CA (un)FAIR Plan is required to periodically attempt to find and place policyholders with alternate carriers if there are options. They operate a clearinghouse to do this.
While the FAIR Plan is not required to help a policyholder mitigate their risk, it does offer up to 14.5% discounts off the wildfire peril premium for those who take mitigation actions prescribed by CA Department of Insurance (CDI), including being a member of a Firewise USA Community in good standing, screening vents with 1/8in metal mesh, etc.
All admitted carriers are also required to consider these mitigations actions when determining premiums; however, most of these rate filings have not yet worked their way through the overly bureaucratic CDI review process.
The bigger trend right now is the Wildfire Prepared Home program, which is the only science-based standard recognized by insurers.
No, that's not correct, otherwise SB 1060 would not be moving through the Senate. It's specifically direct insurance companies to consider mitigation.
You also missed the part that the mitigation is only for vegetation hardening. Nothing about structure specific hardening. Which, even if you did control for the vegetation, which AB38 addressed, you're still not guaranteed a discount.
Concerns yes but the better of two evils. I have not tested this consistently but I have leaned towards rather having the plastic contaminants from the RO system than whatever was upstream of the RO. It might be the wrong choice but after living the Bay Area I became too aware of how easy it is for contaminated water to show up from local hot spots.
Edit: What I would add is I often ponder how much additional nanoplastics are getting added compared to what is being removed. I know some of the test suggest RO is adding more but I am not sure if it accounts for the complete life cycle in a bottling plant. For the near term I have just settled that nanoplastics are the lesser evil to me than PFAS and other chemicals within the water. It is scare mongering but I look at how that town in Oregon I believe had has wide spread PFAS contamination in ground water from the airport fire foam.
I'm not too worried. They were looking at bottled water. My home system isn't the same one they were testing. It's similar, it might have similar problems. But I also don't know how often those filters are changed. My filters last 6 months, I would imagine it sheds most of the plastic right away, and you are suppose to drain the first couple gallons. The other components are rarely switched out, only when they break.
Overall, I would think a home system sheds less. Also strung out through that entire article is the fact that all water has plastics. So at this point we are sorta screwed. Pick your poison, chemicals and plastic in your water, or mostly plastic...
iirc, it's not clear what filters were used commercially, based on this article and how exactly it translated to residential system where filters working under much lower pressures
They did the same to the Incan Quipu, which more recent study and discoveries suggest was an actual full written language, not just a counting system.
The conquistadors came across full-fledged empires with sophisticated arts and cultures who’d built cities that dwarfed their European counterparts with building techniques and on terrain that would’ve flummoxed western builders at the time (and still cause us to pause today) and destroyed as much of it as they could put their hands on. Smallpox was the disease, but the Spaniards were the plague.
I agree this is tragic and under-reported, but I think you weaken your case when you exaggerate like this.. Its not a direct contest for "greatness" since they were so different.
As the other response notes, Tenochtitlan was possibly the largest city in the world at the time, and the Aztec empire contained many other cities with populations over 10k. The Inca built a massive empire (8-12M people) centered on the Andean mountains linked together by roads and suspension bridges and built monumental architecture using masonry techniques that are impressive even today. We're just starting to get a handle on the scale of the Mayan empire, because they built their cities in parts of the Guatemalan jungle we have a hard time getting through today - some of the more recent work has found evidence of raised causeway networks stretching over a hundred miles linking large scale settlements. Go further south, and the Amazon jungle basin has been considered uninhabitable because of the density of the jungle and the poor quality of the soil, except that we've found evidence of cultivation of plants and more recent evidence of large-scale settlements and waterworks.
The Spaniards did not walk into a backwards people or somehow just miss what they were looking at - the civilizations and cities they found were advanced and obviously developed and on a scale that, even outside Tenochtitlan, would have rivaled European cities at the time for both size and sophistication.
It's not that much of an exaggeration. Tenochtitlan--the capital of the Aztec Empire--is estimated to have been about 120-150k people at the time of contact, which is larger than any city in the Spanish Empire at the time. Even the Spaniards themselves, as they recorded in their journals, were astonished at the scale of Tenochtitlan.
this story is tragic and it is not widely known, and also..
the story of Jonah in the Hebrew bible describes a city of 100,000+ people .. and that was just one city somewhere at that time.. that was three thousand years ago in the Middle East
Rome reached the million people mark in the 2nd century. All great cities of classical antiquity (familiar to the Spanish of that time) had over 100k pop: Carthage, Tyre, Byblos, Athens, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople...
Malthus was wrong on a ton of things, but his theory of population growth in pre-industrial cities effectively holds to the data (even according to economic historians).
Cities were effectively constrained by available food and transportation costs before the steam engine, so you'd get cycles of population growth, followed by population decline.
Particular places reached support capacity of surrounding land until something caused systemic failure, and population decline. Think of ancient China, for example with its cyclic population growth in a unified empire, followed by some natural catastrophe or political instability -> civil war as the political system weakened.
Because the natives joined in with them. The Aztecs were hated and ruled through military subjugation. They had a strict class system where the warriors were always trying to expand the empire and held most of the power. They required tributary and glory for the warriors (Aztecs started out as mercenaries). They'd invade their neighbors and bring in captives for human sacrifices... During one of their big holidays they "sacrificed" over 20,000 people by ripping open their chests with rudimentary knives.
That was extreme and insane to most of the native inhabitants. And it was even more outrageous to Europeans (or Asians). The Spanish weren't hero's and they exploited the natives and unwittingly spread disease but the Aztec civilization had to go and it died just as much from internal revolt than from the small amounts of European men that Cortes commanded. I have more respect for the Pueblo's than I do for the Aztecs. They survived harsher environments and had impressive self-taught farming and structural engineering skills.
This is not an apologist perspective, my heart weeps for the knowledge that was lost. But from the perspective of the Spanish conquistadors, all of Aztec culture looked like devil worship. Bear in mind these were Catholics who were suddenly immersed in a culture that regularly performed ritual human sacrifice. So they buried their statues and burned their books. It's tragic, but not all that surprising, really.
Up to 1/2 inch thickness... Great. Just need to 4x that to replace 2x4s, the construction material that the entire US home building process is built around.
But looks like it's ready to go for some applications (plywood). Hopefully they can get it thicker and replace more dimensional lumber. Or maybe I'm reading their site wrong?
“ Fermilab irradiated these samples with the electron beam and shipped them back to 3M.
3M sampled both the headspace—the air at the top of the container—and the liquid to verify that the PFAS of concern had been destroyed without releasing hazardous products to the air.”
I think this is what we call fox guarding the henhouse. 3M has EVERY incentive to declare this whiz bang treatment effective because of the legal liability and financial incentives involved.
I’d want independent test results and a full accounting of the byproducts of this treatment before putting any faith in it.
>3M has EVERY incentive to declare this whiz bang treatment effective because of the legal liability and financial incentives involved.
That sounds entirely incorrect. It seems to me that they'd want to avoid a second round of public flogging and lawsuits when it's later discovered that they falsified efforts to remediate their original catastrophe.
I'm not too sure about that. When profit is the main goal, guaranteed savings(not doing the necessary spending to actually clean up) in the short term often take priority over possible long term avoidance of fines and lawsuits.
In the short term, actually cleaning up and only appearing to clean up probably give the same return in terms of PR and so on, but the former is cheaper.
Not to say I condone them misleading the public, not at all.
> When profit is the main goal, guaranteed savings(not doing the necessary spending to actually clean up) in the short term often take priority over possible long term avoidance of fines and lawsuits.
The interest rate is the mediator between the short term and the long term. Lower interest rates mean that the long term is comparatively more important.
They say there is a solution to the problem so regulators let them pollute more and make more money. Eventually we all figure out they lied and it doesn't work or they don't use it and then they get a tiny fine. Business as usual.
Huh? You could say that about any cost at all. Yet, companies are constantly on the look out for ways of cutting costs. Use less material, use less labour, pay lower fines, find a way to optimize taxes, etc.
The next round of flogging and lawsuits will come long after most of the people involved are gone, having already received their accolades and bonuses for "solving" the problem.
Incentives for a corporation are not the same as the incentives for the people, and the corporation's decisions are made by people who follow their own incentives.
This same duty was there already for decades and it didn’t prevent them from destroying the environment. I don’t think it’s the gotcha argument you think it is. In the end their growth was bigger than any lawsuit.
If the growth was bigger than the lawsuit, then from the corporations point of view, the earlier executives made the right decisions.
We were talking about aligning interests of executives and long term shareholders. You seem to be talking about aligning interests of those shareholders and interests of the environment or so?
That's an important topic, too, but it's not the same.
Yeah, it's their job. What's your point? Are they actually doing it? Signs point to no.
But maybe the real problem is that most of today's shareholders will be gone by then, too. They benefit from juicing the stock and selling high, leaving the cost for some other sucker down the road. They have no incentive to find uncomfortable truths either. I think short-term ownership is one of the roots of a lot of today's economic ills.
> Yeah, it's their job. What's your point? Are they actually doing it? Signs point to no.
The share price today already reflects the long term outlook for the stock.
If you can 'juice' the stock and sell it high, that's a job well done.
> I think short-term ownership is one of the roots of a lot of today's economic ills.
Why? A change in ownership doesn't affect how stock are valuated. If it's eg widely know that a company is going down in five years (because eg their industry is declared illegal), the price will already drop today. It's just a standard backwards induction argument.
Btw, with the stratospheric rise of passive index investing, truly long term ownership has never really been more widespread than today.
And yet, stock prices can swing very rapidly as new info comes out, or as circumstances change. Almost like, despite everyone's best effort, they're at best a very crude approximation of future value.
> The share price today already reflects the long term outlook for the stock.
as an excuse for artificially inflating the stock price? In a context where we're specifically expecting new-but-honestly-predictable information to push it down later?
There can only be predictable news-that-pushes-the-shareprice-lower, if all the people who trade the stock are idiots.
You just need eg a few short-sellers who anticipate those predictable news. They can make a killing by selling the stock at the higher price now and buying it back at the lower price later.
If enough people take this opportunity to make easy money, that brings the share price down today as if the news had already dropped.
So, how do you want to 'artificially' inflate the stock price? Especially how do you want to do it in a way that doesn't require everyone in the market to be idiots only?
If this story was true, we would never see large swings in stock price, because they would already be priced in. But we do. Stock price is simply not an accurate enough predictor to create the incentives we want.
(The most obvious reason this is nonsense is that sometimes the future fall is only predictable to people inside the company. Short sellers don't help here. We need another incentive for those people to do the right thing.)
Those very same french fries may stop containing PFAS sometime in the future. However, the kids who loaded up on PFAS early in life may never be able to get the stuff out of their bodies. :(
I’m curious to learn more about your suggestions, but Icebreaker’s website [0] suggests this isn’t necessary:
“Use a normal warm or cool machine wash cycle with regular powder or liquid detergent. Separate light and darks as usual. Don’t use softeners or bleach.”
I own Icebreaker garments btw, here's what Miele says:
Biological detergents contain certain enzymes that are there to remove proteins from a garment. This is how they are effective at cleaning things such as egg from clothing. However, silk and wool are also made up of proteins. Biological detergent cannot differentiate between a bit of egg stain and a bit of silk so the enzymes will eat away at it.
This results in very small, randomly placed, holes on a garment. They won’t appear after the first wash, but tend to appear after several washes once the enzyme has gradually eaten the fabric away.
One has to imagine the build, test, release iteration cycle for consumer-grade transportation is quicker than commercial trucking. Most trucks have an expected life of 30-40yrs vs 3-10yrs for passenger vehicles (yes, the used auto market exists but luxury buyers always buy the new model). Electrification is a major component in any fleet-based strategy going forward, and that’s going to happen quicker on passenger vehicle platforms than commercial trucks as well.
Also, the potential damage and liability differential between a 90,000lb freight truck and a 4000lb passenger vehicle has to factor in, too. All collisions and fatalities are unfortunate, but better to limit the liability early on in the scaling phase and come back to commercial trucking later once the company and tech are further along.
I'm not going to win points for defending a megacorp, but if this person wants to self-insure (and owns his home outright), then he would be entitled to do so. But until the mortgage is paid and he is able to self-insure, the insurance company sets the rules.
Put differently, if a fire were to happen and this open air mechanics/tire shop were to ignite and destroy the three neighboring properties, is this homeowner entitled enough to pay all damages caused by his negligent storage of combustible materials?
[edit] Plenty of notice should have been provided so the property owner had an opportunity to address the issues found, which may or may not have happened. We only have one side of the story here.
Put differently, if a fire were to happen and this open air mechanics/tire shop were to ignite and destroy the three neighboring properties
Again, a description like really misrepresents the facts. The guy appears to own 2, possible 3 motor vehicles, and has two sets of 4 tires. It looks as if he had hoped to upgrade one of his vehicles by putting some shiny new wheels on it. O am not a car guy, but this looked to me like some personal property stored in his yard, not a hobby that had spun out of control. If he had stored them in a shed or covered storage area nobody would have said anything (because they wouldn't have seen it) even though the risk would have been identical or greater. There's no particular reason to expect a fire to break out in the middle of a subdivision, tires aren't known for just spontaneously bursting into flame.
By contrast, in my neighborhood there is a tire business of some kind at one end of a residential street, which must have 2-300 tires stacked up, directly adjacent to a bunch of houses and a freeway overpass. They've been there for man¥ years so I assume it's a normal business with normal permits, even though it's a massive fire hazard with a higher risk of a fire breaking out from the unpredictable nature of commercial traffic, industrial equipment, vandalism/arson etc.
The main issue for insurance companies arises from a combination of California's increasingly hot and dry climate and the fact that most uses here are made out of wood and thus extremely susceptible to fire damage. The people rationalizing the insurance company's decision as if this guy somehow had it coming are BSing themselves.
5 cars. 1 on street, 3 porch, 1 tarp. Most likely two more in double garage.
>and has two sets of 4 tires
Over 30 tires, some truck sized (bigger than what that astro van? uses). Rusting engine block, heads, plus transmission case, exhaust and fender/hood in the grass.
Reporter material shows fresh garbage bags in the yard suggesting dude started cleaning the moment he got the rejection. Whats more drone footage looks to be recorded after on the ground clips, with backyard meticulously cleaned, things neatly stacked (still 6 piles of tires) and overgrowth mowed.
>in my neighborhood there is a tire business
In commercial zoning, paying commercial insurance.
While the FAIR Plan is not required to help a policyholder mitigate their risk, it does offer up to 14.5% discounts off the wildfire peril premium for those who take mitigation actions prescribed by CA Department of Insurance (CDI), including being a member of a Firewise USA Community in good standing, screening vents with 1/8in metal mesh, etc.
All admitted carriers are also required to consider these mitigations actions when determining premiums; however, most of these rate filings have not yet worked their way through the overly bureaucratic CDI review process.
The bigger trend right now is the Wildfire Prepared Home program, which is the only science-based standard recognized by insurers.