Image by Mika Baumeister.

“Climate change is the monster we made. We are Victor Frankenstein.” (Climate Change: The Monster of our own Making, WashU, October 16, 2017, Michael Wysession, Professor Earth & Planetary Sciences, Washington University)

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was inspired by the extreme weather of 1816, also known as the “Year Without a Summer.”

Today’s climate change is a product of capitalism. It’s the unprecedented version and society’s stuck with it. It is here; it’s now; it’s not going away. It’s the birth child of capitalism. Born 200 years ago, it’s now in late adolescence, about to enter early adulthood, unlike anything seen throughout 2.5 million years of human history

This spooky version of climate change overpowers its own creator, hitting capitalism’s pocketbook hard and harder, year by year. Climate change in years past never moved the needle on costly homeowner insurance or abandonment of insurance coverage. But that’s changed; now it’s a money grubber.

The evidence of climate destructiveness never witnessed before is found everywhere. Headlines spell out the truth: (a) The Mounting Cost of Climate for Insurers, S&P Global, Jan. 13, 2025 (b) How the Climate Crisis Became an Insurance Crisis, The New York Times, Oct. 19, 2024 (c) According to NOAA, in 2024, the US had 27 climate disasters each exceeding $1 billion for total costs of $183 billion, the costliest year on record for climate change-related damages. This is the Frankenstein climate in full living color.

The genesis of climate change is easily identified. A study of the period 1750 to 2017 by Colorado-based Climate Accountability Institute (est. 2011) discovered that 70% of greenhouse gases derived from just 103 fossil fuel companies. And since 1965, 20 of those 103 companies now contribute 1/3 of all emissions, e.g., Chevron and ExxonMobil. (Source: Why a Carbon-free World Isn’t Possible with Capitalism, Broadview, April/2024).

It’s scientific fact that too much atmospheric CO2 emitted from burning gasoline in your car’s engine creates too much planetary heat for survival, eventually. An example of what can........

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