RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) - Lawmakers in North Carolina, which has a long Atlantic Ocean coastline and vast areas of low-lying land, voted on Tuesday to ignore studies predicting a rapid rise in sea level due to climate change and postpone planning for the consequences...To be precise, their discussion at that time was about long-term climate change, not hurricane preparedness (more discussion at the via). But their insistence on promoting coastal development will have its karma tested this week.
A panel of scientists that advises North Carolina’s Coastal Resources Commission, a state policy panel, said coastal communities should plan for about 39 inches of sea level rise by 2100 based on seven scientific studies.
That drew a backlash from a coastal economic development group called NC-20 that called it fake science. The group said making development take into account 39 inches of sea level rise could undermine the coastal economy, raise insurance costs and turn thousands of square miles of coastal property into flood plains that could not be developed...
“The science panel used one model, the most extreme in the world,” McElraft said. “They need to use some science that we can all trust when we start making laws in North Carolina that affect property values on the coast.”
12 September 2018
North Carolina passed a law banning climate-change-based policies
From 2012:
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And while we're at it that whole thing with pi is stupid, from now on it's going to be equal to 3
ReplyDeleteThe big underlying problem is however, that counties depend on property tax for their income and have therefore an incentive to build and build and build. Especially in the south, where raising taxes is impossible. Meanwhile, the Federal flood insurance problem feeds into this need to build, by allowing property owners in flood-prone areas to rebuild and rebuild and rebuild.
ReplyDeleteUnicorn solution: If your house flood and the federal flood insurance needs to pay more than 50% of your house, it will buy you out and leave the lot undeveloped. If a certain number of buy-outs have happened, it will also stop insuring new lots and houses in an area.
The feds can do this because this will keep the federal program affordable (it is not). Sadly, voters want to live on the beach and will send congressmen to DC that will never allow the flood insurance program to make sense.
Meanwhile, us in the non-coastal areas of the US are subsidizing people living on unsustainable places at the beach.
[You don't need to recognize climate change to solve this problem. You just need to be a fiscal conservative that truly wants small government]