Election issues for adjusters: Part 1
The right to vote also comes with a responsibility to consider the impact of our choices on future generations.
My wife is an inveterate political news junkie, and as we’ve watched the “talking heads” on television, it has become evident what issues will be most important when voting for the next President.
There are two issues that, when understood, actually become a single issue: climate and immigration. But “immigration” is the wrong word. As I wrote in the foreword to the May 2020 supplement to “Casualty Insurance Claims, 4th”: “Is it really immigration that is at issue/? All over the world, there is a new migration in the works, and the reason behind much of it is global warming.” There were waves of immigration in the 17th to 20th centuries when Europeans fled crowded and warring nations for new opportunities in America; the recent waves of immigrants are more likely refugees. It is not just for the opportunity; it is a case of necessity.
An article in The New York Times in August 2019 said that a quarter of the world is facing a water crisis and is “literally running out of water,” including countries such as India, Iran, Botswana and 17 others. They have used almost all of the water they have, and several are relying too heavily on groundwater, which they should be replenishing and saving for times of drought.
The article’s map showed that low water reserves affect not only cities such as Riyadh, Beijing, Cairo and Dhaka, but also Mexico City, Melbourne and the California Coastline (Los Angeles), the U.S. Southwest and the American Plains east of the Rocky Mountains.
It is not just the criminal gangs in Central America that are driving people to the U.S. border; it is drought and the lack of water. Just as the “Okies” fled the Southwest Dust Bowl in the 1930s in America, not “immigrating” but “migrating” to California, the refugees from Mexico and the countries below it will migrate to our border — “wall” or no “wall.”
Better learn a foreign language
The best adjusters in the 2020s will be the ones who not only know coverage, liability and damage issues, but can convey the claims process in Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Hindu or Chinese. Who knows? By 2030 the largest P&C insurers are likely to be Chinese. (Lloyd’s is still a big insurer in the U.S. now — why not the People’s Insurance Co. of China?)
Drought, severe weather and flooding will cause internal migration as well. When cattle consume too much of the grain needed for bread, our American diet will change. Those from flooded coastal areas will move inland. Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis and St. Paul will become the new Manhattan, D.C. and Boston as those cities sink beneath the waves.
Is this something to consider when selecting for whom to vote? Who will best prepare the nation and seek the laws from Congress that will control the external and internal migration that is to come? What will be the nation’s response to all these new people from the Far East, the Middle East or Latin America — or even Norfolk or Miami? I’ve never been to India, but I’ve seen videos of the crowds. The idea of “population control” is popular there. It will be our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who must be considered when we enter the polling booth in November.
Ken Brownlee, CPCU, ARM, (kenbrownlee@msn.com) is a former adjuster and risk manager based in Atlanta, Ga. He now authors and edits claims adjusting textbooks. Opinions expressed are the author’s own.
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