- Earlier this year, the South Carolina legislature changed the preamble to a 30-year-old law governing beachfront development, striking out a state policy of “retreat” from the shoreline in the face of erosion and replacing it with a policy of “preservation” of the beaches. It was a small change, but a sign of the state’s approach, said Josh Eagle, who teaches environmental law at the University of South Carolina law school.
“The philosophy is one of, ‘We can beat nature,’” he said. “The driving forces are property rights and climate denial.”
People are moving to the Carolinas by the tens of thousands, and to coastal areas in particular, many of them starting businesses in places that would be right in a hurricane’s path. Extreme storms like Florence might jeopardize that growth, but then again, so would aggressive measures to protect against those storms, said Robert Hartwig, the director of the Risk and Uncertainty Management Center at the University of South Carolina.
“Are city planners — and the states and counties — are they zoning in a way to reflect the new reality?” Professor Hartwig asked. “The answer to that is, generally speaking, no. Most local officials are going to be loath to kill the goose that lays the golden economic egg.”
Insurance will eventually be the lever that breaks the back of climate denial. It's simple economics, I think: The insurer has to make more money than they dish out for claims. That's why they charge more for "high risks", like 16-year olds with a drivers license, homes built on cliffs with common seismic activity, commercial businesses that handle dangerous chemicals or explosives, etc. These homes are getting wiped out by natural disasters as fast as they can rebuild them, and restock them with new furniture, cars, and 70" TVs. Either the insurance companies raise rates to make up for these losses, or they get out of the business. It's just economics. (Yeah, FEMA funds are available, but even those are limited.)
It once was. Insurance companies were taking losses on flood claims, so they separated flood coverage and raised rates. Then FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program was introduced to make sure building and rebuilding in high-risk areas would remain affordable. FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program had 87% of all flood premiums nationwide in 2017. To make the simple economics work, FEMA borrows from the Treasury. It is now about $25 billion in debt. The debt limit is $30 billion, and the program was scheduled to sunset this year, but Congress authorized an extension.Insurance will eventually be the lever
(Yeah, FEMA funds are available, but even those are limited.)
According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, houses that repeatedly flood account for 1% of NFIP’s properties but 25-30% of its claims. Five states, Texas among them, have more than 10,000 such households and, nationwide, their number has been going up by around 5,000 each year. Insurance is meant to provide a signal about risk; in this case, it stifles it.
The reinsurance industry - the guys who insure the insurance companies - started jacking the rates of coastal areas back in like 2009. That, for me, was the moment when it was all over but the posturing. There was a farm I was keenly interested in up in Whatcom County. It was going for crazy cheap. Couldn't figure out why. Did some serious digging (I'm good at serious digging) and discovered that FEMA had adjusted the 100 year floodplain maps in 2010, putting that farmhouse on the "this is a fucking writeoff" portion of the map. Whatcom County regulations made it so that the building would never be issued another permit, that it would be ineligible for federal, state and county relief and that any sales of the property would come with the rider that the structure was not fit for human habitation. So. That cute farmhouse on the North Fork Nooksack with tenants in it in 2014 became a dilapidated shack in 2016.
How's that short-sighted thinking going guys?The states are among the fastest-growing in the country, and in each of them, Republican-dominated legislatures have been accused of prioritizing business and growth over efforts to limit the consequences of climate change. Beginning in 2012, North Carolina lawmakers took actions that forced state and local agencies that make policy on the coast to ignore models that predict rising sea levels.
They'll make their money, they'll score their memberships, and their kids will talk about what a big deal their parents were back when Division Canal was Division Street. https://www.deviantart.com/fstarno/art/The-Global-Flooding-of-2010-75967349