Yes, there needs to be some financial or regulatory disincentive to prevent people from making these poor choices that taxpayers then take future responsibility for.
I’m in this situation. For many good reasons I am very motivated to continue living in an area that is being destroyed by climate change. This attitude that a lot of people are expressing, not just uniwelder, misses the point that the earth has changed. It used to be we would get annoyed by people who would perch their houses on the edge of the water for the view. Or up on the hill, etc. There were lots of other, less dangerous options in the area. Because of climate change there are no safe areas in this part of the country now. This area (southern Louisiana) is all about chemical plants and oil refineries. Pollution and cancer are out of control. Be grateful there are suckers out there that are willing to live here. You want them in your backyard? My house flooded this year. (My house is not in a flood zone). It was a lot more traumatic for me than the American taxpayer.
Sorry, I've read your post a few times, but don't understand what you're getting at. It seems like you're just venting, as you recognize reality, but are frustrated. Are you trying to say the infrastucture (people's homes, chemical and oil industry) is already established, so no use trying to relocate? The rest of US should continue to subsidize that which is unsustainable?
Its a difficult choice certainly, but people can't keep living in areas that will be underwater 30 years from now, unless they intend to have a houseboat instead. You can move sooner rather than later, but eventually will need to relocate.
I agree - moreover, I think the knee-jerk response to the idea that certain regions are uninhabitable is to assume that folks are going to be asked or even coerced to uproot themselves in the immediate future, which is just categorically false.
It will be a slow migration away from areas that are turning uninhabitable, and that is still going to suck. New investment in affected or projected-affected areas will all but cease. People will stop migrating toward those areas and as the population ages and moves away, the infrastructure in those areas will slowly fall apart. But we as a country could do well to not subsidize people to continue to live for decades in an area that's just not great for communities of people to be.
It's incredibly callous of me to say, but it needs to be said - history and tradition be damned, there is a threshold of support that after a certain point we as a collective society should stop pouring money into recovering and rebuilding areas that may not be inhabitable with our current technology for many years.
I am not suggesting eminent domain, but instead to incentivize industry and residents to move away from areas that are not great places to be (be it floods, fires, or drought). I'd much rather start to help people with the difficult but preferential process of transplanting them to hardier areas (even if it means moving 100 miles away) than to keep pouring billions into infrastructure that, one day, will be underwater, ash, or have no reasonable means of water supply.
And if folks or businesses want to stay put, then they should understand that they will have to bear greater responsibility for their remaining where they live.
Alternatively, I would hope that we can innovate adaptable infrastructure so that we can continue to preserve regions of the country that are going to be "lost" to climate change.
Meadow lark - I'm sorry that this is happening to the area you call home. I apologize if this comment is cold, callous, or if I've failed to understand what it's like to live in such an area. I don't mean to suggest that you're being unreasonable, but rather that there are millions of people across the country whose communities may soon cease to exist in the form that we're currently familiar with.
