Homeowners kept in dark about climate change risk to houses, says report | Environment | The Guardian

GR:  Efforts by governments to support development by hiding important information from consumers is rampant in the U. S.  I am not surprised that this is true in Austrailia as I assume that it is true worldwide.

Guardian:  “The risk that houses in some areas of Australia are likely to become uninsurable, dilapidated and uninhabitable due to climate change is kept hidden from those building and buying property along Australia’s coasts and in bushfire zones, a Climate Institute report says.

“The report says there is untapped and unshared data held by regulators, state and local governments, insurers and banks on the level of risk, but that most homebuyers and developers are not told about the data and do not have access to it. The full scale of risk may only be recognised through disaster or damage, or when insurance premiums become unaffordable Climate Institute report“Even when public authorities, financial institutions and other stakeholders possess information about current and future risk levels, they are sometimes unwilling, and sometimes unable, to share it with all affected parties,” the report released on Monday says.”

Source: Homeowners kept in dark about climate change risk to houses, says report | Environment | The Guardian

Once-Wild West Disappearing Under Development | Californians For Population Stabilization

Discussion of the principal cause of the loss of natural areas to development in the U.S.

“The natural landscape of the American West is gradually disappearing under a relentless march of new subdivisions, roads, oil and gas production, agricultural operations and other human development.”

Rogers is citing a new report at http://www.disappearingwest.org posted by Conservation Science Partners, a nongovernmental research group with offices in Truckee, California; Seattle, Washington; Flagstaff, Arizona; Fort Collins, Colorado and Bozeman, Montana. According to Disappearing West, an area of natural habitat the size of a football field is lost to concrete, asphalt, subdivisions, strip malls and drilling pads every two and a half minutes.

In the decade between 2001 and 2011, a combined area of 2.8 million acres (4,321 square miles) – 15 times the combined size of San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco – was developed in the 11 Western states. By far, California lost the most open space of all of them.

Yet there is a gaping hole large enough to drive a bulldozer through in both the Disappearing West website and Rogers’ article about it: the role of human population growth in driving all this development and loss of open space. Various wildlife population sizes are mentioned in the Disappearing West report, but there is not one mention of human population size and growth. Why this glaring omission?

Source: Once-Wild West Disappearing Under Development | Californians For Population Stabilization