving to criminalize Habitat for Humanity and other nonprofits simply because they received climate change-related grants from the EPA under President Biden. But if we just look at how Trump is weakening FEMA and dismantling NOAA, which includes the National Weather Service, it’s readily apparent that for the next 3.8+ years the federal government will be an obstacle, not an ally, in mitigating and adapting to climate change.

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In this challenging context, owning a home that’s vulnerable to climate impacts is a bad situation that will get worse over time. If you’re looking to buy a house, it’s critical you buy one that’s climate resilient and avoid vulnerable homes at all costs. If you already own a house, it’s imperative that you understand its climate vulnerability or resilience.

If your current home is vulnerable to climate impacts, you should consider selling it and buying a more resilient one. Importantly, this is an option that will expire at some point - nobody can say precisely when, but once it starts to happen it will happen fast. Right now climate vulnerable homes can still be sold for a reasonable price, but eventually so many people will understand the risks that the value of those homes will crater. Please trust me when I say you don’t want to be selling your climate vulnerable home in the future when scores of them are on the market and buyers have learned to avoid them.⁴

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This all leads to an important and under-explored question: how can you tell if a home is vulnerable to climate impacts? I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking about this, and in the coming weeks I’m going to offer a structured way of approaching about it, as well as some practical tools for doing it. Stay tuned!

1. The pushback was strong enough that Republicans reached for their decades-old lie that angry voters were actually paid actors and not their constituents, and the head of their campaign committee advised them to quit holding town hall meetings.

2. An underrated way of opposing Trump is simply to recognize how polluted our information system has become and commit to making sure the people in your life are aware of what’s happening.

3. That statement is not an expression of pessimism, ideology, or anything like that, it’s just the unavoidable conclusion of a basic analysis of the data in light of the science.

4. It’s worth noting there are already ethical issues with selling such a home. They will grow more pronounced in the future, not less.