Abrahm Lustgarten

There are two important developments in understanding climate change today. First, we see that not only are the models and predictions correct, but that it is all happening earlier and faster than predicted. Second, we have learned how and why thousands of wildfires are so much more fierce, faster-moving and all but impossible to control, which no one expected and for which we remain totally unprepared. The result is also beginning to show itself: Americans are packing up and moving towards what they hope is safety and peace of mind, according to Abrahm Lustgarten in his riveting new book, On The Move.

It is a fearsome book of high tension and depressing powerlessness. It seems all we are capable of doing is refining the knowledge of our fate, to possibly deal with it better. We certainly are not dealing with the causes. It is way too late to prevent the upheaval. Put simply, between the flooding east coast and the massive annual wildfires, Americans are living under high stress and uncertainty. They are starting to head north, where models show life will be more like normal. But even that is problematic, as northern cities actively prepare for the influx of climate refugees.

Canada, for example, is preparing for its population of 36 million to almost triple this century, as the American situation worsens. Nearby states like Michigan know a huge wave of climate refugees is coming, though it clearly does not have the cash to build all the necessary infrastructure to accommodate them. Places like Detroit, with thousands of abandoned homes, will become magnets as the whole country tries to huddle in what today is perceived as climate safe.

It’s not just the weather, either. Lustgarten’s in-depth research and interviews cite an economic apocalypse to top off the climate disaster. When insurers refuse to write policies on homes, buyers won’t be able to obtain mortgages. Housing prices will plunge, destroying the main source of wealth for the middle class. People will leave, causing services and institutions to vanish, while taxes soar because fewer taxpayers will remain to pay for the maintenance of roads and watermains and even justice that counties and lower level governments are responsible for. It will get ugly, and violent.

We have already had a taste, as tens of thousands have encamped in nearby cities when their own neighborhoods have been evacuated and totally destroyed by fire. The locals can be kind and generous – at first – but it can’t go one like that forever, as it seems to. The nationwide housing shortage means these internal climate refugees cannot find replacement homes, just as foreign refugees end up crammed into old hotels chartered by cities to get them off the streets because of the shortage of social housing.

Even the roads aren’t prepared. As I have been pointing out for two decades, if you remember Hurricane Katrina, the highways out of New Orleans were at a complete standstill, as 150,000 people all tried to flee at the same time. It took all week. Now imagine 66 million people in Bangladesh trying to evacuate ahead of unprecedented monsoon flooding. And replicate that scene all over the world.

Lustgarten points out that a couple of hundred thousand did not evacuate New Orleans, but rode out the storm. This was not because they were rugged American individualists and stubborn libertarians who would not be told when to leave, as they were portrayed so often. Rather, they were too poor to leave. These Louisianans are the kind who remain too impoverished to even put on the air conditioning for the hottest, most unbreathable days – when they need it most. They might not have had relatives elsewhere who could take them in, or savings to rent a place elsewhere, or even a car to try to get there. Instead, New Orleans packed its football stadium with them, with no additional preparations or plans. It was a disaster within the disaster. This too will repeat all over the world.

We are also seeing the results in agriculture, where plants fail to develop to the point of fruiting properly. The models now predict essentially an end to farming below the states on the Canadian border. The fleeing farmers leave behind land that is worthless to anyone, for anything. The soil is so hard and shrunken from being baked for a hundred days a year, it no longer absorbs water. Rain evaporates before sinking in or even hitting the ground. Snow melt evaporates before making it to a river. Another interesting discovery is that the Greenland ice cap is melting much faster than projected, because the warmed rock under it is melting the glaciers from below while the mild temperatures melt them from above, nearly doubling the melt rate. It means the oceans will rise faster. And Greenland has the potential to add nearly 60 feet to the sea level. (For reference, the highest point in Florida is 62 feet above sea level.)

The biggest surprise to the modelers is fire. People think they have time to pack and drive off when they see a fire in the distance. Instead, they find themselves driving through a red soup of swirling live embers, and many cars unable to make it through. We have learned that fires now get big enough that they make their own weather. They develop winds more than 100mph, sending embers miles ahead of the fire, spreading it all but instantly. Firefighters cannot corral it or control it. It laughs at hoses and waterbombers. Trained firefighters keep getting caught and burnt to death in the effort. Lustgarten cites figures like burning at “an acre a second”, clearly beyond the capabilities of a man with a hose. Firefighters’ trucks now come framed in sprinkler systems to perhaps allow them to get out alive.

The Lustgartens, who live north of San Francisco, have a naked-eyed view of the major California fires. It means having the car packed with clothing, water, food and anything important or personal, for a quick escape any time their cellphones say the fire is approaching. It means constantly following the news, constantly on the lookout, and constantly on edge (The fire season is extending itself to eight months a year). One cannot wait for notice to pack. There are literally only seconds to leave in. It doesn’t help that the power companies shut off the electricity to prevent falling poles, transformers and wires from sparking new blazes like they did in the Paradise Fire. (It bankrupted the utility). It is not the California Dream they thought they had achieved. But on their hillside, at least they don’t have to worry about flooding and sea levels, like their neighbors in Napa and Sonoma, Oakland and Silicon Valley.

Despite all the science and all the direct experience we have, we remain unprepared and non-accepting. Arizona’s own water officials report the state will run totally out of water by 2035. Yet building continues at a breakneck pace, even without water connections (Residents have it trucked in – for now). In Florida, the state has taken over home insurance, since private and public insurers don’t want to lose any more at that game. Instead, the state gives homeowners a false sense of security, self-insuring. When claims have to be paid after a hurricane, the state lends the money to its insurance board, which is supposed to repay it from the years when no great damage occurs. But two years in a row of such hurricane activity would be enough to cripple it – the state, that is. It is not a sound business proposition, but a socialist dodge by the state to keep building going on the shores and flood plains, and keep residents quiet. And so they continue to. What could possibly go wrong?

The federal government is no better, repeatedly paying out to the same homeowners in say, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where homes routinely get swept out to sea. We not only don’t prevent people from building in flood zones, we subsidize them, in an ever bigger spiral of loss that only makes sense politically.

Even the official flood zone map used by FEMA is fraudulent. Study after study shows that it underrepresents the size of flood zones, following pressure by mayors and governors, developers and homeowners who don’t want to be classified as such because it will damage resale values. It is no exaggeration to say it is totally inaccurate.

This brings up inequality, because those costly policies go to the wealthy and are not available to the mobile home dwellers who really need them. It is also true that the wealthier one is, the cooler the property. Studies have found that for every ten thousand dollars more in annual income, the neighborhood temperature is lower by half a degree. As Lustgarten says, “It is one thing to denounce subsidies because they can have the effect of encouraging people to stay in dangerous places. It is another to provide those subsidies but to do so unequally.”

In addition to Americans on the move to avoid the pain, Central Americans are well into it. Their countries are ahead in the baking and drought race. The Panama Canal is slashing traffic because it is running out of water to raise ships. All over the region, farmers are destitute, finally gambling their families’ lives by going into criminal debt to afford passage to the US border. Some 50% of those arrested there are farmers who can no longer grow anything. It will get worse. And it will be replicated in the USA.

The situation is clarifying to the extent that we now think that for every degree (Celsius) of increase, the US economy will shrink 1.2%. So it is doubly masochistic not spend on remediating change. But then, it is only costing Americans $280 billion a year at the moment, so perhaps the pain hasn’t made itself known quite well enough yet.

There are plenty of effects we hadn’t considered or given much credence to. Flights are now routinely cancelled in extreme heat. Construction crews work nights and sleep days. And buildings have not been designed to slough off temperatures in three figures; curtain walls and stone slabs that finish many modern buildings will come crashing to the street in high heat.

The book contains several maps, right down to county level nationwide, showing the effects of heat, drought and flooding. Lustgarten’s involvement with the biggest data scientists has also led to the inevitable question – where’s the worst, most vulnerable spot in the country? The answer is Beaufort County, South Carolina, population 187,000, where Hilton Head is located. Congratulations. The already oppressive humidity will be magnified by soaring temperatures and drowned in inevitably rising oceans, not to mention increased hurricanes of increasing severity and duration. And leave us not forget tornadoes. Agricultural yields in Beaufort are predicted to slide 66% as the temperature rises four to five degrees (Fahrenheit) by 2100.

On the sort of positive side, Americans themselves are beginning to demonstrate they understand. Lustgarten cites annual surveys by the likes of Redfin, showing that 25% of prospective home buyers would not consider moving to a region experiencing extreme heat, regardless of how much more affordable it was, while 75% of those not considering a move said they would “think twice” before buying where there were heat and climate risks. It’s a start. For a nation where every conversation on climate seems to include the word hoax, this is significant.

As more and more damage is done, even government will awaken to it. Lustgarten says “Government will be asked to both compensate for the losses of some and encourage change for others, taking a new role: instead of pushing manifest destiny across the continent, it will routinely need to facilitate a managed retreat.” Not as good as managing it right now, but if it even ever wakes up, it will be helpful. For example, “Americans’ access to all of those perverse economic incentives – including cheap insurance, water, and energy for cooling – skew their decisions about where to live.” Think Arizona, he says. Absurd.

So On The Move is a horror story. It is also relentless. The more you look into it, the worse the reality appears. The bright side is quite dim, and the slow-motion horrors to come are unstoppable. The insanity of ignoring and denying it all is Man’s second biggest error ever. The first, of course, is thinking we could burn our way to eternal comfort and wealth.

There remains one pressing question. In an interview, Lustgarten asked one of his biggest data experts whether he should be selling his own northern California home now. Before he could finish, the answer came back “Yes.” It would be interesting to know if he has done that.

David Wineberg… (altro)

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