... while a bad idea lasts forever.
Popular Flood Insurance Law Is Target of Both Political Parties - NYTimes.com
One of the first things I realized about the consequences of climate change is that one of the most immediate dangers is foolishly trying to fight the sea. Beach communities already pay huge amounts of money to fight the littoral current that moves sand up and down the shore. (Remember your parables, folks? Foolish man, houses, and sand?) How do you suppose they'll react when their coastal property is below sea level? And who do you suppose they'll expect to pay for it?
So now sea level is rising, and people are crying. Look, I'm not unsympathetic to people whose homes are being lost. But come on, one of the risks of living close to the water is that the water may get a bit too close. Who should pay for that? Gee, lets see. You get to live near the beach. You get to go fishing and swimming, bird watching in the marshes, enjoy the laid-back atmosphere of coastal living. So of course the people who should pay for that are.... everyone else, right?
The Biggert-Waters flood insurance reform act put more of the burden of insuring flood-prone coastal properties where it belongs-- on the people who choose to build in a flood zone. So naturally the people who now have to pay the true cost of their foolishly located buildings are crying.
It's really not complicated. Don't build on a flood plain. That includes the coastal property likely to flood in severe storms. It would have cost much, much less after Katrina to give displaced homeowners a check for the equity they lost and tell them to build above sea level. Sea level in the Miocene, that is. (See figure 2, page 3) And not on a river flood plain either.
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