Senator Whitehouse: "It May Be Too Late"

[Brenda]

It May Be Too Late is a climate change idiom that is gaining recognition because global warming is bringing the threat of irreversible climate system collapse to reality as nightly TV news broadcasts flash floods and record-setting temperatures year-by-year with increasing intensity, but that’s just for starters.

Along the way, Earth is regurgitating decades of climate system abuse as glacial lake outbursts bury entire villages, Blatten, Switzerland and more telling yet, the world’s leading insurance companies, e.g. Allianz (the world’s largest) warn of uninsurable mortgages because of a lashing climate system. They foresee an upcoming systemic breakdown of the financial system, which is climate change’s payback, unless, as stated by insurance executives, CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels are stopped.

Nobody has warned of the dangers like Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) who on September 9, 2025 delivered his 301st Time to Wake Up speech to the US Senate, warning of a collapsing socio-economic future because of a whacky climate system fed by the fossil fuel industry’s excessive CO2 emissions, but as he explains in some detail, horror of horrors, fossil fuel interests are now on ‘the inside’ with a complacent Trump administration as global warming’s new partner working in its best interests to exceed +2°C above pre-industrial, With the full power of the US government as an ally, global warming should be able to achieve much hotter temperatures much sooner. Then, in due course, Climate Armageddon will have its own nightly TV news show, for the full hour.

Senator Whitehouse has brought out in the open for all to hear: “It may now be too late to prevent it. It may now be too late to wake up. But I hope not… We are on the verge of a major economic shock. But Congress is lost in the moment, not paying attention. When that economic shock hits, I want people to know how and why we failed to protect them. The shock is simple: Climate change makes property insurance unpredictable. So, insurance prices soar. Insurers withdraw from high-risk regions. And fake or flimsy insurance populates the market. As the insurance market goes, so goes the mortgage market… as mortgage markets fail, property values fall.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My personal opinion is that no, it's not a matter of "may be too late" - IT IS TOO LATE, however...

301 freaking speeches about this - Senator Whitehouse is a true American hero. And the American MSM has covered what percentage of these speeches (other than CSPAN) compared to the hyper excessive coverage of the murder of a vastly unknown blogger and the white hood fest of the memorial and funeral for that Lying Bigot Extraordinaire blogger?

I was out of state the other day and picked up a free USA Today at the hotel. A few pages in I saw a full page photo of Kirk with the words saying something about how he is with our Lord. And yeah, I guess anyone can buy a full page ad in the paper, but it really PISSED ME OFF.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/09/19/senator-whitehouse-it-may-be-too-late/

[Autumn]

1. It's already too late. The politicians and corporations know that

but it's all good. They will all be just fine.

[MrWowWow]

2. A Big Change is Coming

[Brenda]

4. Love Neil Young but I don't like the AI crap

Does Neil approve of his music being used with such stupid AI video?

[erronis]

11. That video seemed a mockery - perhaps intentionally detrimental to the reality.

Agree with you.

[Xolodno]

3. It is too late.

Insurance companies won't even bother with high risk areas anymore. It's no longer an issue of pricing, but an issue of refusing to offer coverage. The cost is so high now, you are better off to just toss money into a bank account to rebuild later, if you decide to do so. At least all that gets destroyed will be less likely to happen again.

[Brenda]

5. The linked article does discuss that.

What I think is going to happen is that the huge migration happening now of people moving to places like Arizona, Florida (1,000 people a day) and other SE coastal areas is going to halt abruptly and reverse flow. But they'll lose money on their homes if they didn't outright lose it and they won't be able to move very far.

It's criminal for builders to keep luring people into these areas that have ongoing flood events. Not even related to hurricanes or storms, just sunny day flooding due to limestone substrate, depleting aquifers and sinking city situations, oh and rising seas, they completely cover up with beach "nourishment" programs.

[Xolodno]

7. Not just flood zones...

...but wild fire prone areas as well. I don't have and neither do any of my nieghbors have an insurance policy. You can pay the cost for another home in 10 years, so it doesn't make sense. We are less than a mile from a lake in a wooded area, that normally would cost a fortune. But because no one will insure here, except for the last resort state carier, the values are super low. You basically have to come in on a "all cash" offer.

[erronis]

12. ... not just flood zones. Look at Appalachia (North Carolina) and Helene

Look at Vermont (my old home state).

[Brenda]

14. Absolutely!

I don't live in NC but I bought flood insurance for the first time in my life last year because of the Helene damage in NC (my family's state) and it was not too expensive. I don't live in a flood plain or zone. But I live downhill from folks and I have creeks nearby. So I bought a policy.

[sop]

55. Historically, insurance has been based on the concept of universal risk pools.

Last edited Mon Sep 22, 2025, 10:05 AM - Edit history (1)

The concept of a "risk pool" is to cover everyone, regardless of the risk (within certain limits, of course). Insurance companies achieve this by grouping all individuals together in a risk pool, to spread the costs of insuring the riskiest members across the entire population of insureds, thus preventing insurance companies from excluding high-risk individuals which would negatively affect the economy.

Insurance works on the (reasonable) expectation that most insureds will never file claims within the policy period, offsetting the higher costs of those who will sustain losses. By creating a single, large pool, the financial burden is distributed across a broader population, which ideally stabilizes premiums for everyone. This has been a fundamental concept in the insurance industry from the beginning, but climate change is altering that equation.

Adverse selection occurs when higher risk entities are more likely to buy insurance coverage, while the lower risks, who often cannot afford coverage because of high premiums, choose to opt-out. This pushes up the average cost for those who remain in the risk pool, creating a "premium spiral" that eventually makes coverage unaffordable for almost everyone. That's what's happening in the property insurance market now.

Mandated universal risk pools mitigate this by requiring everyone to purchase insurance, and requiring insurers to cover everyone at affordable prices (within certain limits). This is how automobile insurance works; every vehicle owner is required by law to purchase insurance, guaranteeing coverage for everyone at an affordable price (within certain limits). Property insurance doesn't work like auto insurance; only those with mortgages are required by lenders to purchase insurance to protect their lenders' interests.

For the property insurance market to remain viable, governments will likely be forced to mandate coverage for every property owner, and to subsidize part of the risk. That won't be popular with "free market" Republicans, or their voters.

[yellow dahlia]

6. Sheldon Whitehouse - when he speaks, I listen.

He does his homework.

[alwaysinasnit]

8. Sen. Whitehouse is our modern-day Cassandra.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra

Cassandra or Kassandra (/kəˈsændrə/;[2] Ancient Greek: Κασσάνδρα, pronounced [kas:ándra], sometimes referred to as Alexandra; Ἀλεξάνδρα [3] in Greek mythology was a Trojan priestess dedicated to the god Apollo and fated by him to utter true prophecies but never to be believed. In modern usage her name is employed as a rhetorical device to indicate a person whose accurate prophecies, generally of impending disaster, are not believed.

snip...

[0rganism]

9. If it is, in fact, too late (and I agree that it is) then that needs to be seen as a start to a serious conversation...

... not the end of the discussion.

In particular, topics of this conversation need to include responsibility, accountability, and mitigation.

We humans need to ensure that such calamities do not impact deep future generations as they will the species of the next 200 years. Willingly pushing for or engaging in the policies that caused the incoming climate crisis must become a hard cultural taboo - like poisoning a well or kidnapping children. Such advocates and practitioners must be shunned by default if life, let alone human civilization, is to continue.

[Brenda]

16. Yes. Just like what Greta Thunberg and a lot of other people

have been saying for many years now. Al Gore ring a bell?

Yet Americans just wave off climate kooks and attack the messengers.

What you say about justice is true but it will never happen because people like Musk and Thiel own and run the world.

[Kaleva]

45. China produces about as much greenhouse gases as all the other industrialized nations combined

And that includes the US

[Duppers]

53. There are DUers who also haven't seen the light

I'm tempted to name one certain person here.

[JoseBalow]

10. Global warming will only get worse

Yes, it is too late...







https://rapidclimatechange.org/

[Brenda]

17. Yeah, I used to work with Lonnie Thompson, I know. nt

[LymphocyteLover]

28. Yes, this is the scenario. But too late for what exactly? Stopping warming from going out of control?

I don't buy that.

[Kaleva]

46. It would take a world wide effort never before achieved

to prevent it and we see no signs of that happening.

[LymphocyteLover]

50. So, we just give up? Just burn fossil fuels until we turn into Venus?

[Kaleva]

58. I'm not giving up. I'm working on surviving what is coming

Those who aren’t are the ones who have given up.

[Polybius]

13. I think it was too late in 1950

Possibly earlier. Still though, we can slow it down.

[Brenda]

19. Can't yet decide if you're a comedian or something else.

You like to be contrarian, so let's examine your comments: "I think it was too late in 1950" then "Possibly earlier. Still though, we can slow it down."

What happened in 1950 regarding this discussion?

How can we slow it down?

What's the purpose of posting such things other than to sow some kind of seed of discontent or disagreement with my post?

[Polybius]

31. The Industrial Age happened, and fossil fuels burned for 200+ years before we even vaguely attempted to reduce it

How can we slow it down? Seems pretty obvious. Continue what we have been doing since the 80's, be green (and try and be greener). Of course, it wasn't until later that green really became a thing. If we hadn't started with green initiatives throughout the world, we'd probably be much, much worse than we are today.

I honestly have no idea why you think I'm disagreeing with you. You think it's too late, I think it's too late. See? We agree.

[Kaleva]

47. The US has been reducing the amount of greenhouse gases it has been emitting

The big problem is that China’s economic boom has pretty much put the nail in the coffin to any efforts to slow it down.

[Cirsium]

24. Not really

No idea where that is coming from. Most of the increase in CO2 emissions has been since 1950.

"Slow it down?" What do you propose?

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

[Timewas]

15. My opinion

It has bee "too late" for quite a while now.

[LymphocyteLover]

27. too late for what exactly?

[Timewas]

42. To stop

We are too far into climate failure to stop it now, about all we can do is adapt and try to slow it down. They will never give up their greed and allow anything really meanngful.

[Kaleva]

48. And we won't see people here willing to back to 60 amp service panels

[Timewas]

57. Probably not

Personally my house is on solar abot 70% of the time for now until I complete our setup. Takes time as I am doing it myself and keeping the cost down to an affordable range.

[LymphocyteLover]

51. They don't HAVE to be in power though. New leadership is possible that cares about this.

[moniss]

18. We were warned long ago, we knew what to do but

our GQP/corporate owned leaders and others lacked the will to force change because of fear of disruption and backlash and the fear of losing the bushels of money from political donations.

[DFW]

33. Al Gore's truth was both true and too inconvenient to accept n/t

[Captain Zero]

40. And Al Gore won the Nobel Prize for saying it

Truth.

[2na fisherman]

20. And mass starvation

The upheaval of modern agriculture will bring mass starvation events as more and more formerly fertile farmland disappears. This will trigger waves of population migrations and political instability (war?) as more unstable nations collapse from their inability to provide for their citizens. I'm old but I pity the younger generation having to inherit this dystopian future currently in the making. No wonder there are so many nihilists among us.

[Brenda]

23. Well said

With all these "alternate realities" existing - people living in internet bubbles, people living in real life religious cults (churches), and the non-stop lies from the rightwing nut jobs...

A very sizable number of Americans have no idea what is happening with the global climate changes and what is coming.

[Duppers]

54. And even here on DU❗🤬

[markodochartaigh]

29. Indeed.

At approximately 50 minutes into this video Colonel Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff, says that a NASA climatologist told him that under a worst case scenario by 2100 there would only be enough arable land on the planet for 400 million people. This video is more than a decade old and we have seen that we keep hitting the mark for the IPCC worst case scenarios.
Rising sea level is already a problem for places like Miami, Kolkata, Lagos, Shanghai, etc. but by the time enough anthropogenic energy has been released into our biosphere to raise sea level two meters, enough energy will have been released into the atmosphere to cause serial cereal grain harvest failures and the starvation of billions. Only about 3% of anthropogenic energy released goes into melting ice. The latent heat of fusion of water means that this small amount causes only slow sea level rise. Even with ice shelf destabilization the real danger for most of humanity is starvation.

?feature=shared

[surfered]

21. We're toast. It was a great planet at the right time, but short term self interest has doomed us.

[ananda]

22. No "maybe" about it.

It's been too late for awhile now.

[Kaleva]

35. Yes

[BidenRocks]

25. I was 15 for Earth Day 1

The first Earth Day occurred on April 22, 1970, organized by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson to raise public awareness about environmental pollution. Inspired by a Santa Barbara oil spill and the student anti-war movement, Nelson's idea for campus teach-ins evolved into a national demonstration involving 20 million Americans, leading to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and landmark environmental legislation. -Google AI

Every damn time we tried to make change, the Republicans mocked it and received enough support to diminish the scope of the problem. Jimmy Carter himself tried with solar water heaters until Reagan mocked them and took them out. By doing so he threw a permanent wrench to the 30+% who never believe anything a democrat says or does.

Perhaps I missed the fight for climate by the GOP/MAGA. I don't think so.

Check every politicians bank before and after serving in Washington. Those petrodollars were more important to old fucking politicians.

The planet will be fine.

Humans on the other hand, not so much.

Evolve or die.

[LymphocyteLover]

26. Too late for what exactly? It's not all or nothing. It's not too late to stop warming that will

kill most life on earth. Every bit we can do to slow warming even now will make a better future possible.

it's incredibly harmful to say it's too late because then people just give up.

[markodochartaigh]

30. On the other hand,

the way that mainstream climate scientists have been handling the situation, changing the baseline from 1780 to early 1800's to mid 1800's to 1880-1920, now saying that we need an average over a decade, these tactics don't seem helpful to me. I've been following anthropogenic climate change since Dr Hansen testified before Congress in 1988. He seemed at least as concerned then as most climate scientists today. Continually raising the baseline so that we never hit 1.5°C has not been a good strategy, in my opinion.

I think that scientists need to say that we have lost the ability to save x (give specific examples) but that we still can save x (give specific examples), but only if we lower fossil fuel emissions, and decrease livestock emissions.

[NickB79]

32. Sociatal collapse across most of the planet

Most of the planet's governments reduced to dictators and warlords like Somalia in the 90's. Advanced civilization holding on by a thread in northern regions.

Mass starvation that kills billions by the end of the century.

A mass extinction event that will rival the meteorite impact that took out the dinosaurs.

Possible nuclear war between nations fighting for dwindling natural resources.

[Kaleva]

37. It's also harmful to say it's not too late, that there's still a chance

when there isn’t one. People will put off making efforts to prepare for what’s coming.

[DFW]

34. It's all about water

Without enough water, there is no food, in short, no civilization.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

36. No water

No life period

I think a lot of these ceo motherfuckers are at best nihilists at worse psychopaths waiting for a disaster to prove they are superior because they prepared. But eventually they’ll die too.

[DFW]

43. They will find out too late

Just because their demise comes 24 hours after ours, their “superiority” only gave them an extra day to contemplate the inevitable.

[2na fisherman]

39. Lack of fresh water is an existential threat

Even more important than the mentioned famine conditions is the added factor of the growing global drought. Aquifers are receding in many heavily populated areas. World leaders should be making cooperative contingency plans for fast-tracking global desalination facility investments and other ways to increase water supplies. I can just imagine a time when a billionaire tries to buy a gallon of water on the black market for a pound of gold!

[DFW]

44. I heard from some Israelis about desalinization

They are, according to the ones I talked to, seeing it as that which will sustain their agriculture, and thus ensure their food supply. If reports of quiet meetings between Israelis and Saudis are true, I’ll bet that fresh water and using some of their vast oil wealth to built desalinization facilities were on the agenda. Food crops don’t grow if irrigated by oil, gold or sea water.

[liberalla]

38. Bookmarking

Important post!
Thank you.

[Captain Zero]

41. I've said for years. Insurance Companies will know.

And their actuaries are telling them where to drop property insurance coverage.

Your high property insurance rates will soon be no property insurance offers at all.

Insurance Companies aren't going to lose money on climate change, they just are going to: 1. Raise rates HIGH. 2. Add exclusions. 3. Drop coverage in vulnerable areas.

[Morbius]

49. It has been obvious for years that

the longer we wait to address the problem, the more it is going to cost.

[Doodley]

52. It's not too late for governments to do all they can to try to slow warming through mass tree planting and the

development of carbon extraction technology.

[Torchlight]

56. I believe every problem created by humans may be solved by humans

when the measure of will exists.