Climate-induced extreme weather: protection, recovery and rebuilding
Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump and the ridiculously reactionary climate deniers can’t deny the reality of Hurricane Ian. When he was a congressman, Governor DeSantis voted against federal aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, but today he asked for 100 percent of federal funding to handle the cleanup of Ian’s massive damage. I think it’s true:”Where you stand depends on where you sit.To their credit, both Presidents DeSantis and Biden have put politics on hold to deal with the humanitarian emergency in Florida. Perhaps the tragedy of losing homes and communities is enough to become a shared American experience, and we may move disaster funds to Beyond partisan politics. Global warming is making extreme weather events more intense and frequent, and we need to make our hometowns more resilient and institutionalize the rebuilding of damaged and destroyed homes and communities.
In New York, the Corps of Engineers is proposing $52 billion shoreline protection plan This includes an impressive array of green and grey infrastructure, including giant gates that control the flow of water into parts of our waterways. The program is funded 65% by the federal government and 35% by state and local governments. New York needs $18 billion to cover our share of the cost. The political viability of the proposal has not been tested. Some environmentalists oppose its geoengineering, and some politicians oppose its cost if it gets on the political agenda. It’s unclear if the new shoreline protection project will be built or if it will work as advertised, but we must take steps to protect our 600 miles of shoreline.
Managed retreats are not a viable option for 8.5 million New Yorkers, so we need to do more to protect ourselves from extreme weather events. This includes some form of shoreline protection along the regiment’s proposed route. I would like to see new proposals from the Corps be influenced by independent scientific analysis (a kind of peer review of infrastructure) to examine the indirect effects of projects that project designers may have missed. I would also like to see some infrastructure funding for additional permeable surfaces to absorb water and cisterns to store floodwater and manage its release. Coastal protections sometimes fail, and large amounts of rapid rainfall and coastal storm surges can lead to flooding. We have learned from Ian and other extreme weather events that modern building codes can also provide protection against extreme weather events. A recent article by Allyson Chiu Washington post Some buildings in Punta Gorda, Florida, reportedly survived despite the strong impact. The town appears to have avoided violent disruption to neighboring communities.according to Qiu:
“In Florida, a ‘tipping point’ in building codes came after Hurricane Andrew hit the state in 1992… Andrew, killing dozens and Estimated loss of $26 billionresulting in a Statewide Building Code These include some of the strictest storm-specific codes in the country…For Punta Gorda, the key rebuild came after Hurricane Charley devastated the city in 2004…Many homes and buildings were rebuilt to be modern Building codes, and improved again in 2007…Buildings built using modern codes have a range of structural advantages that help them better withstand extreme weather, including major storms. For example, updated codes often have stricter requirements for “structural load continuity,” which includes ensuring that roofs are well connected to walls, and walls are well connected to structural foundations…”
Still, no protection system is foolproof. We need to create a built environment that can withstand the effects of extreme weather on global warming. We also need to decarbonize, mitigate and adapt to climate change.
At the community or city level, resilience requires efforts to prevent flooding and control flooding when prevention fails. But as Ian has demonstrated, climate change is triggering and supercharging normal hurricanes and other extreme weather events. Ten years after Hurricane Sandy, New Yorkers have taken many steps to waterproof our infrastructure and protect our shoreline, but as we prepare for the next event, we need to avoid the mistake of fighting a war and do our best to predict and ready for the next one.
As Ian is teaching millions of Floridians, some extreme weather events are so powerful that no conservation strategy will work, instead we need to follow first response and recovery actions by rebuilding. I have written many times about America’s inadequacies in rebuilding. I believe now is the time to create a tax to create a national fund for rebuilding after extreme weather events. Our country has built communities in deserts, forests, floodplains, and hurricane-prone places. A hundred years ago, our homes and infrastructure were simpler, and few of us lived in the path of hurricanes, forest fires and storm surges. When a weather disaster happens every hundred years, it’s an emergency. When it happens every year, it happens routinely, periodically. Fortunately, climate disasters don’t hit the same local communities every year, but they do hit our national communities more and more every year.According to NOAA’s Adam Smith:
“NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI) tracks U.S. weather and climate events with significant economic and social impacts (www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions).Since 1980, the United States has 258* Weather and climate hazards Total loss cost of $1 billion or more (including adjustments for consumer price index as of January 2020).The cumulative cost of these 258 events exceeds $1.75 trillion… 14 separate U.S. billion-dollar disasters 2019 represents the fourth highest all Number of incidents after 2017 (16), 2011 (16) and 2016 (15) (tied with 2018). In recent years, 2019, 2018, and 2017 each generated more than $1 billion in disasters affecting the United States—44 incidents in total. This puts a 3-year average of $14.6 billion in catastrophic events, well above the inflation-adjusted average of 6.5 per year (1980-2019).In a slightly longer time frame, the United States has experienced 69 multi-billion dollar disasters Over the past 5 years (2015-2019), the inflation-adjusted average was 13.8 events per year. Years with 10 or more separate multi-billion dollar disaster events over the past 40 years (1980-2019) include 1998, 2008, 2011-2012, and 2015-2019. “
No need to know about climate change to calculate, whatever you think is causing these problems, they are increasing in frequency, severity and cost. The federal government’s response to these events is to develop emergency supplemental funding after each disaster. This is often highly politicized, uncertain and slow to implement. Funding for these “emergencies” is not based on a dedicated revenue stream, but is usually funded by deficits. Because it is considered an emergency, the institutional capacity to provide reconstruction assistance is far less developed than the capacity we have built for the first response. After Hurricane Sandy, many of my neighbors in Long Beach, New York, waited more than a year for the promised funds to rebuild their homes. This uncertainty is especially acute for children whose education has been disrupted.
like we pay Social Security For Old Age Insurance, Every American Should Pay community safety As a right, rebuild a community devastated by extreme weather events or acts of terror. We live in a world where we all face risks that are beyond our control as individuals. The basic function of government is to protect the people. In today’s world, this requires the routine rebuilding of homes and communities after they have been damaged or destroyed. I recognize that in this age of extreme political polarization, a thoughtful, organized response to the facts of new life in America is unlikely. An elected official with the political courage to call for higher taxes to pay for reconstruction insurance is equally unlikely. The alternative, however, is the more expensive, disorganized and politically divisive approach we now stumble upon after every disaster.
Maintaining our way of life on a warming planet will cost us all more money. We need to invest in coastal protection, more resilient transportation, water, sewage, waste, energy and communications infrastructure, and stronger homes. We also need to acknowledge that God and nature are so much stronger than us humans that we are knocked down periodically and need to get back up and rebuild. Our ancestors discovered that they needed to store food in good times to survive famines. The modern version is to take some of our wealth and invest it in measures to make our settlements more resilient, and rebuild them when our best efforts to prevent destruction prove not good enough.
