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America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

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Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#191

Post by brohee »

ilamont wrote: post #82

About 6 million Floridians will need to move inland by century’s end to avoid inundation, according to Hauer, the demographer, in a 2016 paper. By then, about 80% of the nearby Keys, the archipelago that includes the tourist mecca of Key West, will be underwater. About 3.5 million people would be flooded in South Florida’s Miami-Dade and Broward, the two counties with America’s biggest exposed populations. The articl…

It's not rising 6 feet permanently, but it does during storm surges. Hence the stilts. (which only partially solve the problem), your road network, water distribution network, electrical network etc still suffers)

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#192

Post by acdha »

kls wrote: post #89
acdha wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about who owns waterfront property, yacht clubs, etc. and ask whether those rich people are likely to be well-represented in the legislatures. Government agencies do what the law makers tell them and it’s really hard to roll back decades spent ignoring the problem for short-term profit, especially when there’s a large and effective propaganda machine which will attack anyone who suggests policies which realisti…

This would actually be closer to the realities in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale up to Palm Beach (Mara Lago), than the Keys. Most of the people in the Keys are not heavily politically active and have moved here to fall of the face of the earth or where born here. A decent amount of waterfront property is still family owned and used in family businesses such as shrimp, lobster or stone crab operations. Funny enough, waterfron…

That’s a good point to expand on: I wasn’t thinking that everyone on every inch of the coast is rich but rather that those interests align. It’s usually politically risky to pass something which only benefits rich people than something which covers the entire state, which just happens to include that high-value property. When a relief or insurance measure is coming up, they’re just going to make sure it has no or generous limits and make sure that it goes through.

Similarly, tourism related businesses might not be plutocrat-level wealth but they tend to be well-represented politically because they’re visible and employ a fair number of people.

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#193

Post by refurb »

kevingadd wrote: post #159
cure wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget does not agree with this statement. I'm assuming you are conveniently forgetting that the 'Social security', 'Medicare' and 'Other spending' slices of mandatory spending go to rich and poor: these programs pay out their benefits to all people regardless of how wealthy they are.

Not to mention that social security and medicare funding comes directly out of every paycheck I get. It's dishonest to claim those payments are people leeching off the rich when a huge % of the beneficiaries literally paid for them.

Considering the taxes scale with income and a low income person would, in no way, cover the costs, Medicare and to an extent Social Security are a wealth transfer to the poor.

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#194

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

mrosett wrote: post #162
Waterluvian wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't fixate on the numbers. The point of the anecdote is that because climate change means more storms more often, the cut-off point for habitability gets shifted.

It hasn't been established that climate change means more storms more often though.

No, but if the regular storms become larger and more destructive, that still affects habitability.

https://www.c2es.org/content/hurricanes-and-climate-change/

And the point about more storms hasn't been established yet - which doesn't mean that it won't be established in the future.

Given the likelihood of larger storms and the possibility of more frequent storms, living in a storm-prone area becomes a much less appealing idea.

The UK has a similar problem. Some properties have been flooded multiple times in the last couple of decades. They're now uninsurable, which is not far off from being uninhabitable.

Even if they stay dry for years at a time, it only takes a couple of very expensive renovations to reduce their value towards zero.

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#195

Post by fuzzfactor »

Animats wrote: post #69
clumsysmurf wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is discussed in a book called "The Geography of Risk" "The chief beneficiaries of the land boom at the coast have been the beach towns and property owners who perversely shoulder little of the risk of building in harm’s way yet enjoy most of the wealth, the report added." https://longreads.com/2019/09/03/the-geography-of-risk

The biggest flood insurance beneficiary is the Houston TX area. "More flood insurance funds have been paid here than in any other National Flood Insurance Program-participating community."[1] "After the 1940's, the Harris County area did not suffer what would be considered a widespread, regional flood, that is, until June 2001." Since then, 2001, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2015, 2016, and right now. Houston way overbuilt in f…

Two trends which I am familiar with are the excess development of South Florida and Harris County.

Both driven because the county government is funded by taxes on property rather than commerce.

To achieve growth in the bureaucracy, taxes have increased as fast as possible, and additional property developed at a growing rate in order to increase its taxable value.

In Florida it's lots of building only slightly above sea level so there's risk from the beginning, in Texas as more of the watershed/flood plain is paved neighborhoods that were not at risk before have become underwater estates.

>They need higher flood insurance premiums to discourage building.

We already have that. Just results in more people becoming uninsurable. Regulation would probably be better, but county governments are incentivizing toward developers who can afford to work around this type of discouragement anyway, which is one of the cases where it pays more than regulation. Now that the damage has been done, the most pro-development Harris County Judge of all is no longer in power, but there's still residual momentum, and it's a little too late. You should have seen it this week.

Looks like some "Real Estate" systems have been selling you false estate since the beginning. After all you can not disprove that the purpose of county government is corruption.

I can only imagine what would happen if you got unscrupulous developers mixed up with government like this on a larger scale.

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#196

Post by fuzzfactor »

selimthegrim wrote: post #96
Animats wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest flood insurance beneficiary is the Houston TX area. "More flood insurance funds have been paid here than in any other National Flood Insurance Program-participating community."[1] "After the 1940's, the Harris County area did not suffer what would be considered a widespread, regional flood, that is, until June 2001." Since then, 2001, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2015, 2016, and right now. Houston way overbuilt in f…

Two of these are not like the others - are the ports (I count Galveston and South Louisiana as part of their nearby bigger cities) just going to be allowed to vanish?

Depends on motivation and power structure I would think.

These are incredibly productive institutions and under normal operation can build enough resources to weather any storm, plus this kind of thing is what's mainly insured when a storm does hit.

In response to a gradual rise in sea level, they would be expected to adapt at a glacier's pace but anything is possible. For example the island of Galveston was largely raised 8 feet after the disaster of 1900 as the preferred approach to future mitigation, and that foresight turns out to be about as good as you can get so far when it comes to coping with unforseen sea level rise.

You just need to have foresight good enough to forsee the unforseen.

Eventually working in industrial environments like Galveston or Texas City will not be that much different than working offshore in the Gulf. Heck, some operators justify working offshore now because it's not much worse than working in a mainland oil field or refinery anyway.

Besides traditional businesses of Texas, in South Florida probably agriculture and real estate would suffer first, but I imagine tourism would hold out as long as it could and smuggling would not want to go anywhere either, with their multi-century tradition.

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#197

Post by manfredo »

harimau777 wrote: post #36
watertom wrote: post #26

Why is the government buying these people out? The homeowners weren't forced to purchase these properties, so it's not the government's responsibility to remediate the situation.

If the government failed to hold corporations that emitted greenhouse gasses accountable for their externalities then I'd say that it becomes the government's responsibility.

* An oil company pumps oil out of the ground, and sells it to a petroleum company.

* The petroleum company refines that oil into gasoline.

* An auto company builds a truck that runs on gasoline

* A shipping company buys said truck, as well gasoline to power it.

* A store contracts that company to ship their goods.

When a consumer buys something from that store, and has a gasoline burning truck move the goods from the warehouse to their residence who was responsible for emitting those greenhouse gases?

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#198

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

shadowprofile77 wrote: post #76

Presumably I'll get downvoted for this but here it goes.. I know that news sites like to link anything they can to climate change in the global human-caused sense because it might create more clicks but how is this a "climate exodus" in that sense? It's more a case of people having built homes in a very flat, easily flooded place that has always been really, really shitty for living due to the dangers of extremely ba…

Humans used to settle near water when it made sense technologically and for their economy. The risks from flooding have always been strong, but back when those areas were settled the risk management made settling there a reasonable tradeoff. Nowadays when we no longer need to be reliant on settling near bodies of water, it probably makes more sense to move inland to lower-risk areas.

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#199

Post by bobthepanda »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #103
shadowprofile77 wrote: post #76

Presumably I'll get downvoted for this but here it goes.. I know that news sites like to link anything they can to climate change in the global human-caused sense because it might create more clicks but how is this a "climate exodus" in that sense? It's more a case of people having built homes in a very flat, easily flooded place that has always been really, really shitty for living due to the dangers of extremely ba…

It's being linked to climate change because small, low-lying islands are seeing serious losses of land mass. From the article: Fifteen years after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana is trying to relocate the Native American settlement of about 100 people on the Isle de Jean Charles, a narrow island that lost 98% of its land over the past six decades to climate change. My best understanding is that this is, in fact, a new p…

What’s the poison in the Great Lakes region?

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#200

Post by cure »

refurb wrote: post #193
kevingadd wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that social security and medicare funding comes directly out of every paycheck I get. It's dishonest to claim those payments are people leeching off the rich when a huge % of the beneficiaries literally paid for them.

Considering the taxes scale with income and a low income person would, in no way, cover the costs, Medicare and to an extent Social Security are a wealth transfer to the poor.

"Wealth" transfers to the poor to keep people alive and in good health and help lift them out of poverty are great policy. We need a lot more of those, because there are too many poor people, and they are suffering. The US is the richest country on earth, and this situation is plain wrong.

In this particular case, though, any transfers are more 'chump change' than 'wealth' from the rich: Social Security tax is only levied on the first $132,900 of earned income (2019). With the exception of the surtax, Medicare taxes are only due on earned income. Rich people don't make the bulk of their money from a paycheck, so it really isn't like the rich are contributing a lot of their wealth or even income to the Medicare and Social Security systems.

On top of that, the rich still get all the benefits of the same Medicare and Social Security programs. So what if they pay in a bit more over a lifetime than their nanny or the schoolteacher of their children? These are insurance programs, and that is how insurance works: everyone pays in, and everyone benefits, but not necessarily to the same extent.

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