Thinking Citizen Blog — “We Will All End Up Paying for Someone Else’s Beach House” (NYT)
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Thinking Citizen Blog — Wednesday is Climate Change, the Environment, and Sustainability Day
Today’s Topic: “We Will All End Up Paying for Someone Else’s Beach House” (NYT)
Sometimes a headline grabs me. This one did. At first the claim seemed outrageous. But the more I thought about it, the more plausible it became. But on the other hand, what else is new? What is your favorite example of the subsidizing of bad decision making? Today, some excerpts from the NYT article. Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
300,000 COASTAL HOMES AT RISK, OR IS IT 7.5 MILLION? WHO’S COUNTING?
1. “A video of a North Carolina beach house being dismembered by a voracious ocean was a viral hit this spring. But it won’t be long before the novelty wears off.”
2. “As sea level rises and storm surges grow more intense, beach towns on every coast of the United States will soon be sacrificing more real estate to Poseidon.”
3. “A 2018 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that more than 300,000 coastal homes, currently worth well over $100 billion, are at risk of “chronic inundation” by 2045.”
NB: “The analytics firm CoreLogic counts more than 7.5 million homes with “direct or indirect coastal exposure and subsequent risk from coastal storm surge and damage from hurricanes.”
THE TAB — TAXPAYERS AND THE ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS
1. “Beach towns have long kept their beaches plump by dredging sand offshore and pumping it onto eroded shorelines.”
2. “Some $7 billion worth of beach replenishment programs, most under the auspices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, have added sand and bolstered property values in some of the most exclusive havens in the United States.”
3. “Federal taxpayers typically pick up two-thirds of the tab.”
NB: “The corps has been engineering beaches in Cape May, New Jersey, for a century. Palm Beach County, in Florida, has had its beaches replenished more than 70 times. Many beach towns receive publicly financed sand and then turn around and charge the public to sit on it.”
FEDERAL TAXPAYERS AND THE “MANAGED RETREAT FROM SHRINKING COASTS” (THE CASE OF GALVESTON BAY)
1. “Sea rise and aggressive surge threaten oil, gas and petrochemical facilities around Houston, which in turn threaten the entire region with toxins in the event of a major storm. So the corps has proposed a massive barrier across Galveston Bay, along with other coastal fortifications.”
2. “Two-thirds of the total cost, currently projected at more than $30 billion, would be borne by federal taxpayers, with about a third covered by state and local taxpayers.”
3. “The oil and gas industry, the folks who helped supercharge the seas while flashing some truly impressive profits along the way, would owe nothing.”
NB: “You can readily apply this model to the beach. The sea’s coming rampages will no doubt be portrayed as acts of God. Aside from a half-century of increasingly frantic cries from climate scientists, there will have been practically no warning.”
FOOTNOTE — a broader context
“In the United States, coastline communities account for nearly 40 percent of the population — more than 123 million Americans. Globally, three-fourths of the world’s cities are located along shorelines,” (last link below)
Opinion | We Will All End Up Paying for Someone Else’s Beach House
A LINK TO THE LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED BY THEME:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
ATTACHMENT BELOWS -
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, 11/17/20
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to climate change or the environment. Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to climate change that the rest of us may have missed. Your favorite chart or table perhaps…
This is your chance to make some one’s day. Or to cement in your own mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart.
