Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First
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Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First
#2Part of the problem here is exacerbated by all the flood insurance that effectively subsidizes building in flood plains. In addition to long term measures to mitigate climate change, we should have a tax on areas that are threatened by flooding and water levels rising so that we can reduce the immediate issues by incentivizing people to move away from them.
Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First
#3I’ve never understood how the parts of the country most affected by sea level rise have been so vociferously against it being real.
When the BP spill happened and they had all the local mayors and politicians crying about the damage to their coast, I couldn’t understand why no one had the cajones to ask them why they cared so much about their coast being damaged now, when they were completely fine with it being gone and under water in a few decades.
Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First
#4Part of the problem here is exacerbated by all the flood insurance that effectively subsidizes building in flood plains. In addition to long term measures to mitigate climate change, we should have a tax on areas that are threatened by flooding and water levels rising so that we can reduce the immediate issues by incentivizing people to move away from them.
FWIW, I can’t speak for Miami but I do know that the costs for flood insurance are high enough in coastal areas that some people skip it entirely.
Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First
#5Part of the problem here is exacerbated by all the flood insurance that effectively subsidizes building in flood plains. In addition to long term measures to mitigate climate change, we should have a tax on areas that are threatened by flooding and water levels rising so that we can reduce the immediate issues by incentivizing people to move away from them.
Should we also tax people living in earthquake-prone and tornado-prone areas? How about blizzard-prone areas? Keep going with this and we will run out of places (in the USA) where it’s ok to live.
Also, as someone who lived in south Florida, flood insurance is a joke and unavailable near the coast anyway. Nobody expects it to pay out enough in a major catastrophe, including hurricanes and flooding.
Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First
#6I’ve never understood how the parts of the country most affected by sea level rise have been so vociferously against it being real. When the BP spill happened and they had all the local mayors and politicians crying about the damage to their coast, I couldn’t understand why no one had the cajones to ask them why they cared so much about their coast being damaged now, when they were completely fine with it being gone…
Hyperbolic discounting is a very common way to be irrational. Humans are not very good at thinking long-term. Bezos became the world's richest person in part by extending his time horizon by a few years longer than most CEOs.
Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First
#7I’ve never understood how the parts of the country most affected by sea level rise have been so vociferously against it being real. When the BP spill happened and they had all the local mayors and politicians crying about the damage to their coast, I couldn’t understand why no one had the cajones to ask them why they cared so much about their coast being damaged now, when they were completely fine with it being gone…
Really?
It's because wealthy people tend to have physical assets and political power there. They don't want to pay more for insurance for their assets in the short term (property/catastrophe coverage) and in many cases they would be difficult or impossible to liquidate and transfer to somewhere not effected.
This has been the case in coastal areas, with property developers at least. They have it very badly, where they typically are small-ish family operations at the core and they operate with high leverage as land banks.
Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First
#8Part of the problem here is exacerbated by all the flood insurance that effectively subsidizes building in flood plains. In addition to long term measures to mitigate climate change, we should have a tax on areas that are threatened by flooding and water levels rising so that we can reduce the immediate issues by incentivizing people to move away from them.
Should we also tax people living in earthquake-prone and tornado-prone areas? How about blizzard-prone areas? Keep going with this and we will run out of places (in the USA) where it’s ok to live. Also, as someone who lived in south Florida, flood insurance is a joke and unavailable near the coast anyway. Nobody expects it to pay out enough in a major catastrophe, including hurricanes and flooding.
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Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First
#9Start worrying when the banks stop offering mortgages to people trying to buy property in south beach.
I remember when Katrina flooded New Orleans, lots of people were asking why rebuild the city when it almost certainly will flood like that again. And the answer was a simple, do you know how much it would cost to relocate everyone?
What does it do to the economy when almost everyones largest asset(their house) is worth effectively zero and people still have 20 years on their mortgage.
In my old city (Calgary, Canada) we had a pretty bad flood in 2013. The government made, what I thought was a smart, deal with the home owners.
They would get some government assistence with the condition that this was the first and only time that the governmnet would help.
Some owners rebuilt, others just bulldozed their homes. Now everyone knows where they stand, the government helped shoulder the initial burden and the people who moved helped lower the number of people living in a flood plain.
Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First
#10Part of the problem here is exacerbated by all the flood insurance that effectively subsidizes building in flood plains. In addition to long term measures to mitigate climate change, we should have a tax on areas that are threatened by flooding and water levels rising so that we can reduce the immediate issues by incentivizing people to move away from them.
I wonder if people living in coastal flood-prone areas are expecting a bail-out when it becomes impossible or impractical to live there.