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.
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.
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.
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.
Plus, who are you supposed to sell your house to? Fucking aquaman?
Hbomberguy, in response to Ben Shapiro talking about coastal flooding in this vid (yeah yeah youtube sucks, it’s where he posts) https://youtu.be/RLqXkYrdmjY?si=4NqX0czakOD5XOxs
Link without the tracking string attached
“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?
Why don’t people who have had their house burned to the ground in the wildfires just sell their homes and move? 🤪
It isn’t so much that the mountains flooded.
They’ve flooded before.
It’s how badly they’ve flooded. We may mot ge getting extra storms from climate change, but it certainly can make the existing storms worse.
IMO that’s what we’re seeing more of. From straight line winds being more damaging, to storm systems that might only have a couple tornados to now having a dozen.
Yup, also south Georgia historically gets missed by most hurricanes. Now that area has been hit by two in a matter of weeks. These are not coastal areas but 100+miles from the coast.
But also we are getting extra storms? The average number of storms per season is up
That’s kinda the same thing tho. The entire scale gets moved up, because there is more energy available in the atmosphere and water to form and power storms. So when all the storms get more powerful, you get more hurricanes, because in the past those would not have grown big enough to be classified as such. Small local storms can more easily grow to become larger, having a bigger impact. And wind patterns can change as well, so it’s very complex and hard to predict. The one thing we know for sure: it’s bad news.
Except scientists have been predicting that they will happen, with increasing frequency from now onwards. Ignoring those predictions isn’t the same as them not existing. Those predictions may not say like “May 11, 2025 a mudslide will go down this specific hill”, but even lacking precision they are proving fairly accurate (especially “the climate is currently changing” and “as that process occurs, both the frequency and severity of dangerous storms will increase”).
Tbf, the for-profit media only sells stories that make the most profits, not what would be most beneficial for people to be made aware of. And while the latter used to be done by the government, now that “facts” themselves are “political”, it is hamstrung in that regard, especially held hostage by the budgetary fights. And with the two most official sources of factual information delivery having been coopted, we now have left behind the information age and have already entered the era of misinformation, or dare we say even disinformation, especially for people who get their “news” from Facebook.
On the bright side, the more stuff that happens, the easier it gets to predict. In the meantime, a lot of people are going to not merely lose some money but actually and fully die, maybe after seeing their entire families die before their eyes. And as it happens they will be shocked, Shocked I say, SHOCKED! Again, just as happened before with covid as well, and as also happens to each individual woman who has a miscarriage or such and needs a medically necessary abortion, but only when it is far too late to do anything about it - i.e. to fly or drive hundreds of miles to another state and live there for the duration of the pregnancy - finds out that yes those laws apply to her as well (surely she thinks to herself, “b-b-but this isn’t an abortion, it’s necessary!?” To which the doctors can only think to themselves “ikr!?!?!? if only ‘facts’ mattered, you know!?”), and this in areas that are at least well-off enough to not have healthcare deserts that won’t even handle regular pregnancies.
The one thing we know for sure: it’s bad news.
You made some very good points and I hope you don’t think I’m picking on you, I just thought these additional considerations seemed highly relevant. Lastly I guess I’m disagreeing with the final point: no, we cannot even all agree that it’s bad news, when the budget affecting literally all of us is held hostage by people who are still adamant about it not being allowed to be considered that it is happening at all. So yes, it is bad news, but the obstinacy surrounding that bodes far worse for us all than each individual incident could ever be.