Semafor: “The devastating wildfires that are sweeping Los Angeles may accelerate the flight of home insurance companies from California in spite of recent regulatory changes aimed at retaining them, the state’s previous top insurance official told Semafor. At least two major fires are still raging largely uncontained, aided by ongoing high winds, and 24 people have been killed, with initial estimates indicating the blazes could be the costliest in US history, resulting in up to $30 billion in insured losses and up to $150 billion in total economic losses. For California to experience fires like these “was never a question of if, it was a question of when,” said Dave Jones, California’s former insurance commissioner. The fires “shouldn’t be a pretext for the insurers to renege on their commitment to start writing again in California,” he said, “but they might anyway.” Wildfires aren’t the only problem. Realistically pricing the risk posed by floods and fires could wipe nearly $3 trillion off the $46 trillion value of the US housing market, research published today by Susan Crawford, senior climate fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, concluded. To safeguard the stability of the housing market going forward, she argues, flood insurance needs to become better and more widespread. That starts with boosting FEMA’s work on future-facing flood maps, a project that could be in jeopardy if the incoming Donald Trump administration moves ahead with plans to scale back federal climate science…”