This isn't the whole of the problem, and it isn't the whole of the solution. It's a worthwhile discussion but it's gonna be political. I had to give up on a dream farm because I discovered it had been red-tagged. It was a lovely 1928 farmhouse by a bend in the river on 70 acres for a ridiculously low price; no amount of real estate savvy could figure out why for me. Eventually i got gud at this stuff and discovered that the whole of the structure ended up on the 100-year floodplain when FEMA came through and redrew their flood maps. Consequence: the county would not permit any work on the place. there would be no furnace installs, there would be no new windows, there would be no work requiring city say-so. People could continue to live there (and, as I understand it, buy fucking flood insurance!) but the minute it needed a new roof it was a derelict. Period. The end. There's a property down the way from me that is at the bottom of a long slope towards the river. It's also in the 100-year floodplain. Guy started listing it at $3.8m; he's come down to $750k but never gets past "pending" on Redfin. 'cuz if you wanna live there, the first thing you need to do is move the house 150 feet east. I have no doubts that the owners of these two properties had their retirements tied up in them. I have no doubts that FEMA moving the floodplain basically wiped them out financially. But I also know that the river in the first instance has flooded above the 100-year twice in the past five years and I know that the river in the second instance flooded above the 100-year Monday. We had like an inch of rain in 24 hours. in Seattle. And it flooded out fourteen apartments between here and my in-laws' place. Near as I know my dream farm washed away some time in 2015. That's a claim that didn't get made because on the assessor's form the structure value is $0. It's also the death of a hundred year old farmhouse. Went out to the Big Island. Kona side? Where the airport is, where the tourists go? Big resorts up on a cliff. Hilo side? Where the hurricane hit in '67 and the laws were passed that you couldn't get a permit for anything that hadn't been redeveloped with hurricanes in mind, IE built on stilts? It's a shantytown. I got pictures of a building with a pottery studio on one side, an ice cream parlor on the other side, and the space between them had ferns six feet high growing in it because you can't get a permit to fix the roof. Out where the rich people are the grass isn't even tall. Out where the natives live you're basically squatting. So yeah. Current flightpath is wipe out the poor people, make them move away from their homes, or make them buy flood insurance. 'cuz here's the thing: our flood maps and our floods don't match up so the yellow red and purple areas on your map aren't eligible for subsidy. I'm not... and I'm 50 yards from the river. Aggravating the issue is that our flood control in this country is done by the Army Corps of Engineers, the guys who brought you Katrina, and their basic approach has been "dam and culvert everything." Dams silt up and culverts kill wildlife. Not only that, but pretty much every dam and culvert we have was designed around hydrology of the 1930s which meant not only are they adapting to conditions from an era before global warming, they're built around the population patterns of the 1930s. Dealing with this is literally going to remake the landscape, which means there's a lot of opportunity for people with some influence to steer things their way, which means lots of assholes are going to get rich and lots of people are going to die.
Which sucks for people imo, but I don't see any other solution being offered up anytime soon. If you'll let me be hyperbolic: Almost every person I've loved, every place I've called home, every school attended and every stadium, cemetery, and or church sat in exists in the yellow red and purple. I've been thinking about why I'm commenting so much in this thread...and it's because the scale of it baffles me. If you have to relocate a town of 300,000, maybe your city's neighbor can take you in. If you have to relocate 150 million? Our infrastructure will bend, buckle, and break. It means climate refugees right here, soon. My home is going to be the fucking marching ground of these assholes, and my people are going to die. Have died. It's got me riled up. Thanks for the thoughtful comment as always klein, wish I had more of a useful response for you than this.So yeah. Current flightpath is wipe out the poor people, make them move away from their homes, or make them buy flood insurance.
'cuz here's the thing: our flood maps and our floods don't match up so the yellow red and purple areas on your map aren't eligible for subsidy. I'm not... and I'm 50 yards from the river.
Dealing with this is literally going to remake the landscape, which means there's a lot of opportunity for people with some influence to steer things their way, which means lots of assholes are going to get rich and lots of people are going to die.
Bleakest part is you aren't being hyperbolic, you're being realistic. I said "dealing with this is literally going to remake the landscape" and I meant it. Prior to the Army Corps of Engineers and sucking the Ogalalla dry, the Great Plains were the Great American Desert and the ecosystem out there consisted largely of prairie dogs, condors and bison. Two out of three of those are effectively gone and where they'd live is covered in Midwesterners and corn. The American Savannah is not going to come back on its own and even if it did it would require the middle of the country to move somewhere else. Thing is? The proximate cause of the Syrian Civil War is climate change. The proximate cause of the Border Crisis is climate change. Drily and dispassionately put, "kids in cages" is the expression of a policy debate regarding global warming. There's 18,000 people in Inyo County and 18 million in Los Angeles because of water wars. I got a friend who's a Lebanese refugee - he got out of Lebanon while the Phalangists were still rabble-rousing rather than shooting. I got friends who are Iranian refugees - they got out when SAVAK was shooting people on the sly rather than in the open. Los Angeles looks like Los Angeles in no small part because enough of the cinema and artist community bailed on Berlin between the Beer Hall Pusch and Kristallnacht. Some people get ahead of the tragedy, do what they can to rebuild their lives and try to throw back a few sea turtles. Most people drown. I am subjectively rich. I am objectively middle-class. Through hard work and cunning I managed to cobble together a life. Thing is? My parents managed to fail their way to a better life than I got because things were way the fuck easier for them. And everyone around me has gotten where they are by hustling while their parents sit back and wonder why their kids are such failures. And they're proud of their kids nonetheless because apparently everyone these days is an utter fuckup who just can't get ahead because, well, surely it isn't because life is hella harder than it was in the '70s. But it's hella harder than it was in the '70s and I think we all subconsciously know it. It occurred to me that one big problem is from about 1930 to about 1980 if you were white, things were gonna be largely okay. Other white people had your back and the rules and policies that governed life in these here United States made it so that rich people pretty much had to do kinda sorta the right thing towards poor people. But drives towards racial equality came hand-in-hand with drives against economic equality so the rich people banded together and because rich people have more education it was easier for them to see that they have more in common with a rich person in Venezuela than they do with a poor person in the United States but the poor people in the United States? They still think the darkies are out for their job (which realistically speaking they are) but rather than band together with the poor people that aren't their color they still expect the rich white people to save 'em. I have no power to improve things. I can't fix this. It seems unfixable. But I created five jobs this year, three of which belong to minorities, one of which belongs to a felon and all of which belong to women. I left the house with a garbage picker and two empty bags and returned with four full bags of garbage (two empty bags were on my goddamn walk). Because sometimes you have to make things a little better even in the face of inevitable catastrophe.
This is how I have been feeling for... basically my whole life. Sometimes more top of mind than others (front and center since commenting in this thread yesterday). I wish I had some answers. I have more thoughts on this than my thumbs can keep up with. I’ll finish this from the computer in a bit.I have no power to improve things. I can't fix this. It seems unfixable
In elementary school in the 80s, we were given presentations about how photovoltaic cells were going to change the world. Utopia was just around the corner as soon as they could work out getting just a little more efficiency out of the panels and as soon as costs came down just a little. In the 90s, GM made an electric car that actual mortals could lease (not buy - see Who Killed The Electric Car). If we all recycle, then we could save X amount of aluminum and plastic. If we compost and garden we could reduce landfill waste. If we all do X then we can save Y. . . I guess I'm just tired. and maybe a little bitter. . . I got excited about solar and wind. I turn off lights when not in use - have for years. didn't buy a car until I was 21. I don't eat a lot of meat - partly because I don't love it, but partly because of the amount of water and energy it takes. I pay extra for recycling - have for years. I changed out my bulbs for CFLs I changed out CFLs for LEDs. I got an electric car in 2013 I bought a house with solar. I carpool even though it is almost painfully inconvenient. When I'm not carpooling, I ride my bike 13 miles each way to work. . . I spend, and have spent more mental anguish, and had more environmental guilt on these subjects... and I'm tired... because it feels very much like my actions are dwarfed, swallowed up, and more than negated by ONE steak eating, monster house dwelling, F-350 diving real estate agent who logs 100 miles/day. I think I'm just tired, disillusioned, and burned out on the subject. just so tired. I'm not going to quit doing these things. I've just got a lot of sub surface anger and frustration boiling about it. I've been doing so many of the things... and talking about it. And evangelizing for it. And it feels like a life wasted on deaf ears, blind hearts, and hard hearts.
DUDE. I've got a Ford F350, lifted, that I see almost every morning on the way to work. He lives about 3 blocks away from me, and apparently we have similar schedules. As he passes me in my electric car every day, he's doing 50 MPH on the 35 MPH two-lane road through our part of town, and I get to read his 6-inch tall black letters on his tailgate: MPG? LOL! As Jane's Addiction said, "Some people should die / that's just uncommon knowledge..." I'm so tired of living in a culture where being an asshole is an admirable trait.
Absolutely! And I have no need to force him to drive a different vehicle, even. (This is NOT a work truck... it is purely a Compensator.) Drive your asshole vehicle. Fine. I can't make you buy something different. But actively projecting your assholeitude on others with the "MPG? LOL" thing, is something every mother should be embarrassed about.