For many Americans, the single biggest financial asset you have is your home.

If you don't have insurance or you can't afford enough insurance and that home is destroyed,

then you're left with basically nothing.

Insurance is the climate crisis canary in the coal mine,

and the canary is just about dead.

I'm Dr. Leah Stokes, and I'm Dr. Catherine Wilkinson,

and this is a matter of degrees.

Thank you. this is a matter of degrees. Let's be honest. Let's be honest, most people hope to never have to deal with insurance companies

or really even think about insurance. But when disaster strikes, insurance can become the

most important thing in the world for people. And climate change means that disaster is striking a lot more

often. So we called Dave Jones to try to figure out what the future of insurance looks like

under the new reality of the climate crisis and how we might navigate a path forward. He was

California's insurance commissioner from 2011 to 2018, and now he directs the

Climate Risk Initiative at UC Berkeley's Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment.

We got in touch with Dave as wildfires raged across Southern California. They're no longer burning,

but the damage is breathtaking.

29 people lost their lives.

Over 150,000 people were displaced, and over 57,000 acres were burned.

It's a horrible tragedy, and people were killed, people were injured, people lost the most important possession in their entire life.

They lost all of their worldly possessions, all of their history in a moment.

Now people who lost everything have to rebuild, and they're looking to their insurance companies to help them out.

So most people have private insurance, but some people didn't. Some people either because

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