Six ways to pay for climate change
We can act now and pay in advance to protect against climate change. Or we can drag our feet and pay a lot more after the next big disaster rocks the country.
by Andrew J. Willner
Blue Ridge Press
Americans – whether living on the Gulf or East coasts, in Tornado Alley, behind a Mississippi or Missouri river levee or within range of a Western wildfire like the one now raging in Yosemite – are learning a harsh lesson: Preparing for climate change is costly. But not preparing is catastrophically expensive.
Eight years after Hurricane Katrina, nearly 100,000 people haven't returned to their New Orleans homes; good jobs are lacking, public housing is mostly gone. One year after Hurricane Sandy, poor towns like Union Beach, N.J. – which saw half of its homes damaged or uninhabitable – don't have the means to recover, while rich towns like Mantoloking, N.J., have wrangled millions in federal funds to build massive seawalls that offer dubious protection against the rising seas and fiercer hurricanes expected from climate change.
How do we pay in advance to defend communities against escalating extreme weather? It's a thorny question. But here are some logical answers:
Scientifically assess dangers ahead
North Carolina passed a law last year that wished away climate change. It requires all future sea rise estimates be based on historical data, rather than on scientific projections of a three-foot rise by 2100. Sadly, ignoring climate science only profits coastal developers, while leaving homeowners and municipalities defenseless against worsening storms. To prepare for the Sandy's of tomorrow, government must stop denying global warming and do thorough national, regional, and local scientific assessments of worst-case climate change damage scenarios and the best precautions against them.
more
http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2013/09/opinion-climate-costs
= new reply since forum marked as read
It makes a lot of good points ...
> One strike and you're out
> Want to build a McMansion on the beach with a front-row seat for the next Katrina?
> It's your legal right, if you can afford federal flood insurance or self-insure. But if
> your property is destroyed by a climate change disaster, and you're compensated,
> you shouldn't be allowed to rebuild there again and again, and be compensated
> by insurers for repeated destruction.
...
> If you decide to build in a high-risk zone, you should also be assessed a municipal
> climate change tax for putting others at risk, such as first responders who will have
> to rescue you in a disaster. Your decision to build in a high-risk zone also prevents
> municipalities from making the economically sensible choice to retreat and withdraw
> vulnerable public services such as roads and utilities from that area.
.... but even the author recognises that the fucknuts who this is aimed at are too
damn stupid, wilfully ignorant & stubborn to pay attention ...
> These may be good ideas, but they're unlikely to get done. Current federal policy
> is to do nothing, which means nature will take care of it
Here's to Nature cleaning up the mess of homo nonsapiens!
