> The agency’s projection that the system will “no longer provide [required] risk reduction as early as 2023” illustrates the rapidly changing conditions being experienced both globally as sea levels rise faster than expected and locally as erosion wipes out protective barrier islands and marshlands in southeastern Louisiana.
The article repeatedly refers to sea level rise without noting the contribution of this factor relative to erosion. Equal? Highly tilted toward sea level rise? Does erosion account for most of the problem, and if so how does one separate this factor from seal level increase?
Neither the article nor the source document offer much insight:
> “I think this work is necessary. We have to protect the population of New Orleans,” Vuxton said.
I'm not so sure, especially because the full costs of doing so appear to be so uncertain.
How much money will people living in other states be willing to dump into a cause with cost increases as far as the eye can see? It's not like sea level rise is expected to suddenly stop dead in its tracks.
Ever-greater engineering efforts are one option. Mass evacuation of the most vulnerable areas is another. There may be options in-between.
This says three main factors:
1.)sediment flow changes - we changed flow of Mississippi River to benefit a lot of upstream communities (for flood control/farming/maintaining river boundaries against nature's desire) - continuing to do so robs Louisiana of land mass
2.) subsidence - pumping out water aquifers and extracting oil (without replacing fluids) cause land levels to sink
3.) sea level rise
It's not just a few houses built by irresponsible people.
Nola has the highest port tonnage in the country. The impact on GDP is estimated in the hundreds of billions. There's also billions and billions of dollars of infrastructure here.
Most goods that pass through to the midwest and many through the rest of the country come through here.
Without Nola, hundreds of billions of dollars of the economy will go away. Gas prices set a record after Katrina.
Porque no los dos? Keep the port and relocate the rest of the city. It's not that you need hundreds of thousands people to run port facility. Damn, if you even need 500.
The rest of the population are hospitality workers and ambulance chase lawyers.
A lot of the current problem in New Orleans is that it's built on deep layers of silt which are slowly compacting. And channelizing the Mississippi has resulted in loss of protective barriers offshore because the silt now goes right out the end of the channel into deep water. Bonus the bedrock itself is slowly tilting sinking towards the gulf.
What the place needs is about three meters of compacted fill under the whole city. ALA Galveston TX and Downtown Chicago.
It's neither. Erosion and sea level changes are not at all the problem here.
The problem is that keeping the lowest point dry causes subsurface water to be removed from the area. Also, that water doesn't get replenished. Things tend to shrink when they dry out, and the land under New Orleans is no exception. It's becoming like a shriveled up raisin or sponge.
The more you pump the place dry, the more the place sinks lower.
Sea level has been rising at three millimeters a year as long as detailed measurements have been made. There has been no acceleration in that rate. We are, after all, still coming out of an ice age, and the oceans are still expanding due to accumulated heat.
Locally apparent changes are primarily due to land subsidence due to sediment deposits or rebound after the ice melted.
As I understand it, the Netherlands pays for this maintenance themselves, and not from EU funding? If it were relying on EU funds then I'd expect some kind of European benefit analysis would be required.
We have a seperate branch of government called Water Boards[0]. They are some of the oldest forms of government in the world dating back to 1255.[1]
The water boards raise their own taxes, and we elect officials for it in separate elections.
Basically we don't want regular politicians to make budget trade offs between long term safety and short term <whatever they campaign for>. I'm sure we're all familiar with long term planning capabilities of regular politicians.
To answer your question: yes. We do fund this our selves. I was saying I'm glad we do it this way in stead of begging the EU for funds.
It's just a headline, but this title makes me sigh.
For this thread, it's the title; for others today, it has been the "dose of realism" cynical first comment. It's probably just bad luck, but it feels like the first comment on every thread I've read today has been some variation of "here are the clouds to this silver lining."
In this case, it's amazing that we give enough of a damn about each other to allocate the money in the first place. How many people say caring for the less fortunate should be a matter for charities but then don't donate a dime themselves? How many in an honest moment would reply, "that's tough, move to Houston." Yet some among us cares enough to try instead of just rolling their eyes at building below sea level. I'm happy to take more trying and failing if it's in exchange for "serves them right" hindsight or abject cynicism.
Proceeding to read the article, over a decade the Army Corps of Engineers raised hundreds of miles of levees. If this were a thread about how the US can't complete big projects any more, that alone would be a ray of sunshine.
There are real problems in the world, folks. There's no denying that. But when the people with the ability and the inclination to be doers spend their time wringing their hands or giving themselves over to "the constipation of bittersweet philosophy" that's when there's really a problem.
Instead of worrying about the state of the world, spend an hour of your social media/fuck around time a day/week/month doing something for someone else. It'll do some actual good.
I would rather we spent tax dollars on fixable problems with much more social good per dollar. I'm tired of subsidizing flood insurance for idiots that keep building in areas that flood every 10 years. Subsidizing someone to have a nice home on a Miami beech is not "actual good". L
What you're missing is the Nola has the highest port tonnage in the country. The impact on GDP is estimated in the hundreds of billions. There's also billions and billions of dollars of infrastructure here.
Most goods that pass through to the midwest and rest of the country come through here.
Without Nola, hundreds of billions of dollars of the economy will go away. Gas prices set a record after Katrina.
We spend more tax dollars on the military than anything else; that’s also a sort of never-ending wall building exercise intended to prevent floods of war & immigration... maybe we’re all idiots. ;)
It’s not really a subsidy, just poor use of tax dollars. I like my taxes being used for wise infrastructure projects. As a whole, the benefit the whole. Individually they benefit some individuals more than others. But I don’t consider that a subsidy.
The planet is in constant change except on longer timescales than humans can perceive. Just because a geographic location is great for a city at one time doesn't mean it will stay that way forever.
They should just pay people affected by this to move.
* > Proceeding to read the article, over a decade the Army Corps of Engineers raised hundreds of miles of levees. If this were a thread about how the US can't complete big projects any more, that alone would be a ray of sunshine.
Unfortunately even that sunshine requires applying sunscreen as it reminds of their calculations that don’t favor helping the most people.
Still, even if the [Army Corp of Engineers] approach is designed to avoid picking winners and losers, it ends up doing so anyway, favoring wealthier neighborhoods. "It's also going to be [choosing] more valuable businesses," Kling says. "More valuable real estate."
I would say in these cases though that he levees are the problem. You have silted up channels because the river needs to flood, and the excessive levee system makes that problem more pronounced and contributes to the shrinking of the delta.
That said, New Orleans shouldn’t die. But we’re making the problem worse for most stakeholders in other places.
>> “I think this work is necessary. We have to protect the population of New Orleans,”
Not that I like either option, but I'd rather my tax dollars be spent on relocating these people than fighting an eternal war against the inevitable march of nature. Can I do anything personally about it? Not really. Certainly far less than any individual who lives there. But if my taxes are going to be used to help, then please help in a way that is more effective than doing the same stupid thing (building below sea level) that they've been doing for a hundred years.
Nola has the highest port tonnage in the country. The impact on GDP is estimated in the hundreds of billions. There's also billions and billions of dollars of infrastructure here.
Most goods that pass through to the midwest and rest of the country come through here.
Without Nola, hundreds of billions of dollars of the economy will go away. Gas prices set a record after Katrina.
>Instead of worrying about the state of the world, spend an hour of your social media/fuck around time a day/week/month doing something for someone else. It'll do some actual good.
Unfortunately, the current zeitgeist is one in which if you say the wrong thing, are misinterpreted, "mansplain" or simply disagree with the wrong people you're going to get railroaded, brigaded, reported to authorities, fired or blacklisted.
In a world like that, where everyone is an opponent, who wants to "help their neighbour"?
Feigned moral indignation over 'cynicism' won't change the fact that real money was really wasted.
> Instead of worrying about the state of the world, spend an hour of your social media/fuck around time a day/week/month doing something for someone else. It'll do some actual good.
Also, speak for yourself. You don't know what people spend their time doing outside of writing comments on HN.
I do that, and I agree: I wish people would spend as much time complaining about other people as they do helping them. Yet, 40% of my paycheck is still taken against my will anyway.
> Emily Vuxton, policy director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, an environmental group ... said repair costs could be “hundreds of millions” of dollars, with 75% paid by federal taxpayers.
“I think this work is necessary. We have to protect the population of New Orleans,” Vuxton said.
Summed up as: “I think our unsustainable way of life should be subsidized by the rest of the country at a 3:1 rate”.
I enjoy NOLA, but how are we going to deal with this at any kind of scale?
The key to my comment was the last clause “at any kind of scale”.
If the community living there can’t support the costs of environmental maintenance, at a certain point it becomes like a superfund site: people will need to move to higher ground. In NOLA, in Houston, in Miami and beyond.
> Hundreds of millions of dollars is barely a blip on the federal government's budget.
That doesn’t mean that’s how it should be.
When you listen to old radio, you get the impression people actually cared about how money was spent and didn’t casually write off millions of dollars, just because “that’s the budget.” Why are people these days willing to let the government drop millions of dollars so casually?
Take for example this episode of Johnny Dollar: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PXa86HJ49iE (1956). The way the people in this episode are pissed off about their money being wasted, you’d think it was some other country.
When did people become OK with wasting money like this?
Off the coast of Louisiana is the Mad Dog spar oil platform, installed in 2005, which at maximum production is pumping 100,000 barrels of oil a day. Louisiana receives no tax revenue from it.
I'm not totally sure what point you're trying to make... I don't have a particularly strong opinion on how to allocate tax revenue in this situation, but it seems relevant to mention that the platform is 150 miles off the coast.
That's 138 miles into international waters. Percentage-wise, it's... a little closer to Louisiana than Texas? Florida and Mexico are't all that far away either.
Nola is built on silt. Due to waterway controls etc., the delta isn’t getting the silt it historically received to keep erosion/subsidence at bay. Cost benefit would say keep the farming/irrigation, diversion due to economics and sacrifice a sinking delta. Not much different from Alexandria+Nile.
Nola should have taken the opportunity to move and rebuild on higher ground.
How much do the Feds collect in taxes from the city each year? How much more will they collect in the future because the city floods less? A few hundred million dollars to protect a major city sounds like an incredible bargain with a great ROI.
Indeed. This was totally predictable. New Orleans has been sinking for centuries. And sea level rise is inevitably occurring at an increasing rate.
So yes, just move everybody. There can be boat tours. Same for Florida. With porous limestone, it's a lost cause. Even New York City will be a challenge. Lots of Manhattan is built on old garbage.
New Orleans isn't the most unsustainable place around. The intractable swampy surroundings have prevented it from becoming as suburbanized as most American cities; if you look at it from a satellite, there is a sharp boundary between the city and the swamp. The situation is much worse in, say, Miami. Many other coastal cities will also need levees and have uglier boundaries.
>New Orleans isn't the most unsustainable place around
You can't really treat New Orleans as a single entity. The French Quarter and where the high rises are is (relatively) comfortably above sea level. The sprawl that stretches towards Lake Ponchartrain isn't. That area is well and truly screwed. They keep sinking, the sea keeps rising, and the hurricanes get stronger.
There's no real solution. You can keep building the levees higher, but that's sort of like paying off a credit card with anotehr credit card. It's a temporary solution that makes the reckoning a lot worse when the piper comes calling.
Nola has the highest port tonnage in the country. The impact on GDP is estimated in the hundreds of billions. There's also billions and billions of dollars of infrastructure here. Most goods that pass through to the midwest and many through the rest of the country come through here.
Without Nola, hundreds of billions of dollars of the economy will go away. Gas prices set a record after Katrina.
If the federal government would just do what North Carolina did and pass a law prohibiting basing coastal policies on the latest scientific predictions of how much the sea level will rise, these levees would last indefinitely.
As a non-American, can someone explain to me why the army was responsible for this work? When does the normal tender/contractor process not occur? Is it a scale or political decision?
The US Army Corps of Engineers is generally and historically responsible for waterway dredging and flood control. It's one of their core (peace-time) responsibilities. These are typically large projects that benefit the public good yet are rather complex and lack sufficient financial incentives for privatization. The wikipedia article [1] gives a general idea of how and when this came to be. (Canals.)
It's complicated. The Army Corps of Engineers has had a civilian mandate to support flood control prevention since 1917 [1]. Beyond that, they are also involved in large public works projects such as the building of roads and bridges, and Superfund clean-up sites. On top of this, they regularly receive large pork barrel grants from Congress that can siphon money into a senator's state or a congressperson's district. They do have a large contracting arm and are actually pretty well-regarded for their comprehensive procurement and management process for these large public works projects.
So it's scale, politics, and history/momentum at this point.
> As a non-American, can someone explain to me why the army was responsible for this work?
Because...path dependency. The Army Corps of Engineers has long been responsible, largely, as I understand it, from mission following capacity rather than vice versa.
> When does the normal tender/contractor process not occur?
It can, but that process requires
a government agency over the top, and the ACE is the responsible agency. They contract out work.
It is a bit odd, but the Army Corps of Engineers has historically always been responsible for a lot of maintenance of the country's rivers and waterways, dams, parts of the Great Lakes, etc. including flood control.
They have a concept of “waters of the United States” where if it’s a navigable water it is federally managed and historically army cane first so their Corp of engineers are the ones who carry out the operations
As an American I know. These levees were built KNOWING that they sink at a mathematical formulate rate. This is FAKE NEWS. The 14 billion dollar cost is a cost rate over a decade or more, lets say 1 billion at 14 years long. This billion a year is the cost to keep adding on to the existing well made and constructed infrastructure.
Please don’t co-opt the phrase “fake news” even if you don’t believe what’s being said is an accurate portrayal — it disparages the news media by implicitly legitimizing self-serving uses of the term. Every time this phrase is used it hurts the fourth estate. The media gets things wrong sometimes, and we should hold them accountable but this isn’t how.
Y'all questioning whether it's worth saving should stay in New Orleans for a month. There is so much joy there, such a rich culture and long history that we all stand to lose.
I saw a program on Netflix or Prime Video about how rising sea levels are changing the lives of people living in a community in coastal California as the tides flood the streets more and more. People are emotionally bonded to their homes and are unable to decide to move away.
This is a new type of problem that is going to happen more and more globally. Maldives is going to be among the first to sink. However, their government has sobered up to that fact and are making plans. These type of events cannot be handled at the local level and government leaders need to coax and guide people to relocate.
Then again, we have deniers of climate change and rising sea levels...
Is it a new problem? The dustbowl hit, and some people were completely unwilling to move, even though their way of life was unsustainable.
Change is inherently hard to deal with. I think one of the big roles of government, and perhaps culture, is to temper the peaks and valleys. Some of us are going to face hard hard choices. Some of those choices are very rapid, like an earthquake. Some of those choices are very slow, like rising sea levels.
We pretty much know that there will be earthquakes and rising sea levels. How do we influence people to minimize that impact today?
I'm a fan of big cash payouts for flood insurance in exchange for losing the land, ever increasing taxes on the sale of costal properties and converting coastline to national park.
When folks homes are inevitably destroyed, make sure they have plenty of money to move. Make it harder and harder to sell property on the risky coasts, and finally when enough homes have been destroyed (50%? 95%? doesn't really matter the higher the fraction, the more painful the change will be), take the land and turn it into parks for everyone to use.
I'm not exactly opposed to the very wealthy hanging on to a cabin or a mansion, but there needs to be a clear line that they are living on public land. People can camp in their yard.
Maybe it's a stupid idea. We do have an opportunity to unwind the massive, massive risk incurred by allowing, even encouraging, people to live in places where they will fail miserably, eventually.
Right now, the risks are low. So the stakes should be low. I have no problems with my tax dollars giving a small bonus for them to move away, and turn that land into national park. In 50 years when they are well and truly fucked - who cares? Maybe stop issuing flood insurance in 40 years. Plenty of time to figure out a plan.
But where they are living is increasingly risky. Slowly, gradually make it clear that we as a culture and government aren't going to subsidize that. It's ok if they are super-rich, and can afford to rebuild every few years. but the land will be nationalized eventually. And no one is going to subsidize rebuilding efforts in the very long run.
I think this is an unsustainable strategy in the long term. Many of America's biggest most profitable cities are on the coasts. With rising sea levels many will be at risk. Some (eg. New Orleans) already are.
On the other hand, investing a little money in terraforming never hurt anyone and has a proven track record.
Readit News
The article repeatedly refers to sea level rise without noting the contribution of this factor relative to erosion. Equal? Highly tilted toward sea level rise? Does erosion account for most of the problem, and if so how does one separate this factor from seal level increase?
Neither the article nor the source document offer much insight:
https://www.eenews.net/assets/2019/04/11/document_ew_01.pdf
Also from the article:
> “I think this work is necessary. We have to protect the population of New Orleans,” Vuxton said.
I'm not so sure, especially because the full costs of doing so appear to be so uncertain.
How much money will people living in other states be willing to dump into a cause with cost increases as far as the eye can see? It's not like sea level rise is expected to suddenly stop dead in its tracks.
Ever-greater engineering efforts are one option. Mass evacuation of the most vulnerable areas is another. There may be options in-between.
https://www.factcheck.org/2017/03/land-loss-in-louisiana/ All three together paint a pretty grim picture of the future of New Orleans.
Nola has the highest port tonnage in the country. The impact on GDP is estimated in the hundreds of billions. There's also billions and billions of dollars of infrastructure here. Most goods that pass through to the midwest and many through the rest of the country come through here.
Without Nola, hundreds of billions of dollars of the economy will go away. Gas prices set a record after Katrina.
14 billion is a bargain to keep this city going.
What the place needs is about three meters of compacted fill under the whole city. ALA Galveston TX and Downtown Chicago.
The problem is that keeping the lowest point dry causes subsurface water to be removed from the area. Also, that water doesn't get replenished. Things tend to shrink when they dry out, and the land under New Orleans is no exception. It's becoming like a shriveled up raisin or sponge.
The more you pump the place dry, the more the place sinks lower.
See also: Mexico City
Locally apparent changes are primarily due to land subsidence due to sediment deposits or rebound after the ice melted.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/2018rel1-global-mean-se...
1/3 of our country is below sea-level or around 0m NAP. Levees and flood protection are like fashion or politics: they're never finished, not really.
I'm glad we do this out ourselves in stead of the EU deciding whether they want to subsidies a bunch of people living in a delta.
The water boards raise their own taxes, and we elect officials for it in separate elections.
Basically we don't want regular politicians to make budget trade offs between long term safety and short term <whatever they campaign for>. I'm sure we're all familiar with long term planning capabilities of regular politicians.
To answer your question: yes. We do fund this our selves. I was saying I'm glad we do it this way in stead of begging the EU for funds.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_board_(Netherlands) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoogheemraadschap_van_Rijnland
For this thread, it's the title; for others today, it has been the "dose of realism" cynical first comment. It's probably just bad luck, but it feels like the first comment on every thread I've read today has been some variation of "here are the clouds to this silver lining."
In this case, it's amazing that we give enough of a damn about each other to allocate the money in the first place. How many people say caring for the less fortunate should be a matter for charities but then don't donate a dime themselves? How many in an honest moment would reply, "that's tough, move to Houston." Yet some among us cares enough to try instead of just rolling their eyes at building below sea level. I'm happy to take more trying and failing if it's in exchange for "serves them right" hindsight or abject cynicism.
Proceeding to read the article, over a decade the Army Corps of Engineers raised hundreds of miles of levees. If this were a thread about how the US can't complete big projects any more, that alone would be a ray of sunshine.
There are real problems in the world, folks. There's no denying that. But when the people with the ability and the inclination to be doers spend their time wringing their hands or giving themselves over to "the constipation of bittersweet philosophy" that's when there's really a problem.
Instead of worrying about the state of the world, spend an hour of your social media/fuck around time a day/week/month doing something for someone else. It'll do some actual good.
Most goods that pass through to the midwest and rest of the country come through here.
Without Nola, hundreds of billions of dollars of the economy will go away. Gas prices set a record after Katrina.
14 billion is a bargain to keep this city going.
Deleted Comment
They should just pay people affected by this to move.
Unfortunately even that sunshine requires applying sunscreen as it reminds of their calculations that don’t favor helping the most people.
Still, even if the [Army Corp of Engineers] approach is designed to avoid picking winners and losers, it ends up doing so anyway, favoring wealthier neighborhoods. "It's also going to be [choosing] more valuable businesses," Kling says. "More valuable real estate."
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/05/688786177/how-federal-disaste...
I would say in these cases though that he levees are the problem. You have silted up channels because the river needs to flood, and the excessive levee system makes that problem more pronounced and contributes to the shrinking of the delta.
That said, New Orleans shouldn’t die. But we’re making the problem worse for most stakeholders in other places.
>> “I think this work is necessary. We have to protect the population of New Orleans,”
Not that I like either option, but I'd rather my tax dollars be spent on relocating these people than fighting an eternal war against the inevitable march of nature. Can I do anything personally about it? Not really. Certainly far less than any individual who lives there. But if my taxes are going to be used to help, then please help in a way that is more effective than doing the same stupid thing (building below sea level) that they've been doing for a hundred years.
Without Nola, hundreds of billions of dollars of the economy will go away. Gas prices set a record after Katrina.
14 billion is a bargain to keep this city going.
They're not keeping it around to be nice.
Unfortunately, the current zeitgeist is one in which if you say the wrong thing, are misinterpreted, "mansplain" or simply disagree with the wrong people you're going to get railroaded, brigaded, reported to authorities, fired or blacklisted.
In a world like that, where everyone is an opponent, who wants to "help their neighbour"?
> Instead of worrying about the state of the world, spend an hour of your social media/fuck around time a day/week/month doing something for someone else. It'll do some actual good.
Also, speak for yourself. You don't know what people spend their time doing outside of writing comments on HN.
Summed up as: “I think our unsustainable way of life should be subsidized by the rest of the country at a 3:1 rate”.
I enjoy NOLA, but how are we going to deal with this at any kind of scale?
Federal dollars subsidize all kinds of local and regional infrastructure.
If the community living there can’t support the costs of environmental maintenance, at a certain point it becomes like a superfund site: people will need to move to higher ground. In NOLA, in Houston, in Miami and beyond.
That doesn’t mean that’s how it should be.
When you listen to old radio, you get the impression people actually cared about how money was spent and didn’t casually write off millions of dollars, just because “that’s the budget.” Why are people these days willing to let the government drop millions of dollars so casually?
Take for example this episode of Johnny Dollar: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PXa86HJ49iE (1956). The way the people in this episode are pissed off about their money being wasted, you’d think it was some other country.
When did people become OK with wasting money like this?
That's 138 miles into international waters. Percentage-wise, it's... a little closer to Louisiana than Texas? Florida and Mexico are't all that far away either.
Get the Army Corps of Engineers to hire the Dutch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_board_(Netherlands)
Nola should have taken the opportunity to move and rebuild on higher ground.
I say it’s time to move people to somewhere above sea level and let NOLA return to being the river delta it is so desperately trying to be.
[1] https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal-analysis/balance-of-...
Florida is worse off. Florida doesn't have much high ground.
So yes, just move everybody. There can be boat tours. Same for Florida. With porous limestone, it's a lost cause. Even New York City will be a challenge. Lots of Manhattan is built on old garbage.
You can't really treat New Orleans as a single entity. The French Quarter and where the high rises are is (relatively) comfortably above sea level. The sprawl that stretches towards Lake Ponchartrain isn't. That area is well and truly screwed. They keep sinking, the sea keeps rising, and the hurricanes get stronger.
There's no real solution. You can keep building the levees higher, but that's sort of like paying off a credit card with anotehr credit card. It's a temporary solution that makes the reckoning a lot worse when the piper comes calling.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
Without Nola, hundreds of billions of dollars of the economy will go away. Gas prices set a record after Katrina.
14 billion is a bargain to keep this city going.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/north-carolina-bans-latest-science...
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Corps_of_...
So it's scale, politics, and history/momentum at this point.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Corps_of_Engineers_c...
Wherever infrastructure is done responsibly, it makes sense to invest it'd seem ...
Because...path dependency. The Army Corps of Engineers has long been responsible, largely, as I understand it, from mission following capacity rather than vice versa.
> When does the normal tender/contractor process not occur?
It can, but that process requires a government agency over the top, and the ACE is the responsible agency. They contract out work.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
This is a new type of problem that is going to happen more and more globally. Maldives is going to be among the first to sink. However, their government has sobered up to that fact and are making plans. These type of events cannot be handled at the local level and government leaders need to coax and guide people to relocate.
Then again, we have deniers of climate change and rising sea levels...
Change is inherently hard to deal with. I think one of the big roles of government, and perhaps culture, is to temper the peaks and valleys. Some of us are going to face hard hard choices. Some of those choices are very rapid, like an earthquake. Some of those choices are very slow, like rising sea levels.
We pretty much know that there will be earthquakes and rising sea levels. How do we influence people to minimize that impact today?
I'm a fan of big cash payouts for flood insurance in exchange for losing the land, ever increasing taxes on the sale of costal properties and converting coastline to national park.
When folks homes are inevitably destroyed, make sure they have plenty of money to move. Make it harder and harder to sell property on the risky coasts, and finally when enough homes have been destroyed (50%? 95%? doesn't really matter the higher the fraction, the more painful the change will be), take the land and turn it into parks for everyone to use.
I'm not exactly opposed to the very wealthy hanging on to a cabin or a mansion, but there needs to be a clear line that they are living on public land. People can camp in their yard.
Maybe it's a stupid idea. We do have an opportunity to unwind the massive, massive risk incurred by allowing, even encouraging, people to live in places where they will fail miserably, eventually.
Right now, the risks are low. So the stakes should be low. I have no problems with my tax dollars giving a small bonus for them to move away, and turn that land into national park. In 50 years when they are well and truly fucked - who cares? Maybe stop issuing flood insurance in 40 years. Plenty of time to figure out a plan.
But where they are living is increasingly risky. Slowly, gradually make it clear that we as a culture and government aren't going to subsidize that. It's ok if they are super-rich, and can afford to rebuild every few years. but the land will be nationalized eventually. And no one is going to subsidize rebuilding efforts in the very long run.
On the other hand, investing a little money in terraforming never hurt anyone and has a proven track record.