Also that argument is dead on arrival because they expect you and businesses and the entire city to pack up and leave as if it would cost nothing. They also have literally said “just sell your house and move” but like TO WHO?! Who would buy that house if it’s in such a fucked area?!
If anyone ever says “just move” you know they have zero concept of the word “community” or “moving costs” or “nuance”. They just don’t want to address the cause of the problem because they’re, at best, cowards.
They also have literally said “just sell your house and move” but like TO WHO?! Who would buy that house if it’s in such a fucked area?!
You have to sell the story that the area is a conservative utopia where people can live free of wokeness.
Then the conservative refugees from the satanic, communist areas will flock to you to buy your land.
If its our area (Flordia coast)… that’s not a problem.
Buyers don’t care. They don’t know squat about flooding or hurricanes, they just come in from out of state and get dazzled by the realtor and the weather and everything and buy.
Our housing market was so crazy houses were being auctioned left and right. Market value just keeps going up, even on the coast.
TL;DR if the area is superficially attractive enough, home buyers are idiots. I realize this is probably not the case in Georgia mountains, but it his here, and its enabling a vicious cycle where builders keep building homes in obvious flood zones, where they absolutely shouldn’t.
I was talking to some friends last weekend, and one of them said that they had previously owned a house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I said, “I love the Outer Banks, love visiting it, but I would never buy real estate there.” He said, “Yeah, it took a couple years for us to figure that out.”
Of course, the islands are basically giant sandbars, and there’s the sea level rise issue. But I hadn’t considered that the environment is just that much harder on houses - roofs need to be replaced more often, wood rots more quickly, and so on - and that’s not even including a hurricane coming through. When the kind kicks up, which happens pretty regularly there, the house is getting sandblasted. The maintenance costs are much higher compared to an inland house, and I assume insurance is much higher, and so on.
They rented it out to vacationers to help offset that cost, but they found that they weren’t breaking even - they have to charge competitive rates to get customers, but those rates weren’t covering all of the major upcoming expenses.
But, there’s still a market for houses there. I imagine the recent images in the news of houses collapsing into the water have to be having an effect, but the bottom doesn’t seem to be falling out like you’d think.
No kidding, even inland salt is a menace. That + sand destroys stuff outside.
Florida has the added bonus of being a swampy jungle, which you don’t really understand until you try to live there. Your landscaping, weeds, anything that grows, grows like crazy. Your pets will get all sorts of infections and parasites from the ground, even with all the pesticide they spray through sheer necessity. Mosquitos are even bigger than in Texas, and they never leave. And I saw a big alligator tear up our neighbor’s porch trying to run/hide from us, in a very suburban area.
Not exactly. My coworker has been trying to sell his waterfront home for over a year. He keeps having to rehab it after flooding from storms and then right back on the market. No luck. Starting October 13th or something you have to start disclosing floods when selling, also.
Broad brushes don’t work. I moved out of country in my early twenties. Moved back home in my mid twenties, then proceeded to move to three different coasts over the course of the next decade, selling two homes and most belongings in the process before ultimately moving to an inland city that’s a fourteen hour drive from where I grew up and knew nobody (I’ve been here nearly twenty years now). If the area goes to hell then yeah, I’ll scope out job options and quality of life in other locations, sell my house and unnecessary belongings, and move my boys and I. It isn’t nearly as difficult as people flap about. Staying somewhere until theirs no longer a buyers market is short sighted similar to people refusing to leave Biloxi when it was certain to be destroyed (one of the places I moved out of) and folks deserve what they get if they refuse to leave. I’d love for us to fix the climate and socioeconomic issues so difficult decisions didn’t need to be made but people burying their heads in the sand and refusing to look out for themselves and their family in response to global and societal issues will never make sense to me. Control what you can control but recognize what you don’t control and adapt. If folks aren’t going to take responsibility for the things they can control I don’t see any reason to fret about the things outside of their control negatively impacting them.
Most people seem to have a particular brand of irresponsibility wherein they avoid their own problems by distracting themselves with those of others. It can work out semi-okay even, under some conditions like a spouse caring for someone who also cares for them in return, though ofc it’s not ideal in the sense of not taking care of yourself. But very little in life is ever fully “ideal” so… I’m saying that at least this form of mental unhealth isn’t as damaging as e.g. doing drugs can be.
And it can be predated upon by the unscrupulous. Which technology allows to happen quicker, and with greater reach (breadth of those affected) and depth (if everyone around you believes in something, then surely it couldn’t be “false” now could it?) than was ever possible before, even with organized religion (e.g. Catholics seem to listen more to Faux News than to the literal Pope).
i.e., listening to those “in charge” is actually a good thing, and democracy is also a good thing (if implemented well), but listening to idiots who inflame tensions subverts those good processes, and converts the outcomes to very bad ones. This is why I fear that democracy itself might be about to fail, at least as practiced in the USA - not just bc Trump said that people would only have to vote for him once more and then they’d never need to vote ever again, but bc regardless of whether he wins, there is a huge segment of the population (something like 42%, although due to the Electoral College manages to control the entire outcome) that is pushing for that, and will continue to do so on the next ballot, and the one after that, etc. Plus digs their heels in every time they lose to control outcomes either way - e.g. the government shutdowns holding the budgets hostage.
So I am glad that you are responsible, and quite frankly even the idiots are trying to be, as they vote how they do bc their self-chosen leaders told them to, but we all have blind spots, some far more than others.
I mean, you’re the one who bought it currently, just find an equal or dumber person like yourself, bam. Simple. At its core, this is basically how all products are sold.
You’ve completely missed the point about community, eh? And you know people don’t get to pick where they’re born or where their extended family lives, right? So they get born into these places and get locked down for whatever reason and can’t leave. Certainly they can’t all leave in one perfect unit all at the same time.
Also that’s not how all products are sold, holy shit. Maybe certain drop shippers, sure, but that’s not how it works.
I can tell you the other thing people do as they grow up and that is develop their own views. Growing up in Texas, I didn’t realize anything was wrong or out of the ordinary politically/ideologivally. My parents had their views which initially became my views since that was what was normal in my family and community
Getting older and more mature, I realized I didn’t agree with my state or parents but I also didn’t have the option to pack up and leave. By the time I was able to sustain myself and build a life, I had already gotten a job, a relationship, and wanted to start building my own family. Doing that meant staying where I was since my in-laws were in the same city and my spouse didn’t want to be away from them.
Even if on paper to some people it is as easy as just sell your house and leave there are complicating factors. I don’t want my kids to have to deal with hurricanes, power grid failures, intolerance of others, and everything else Texas has to “offer” but at the same time, its not so easy to just bail and start again.
Dude it’s just moving, it’s not that hard. People do it multiple times in their lives. Relax.
That’s funny and I’m sure you know this but for purposes of discussion -
Think about a couple common examples:
I would pay like a thousand dollars not to wash clothes by hand for a few years.
You see washing machines are like $500-$1000, you buy, you’re happy.
I’d pay five bucks to have a sweet dark tasting liquid in my mouth and not be as tired.
Cha-ching, Starbucks makes a sale.
So even rational consumers often make purchases when their expected utility/satisfaction exceeds the monetary cost.
The problem is a town was built where there should not be one. Flood plains WILL flood. Rebuilding is pointless. It will just be destroyed again. At some point we have to cut our losses.
“A” town didn’t flood, there’s wreckage across the entire southeast. It’s not because people in the south are too stupid to know where to build, it’s because climate change is making hurricanes stronger further inland, resulting in century and thousand year floods happening.
A drought in south america has caused out of control wildfires that dumped 210 megatons of CO2 in the atmosphere, this year alone.
That’s just from wildfires in one continent. Now add it to all the CO2 produced in one year.
The runaway effects are becoming more evident and unfortunately people will have to finally give up on huge swaths of land or be killed. Save the planet, hang a CEO
It’s both - yes, places are getting hit with types and scales of natural disasters they could not have anticipated, but they’re also rebuilding in places that will get hit hardest when they do it again
Consider the idea of a 100 year standard - you’re building to the level where it won’t hold up to the storm of a lifetime. Let alone the fact that storms keep getting worse… It boggles my mind
And those type of floods will only increase in frequency. This is the new normal. People will need to move if they don’t want to be rebuilding every couple years.
On top of what the other person said people still need to live in those places. It is actually crazy to say that the entire south-eastern seaboard of the United States should just be permanently evacuated wholesale. We could slow, or even stop, a lot of this by just admitting that climate change is real and doing something about it and it would be a helluva lot cheaper than turning several states in ghost towns.
During the pandemic, Trump dragged his feet in developing a response to it - leaked conversations mentioned how individual #1 liked the fact that it was primarily affecting highly liberal areas such as NYC and LA, while leaving conservative strongholds such as Idaho and Utah alone, and had asked about delaying the federal response a bit so as to let the people in the former stew in it a bit more, for his political advantage.
Also I note that that same individual #1 was in charge of nationwide disaster recovery efforts - even going so far as to take the binders of ready-made plans and throw them into the garbage.
So this whole “it is not the job of the government to use its tax collected revenue to take care of We The People” is very much by design. i.e. not merely a factual matter but a political one, in having to choose between deeper tax breaks for the wealthy vs. preparedness. And Individual #1 made that choice, in conjunction with Congress, that now applies to us all.
In fact, the former swing state turned Republican stronghold NC is one of the very reasons why climate change is hitting us so strong and fast, unprepared and seemingly even unawares.
Perhaps “admitting that climate change is real and doing something about it” is something that NC will now change its mind about, so that the federal government can do differently?
But I somewhat doubt it. It is very hard to help someone who seems dead set against being helped, nor allowing the rest of us to help ourselves as well (see e.g. medically necessary abortions).
I’m not saying to abandon the whole southeast, but something in the range of 15 million US homes are built in flood plains. A large portion of these are in Texas and Florida. It is absolute madness to keep building and rebuilding in these areas.
Even if we drop global CO² emissions to zero tomorrow, it will take more than a century to even begin to see trends reverse. In the mean time lowland areas will continue to flood over and over.
I have a degree in postmortem science and hobby in anthropology/archeology/paleontology. The biggest extinction event this globe has ever seen, the Permian Extinction, where over 90% of ALL life (96% of ocean life) went extinct, was from pollution and a mere 10°C increase in global temperature. That’s all it took to decimate life on earth. The pollution and heat came from volcanoes, but we are on the same path. It’s already gone up 1.6°C… I do think humanity will survive, but not the majority of us.
Some of my family doesn’t believe in climate change, and/or is religious to the point that they don’t believe in carbon dating and core sample data. I wish I could make them believe, but no data in the world will work.
I was part of a documentary on the largest fires in recorded history and so many were within the last 10 years it was terrifying. One in the forests of Russia was still ongoing when the doco was finished and RELEASED!
I understand the term isn’t always used in such a way, but there is something of irony to hear the term decimate (to kill 1 of every 10 people) to describe what you are saying that only 1 in every 10 survived.
This is why I get angry that whenever I complain on Reddit about climate change because of massive heatwaves someone said “just emigrate north lmao”. Neoliberals are deluded, we have to solve the problem, period.
“Solve” was 20 years ago. Now it’s only “mitigate”. But that’s the difference between global catastrophe and literal breakdown of organized society.
We could solve global warming right now with intentional cloud seeding, but many are worried geoengineering could be too effective and freeze us. Or, if we solve the heating, it could give fossil fuels the wrong impression that they can keep pumping CO² into the air despite it still killing the oceans with carbonic acid.
Suppose moving North was the answer. Okay, the entire global south is just gonna move North. No problems on the horizon here.
It’s pretty ironic that right wing parties in Europe are actually making what they hate, African migration to Europe, more likely to happen. They don’t want any money going to programs that combat climate change and they don’t want aid going to Africa to help Africans survive and thrive and build their economies.
They also fail to understand that there are 9 theorized planetary boundaries needed to support human life, and we’ve crossed at least 6 if not 7 of them. We need to not cross ANY. Moving north doesn’t fix most of these PLANETARY boundaries
Could you expand on what are those boundaries and what have we already crossed? Seems interesting.
Here you go :) It’s a complex topic so unfortunately summarizing it would still create a very large comment
North is their answer… Ask them if Canada is north enough…
Where we had that Hell Dome^TM from June 25 to July 1, 2021 and 526 people died after it reached 50°c and didn’t cool off at night-- making it “the deadliest weather event in Canada to date.”
Or how about when it flooded so bad in the same place, 6 months later, that thousands of animals died, 20k people needed to be evacuated, and roads broke-- cutting off the Greater Vancouver Region from the rest of the Province.
North won’t save anyone 😬
Most people take complaining as an opportunity to give advice. Moving to a less risk adverse area is good advice and probably the most any one person can achieve in terms of reducing their personal climate change related risks. If you don’t want to get those kinds of answers you have to specify that you either dont actually want advice or that you specifically want advice that you personally can’t do anything with.
I live in a river valley that tornadoes generally jump over. I also live on a hill much higher than the river will ever flood even in a catastrophic event like this.
And yet, back in June…
No tornado, just high-speed wind. And a lot of our neighbors got it worse than us. Trees through people’s windows, branches on cars, some of the roads in our subdivision were completely blocked for a couple of days. Houses are still being repaired.
There is nowhere safe from climate change.
Had one of those in my area a few years ago. Just like 5 minutes (probably less) of a freak strong wind and the massive tree in my backyard fell, along with many others. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Well, I probably have, just at an intensity low enough that it was a non-event.
Trees usually grow more wind resistant if they are exposed to more wind. This might just mean that your climate is also changing (quickly) or a unusually strong gust of wind came along. The particular tree also might have been sick.
Like I said, it was the entire neighborhood. In fact, the entire town.
https://wibqam.com/2024/06/26/photos-and-video-of-the-june-25-storm-and-damage-left-in-its-wake/
The SBA actually offered low-interest disaster loans to both residents and businesses because the damage was so bad.
“Who am I supposed to sell my house in Florida to!??!!?!??”
Conservatives. It’s a victimless crime. Come on guys.
Have you tried getting a good auctioneer?