Sierra Club Says National Flood Insurance Is Totally "Wack" (original) (raw)

Today's New York Times has a front page article, "Storm Cost May Force Many from Coast Life," the tone of which basically advocates National Flood Insurance as just another middle-class entitlement program. The apparent problem is that the completely bankrupt federal insurance program is doubling its premiums in a vain attempt to cover its losses. The upshot, according to the Times, is that only the wealthy will be able to afford to live along the coasts. Yet, as the Times article reports one environmentalist lobby group not noted for its economic acumen gets it—the Sierra Club:

"The irony is, if we allowed market forces to dictate at the coast, a lot of the development in the wrong places would never have gotten built," said Jeffrey Tittel, director of the Sierra Club's chapter in New Jersey. "But we didn't. We subsidized that development with low insurance rates for decades. And we can't afford to keep doing that. Should a person who lives in an apartment in Newark pay for someone's beach house?"

The Sierra Club has left the cloud cuckoo land in which Congress dwells and has now joined Reason in the reality-based community. I praised an insightful Times op-ed that calls for ending federal flood insurance earlier today.