What pisses me off is these homeowners are going to expect the federal government to bail them out when their property gets destroyed by climate change.
I don't mind helping out areas impacted by tornados hurricanes etc but not ignorance.
I don't mind helping out areas impacted by tornados hurricanes etc but not ignorance.
It would be disruptive to just yank out support for whole regions. But I feel like you shouldn't get to rebuild structures with government support unless the new ones are no longer vulnerable. Whatever gets rebuilt should be able to survive another event of the kind that destroyed it, plus a safety margin. That may mean that you just can't build the same kinds of structures all across the US. Depending on locale your home might need to survive earthquake, tornado, hurricane, whatever. It might mean that it looks weird and costs more. But being able to build "normal-looking" homes for "normal" prices is a terrible deal if it means that the rest of the country has to pay for reconstruction after nature predictably ruins them.
With climate change things will never "get back to normal" so investing time and money into these places is unwise. It is better to tell people to move now before it's too late.
My idea to solve the problem is this: Legally prevent U.S. banks from granting loans to areas that are likely to become unlivable because of climate change in the next 30 years. That way when the problematic areas do become unlivable only foreign banks and rich folks that could purchase homes with cash will have to deal with the economic consequences of their poor decisions.
* some people bought their homes 30+ years ago, when the timeline and exact impact wasn't known (and there was reporting of a potential Ice Age coming, despite that not accurately reflecting the science of the time)
* other people have bought since then, but have seen their own politicians telling them it's "in dispute", and the general media just says some people say it's in dispute and others say it isn't.
* our school systems do a terrible job of teaching fundamentals, like "what is a theory" to science.
Heck, while I believe in climate change and human-caused climate change, including the unprecedented scale, when I've tried to find good answers to skeptical questions...it's hard for the lay person to find. Things like "volcanos put out more CO2 in a year than mankind ever" are apparently false, but it's a lot easier to find that claim than the reverse (and much easier to find the refutation now than even 5 years ago). "Satellite data shows no global warming" is one I still don't quite follow - I get that they tend to pick a range from the last El Nino peak, but I don't know how to reconcile how they can say each successive year has been "the hottest on record" (including beating the previous year) but "satellite temperature measurements have been flat in recent years". If I - a reasonably well-educated person familiar with online research and with ample time on my hands - can't find decisive answers, how can I expect that everyone has?
Ultimately, I decide to trust in the overall body of scientists, but that's pretty subjective, and I can't fault the average person that understands science only from mass media for deciding NOT to trust the body of scientists.
See this from the article:
The National Flood Insurance Program is up for reauthorization this year; fiscal conservatives have said they want to use that opportunity to reduce the program’s subsidies, so that people are paying something closer to the full cost of their risk. A cut in federal subsidies would particularly hurt Florida, which despite its exposure pays the lowest average flood-insurance premiums in the country, according to FEMA data.
Let them deal with the flooding on their own.
People, no matter their views, matter.
Tell me why I should have any sympathy for them, or why I should help them when their expensive homes get flooded.
We as a society have externalized the costs of carbon emission. That cost is going to fall on someone, whether it's a person who couldn't have known or someone who should've known better it hardly seems reasonably to expect a small group of people to bear the blow.