November 2012

In the aftermath of the real super-storm (or hurricane) Sandy, there has been, not
surprisingly, a super-storm of reporting, opinionating, blogging, and
twittering. This is good – there is, in certain quarters at least, some kind of
debate going on. However, I have a problem, and so, to wrap up the current sequence of the
ongoing theme, I will add my two cents to the maelstrom.

The cover, above, from a recent issue of Bloomberg Business Week
illustrates my problem quite well. Putting aside my resentment at being
addressed as stupid (I’m sure it wasn’t meant personally), I should say that the
cover
article is good in many respects. It begins, perhaps a little petulantly,
“Yes, yes, it’s unsophisticated to blame any given storm on climate change” and
goes on to declare that “Clarity, however, is not beyond reach. Hurricane Sandy
demands it…” Then, in my opinion, it fails in its own quest for clarity by
confounding two vital issues, two problems, both of which need to be urgently
addressed – although these problems are related, the paths to successfully
addressing them are distinct, and this distinction is lost in the furore. And
Bloomberg are not alone.

The challenge of managing our coasts is not
the same as the challenge of “managing” climate change. We urgently need a
rigorous, evidence-based, approach to developing policy on both – *but with
the recognition that the solutions are distinct.*Coastal management policy
should be informedby analysis of the changing climate but should not
be dependent on it.Successfully addressing global warming is neither a pre-requisite nor the solution for coastal management.

Here’s a simple summary of my argument (not that I claim any intellectual
property rights whatsoever – I am simply following the logic of the
experts):

1. The consequences of the damage caused by even a relatively**modest storm such as Sandy are socially, financially, economically, and
   environmentally unsustainable.
2. More – and more violent – storms are inevitable, regardless of global
   warming, and their frequency and targets impossible to predict.
3. It is likely that warming oceans are exacerbating the strength and frequency
   of storms and hurricanes such as Sandy – but then the situation is arguably bad
   enough already.
4. Any hoped-for global action to address global warming will operate on a
   timeframe that is irrelevant to storm frequency in the foreseeable future and
   the consequent immediate coastal management issues.
5. Fundamental reform of the current free-for-all in coastal development needs
   to be an immediate and local issue, distinct from any longer-term actions to
   reduce emissions and ameliorate climate change.

So when a video report included in the Bloomberg piece tells me that
“our cover story this week may generate controversy, but only among the stupid,”
I have to take exception. It’s not that they don’t hit many of the components –
insurance costs and so on - and their message that “We have to pay attention”
is, of course, correct. Their concluding statement is absolutely correct: “The
U.S. can’t afford regular Sandy-size disruptions in economic activity. To limit
the costs of climate-related disasters, both politicians and the public need to
accept how much they’re helping to cause them.” But, at the same time, there’s
my problem – Sandy was a “climate-related disaster” independent of climate
change; and yes, “politicians and the public need to accept how much they’re
helping to cause them,” but the immediate cause of the scale of the disasteris not inactivity on climate change.

I really don’t mean for this to be tirade against the Bloombergarticle – after all, it succeeded in its intention to be controversial, and
that’s a good thing; it’s simply symptomatic of what I feel is a muddying of the
waters. But let’s clarify what we should be arguing about. Bill Hooke at
Living on the Real Worldhit the proverbial nail on the head in “Hurricane Sandy’s Real
Lesson…will we learn it?”:

America needs a comparable national effort and accompanying long-term
investment in reducing the need for emergency response on such a grand
scale.
The need for emergency response will never go away. But we shouldn’t resign
ourselves to the idea that emergencies will necessarily continue to grow in
scope, number and impact, just because our society is growing in numbers, in
property exposure, and in economic activity. We can grow our society’s
resilience to such events. We can reduce the geographical extent and the
population adversely affected by future events.

Exactly (except that it’s not just about America). The issue is resilience –
and adaptation, and sustainability.

And some further words of wisdom from Rob Young, often quoted in this blog,
from a New
York Times piece, “As Coasts Rebuild and U.S. Pays, Repeatedly, the
Critics Ask Why”:

“The best thing that could possibly come out of Sandy is if the political
establishment was willing to say, ‘Let’s have a conversation about how we do
this differently the next time,’ ” said Dr. Young, a coastal geologist who
directs the Program for the Study of
Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University. “We need to identify
those areas — in advance — that it no longer makes sense to
rebuild.”

That’s one urgent issue. Climate change is another one.

From Judith Kildow (who directs the National Ocean Economics Program at the
Monterey Institute of International Studies), and Jason Scorse, an associate
professor of economics at the institute, in a New York Timesopinion
piece a couple of days ago:

IT’S no surprise that it can be very expensive to live near the ocean. But it
may come as a surprise to American taxpayers that they are on the hook for at
least $527 billion of vulnerable assets in the nation’s coastal flood plains.
Those homes and businesses are insured by the federal government’s National
Flood Insurance Program.
You read that right: $527 billion, which is just a portion of the program’s
overall liability of $1.25 trillion, second only to Social Security in the
liabilities on the government’s ledgers last year, according to government data.
…The bottom line is that the flood insurance program is a fiscal time bomb
for the government.
We should phase out the program, begin thinking strategically about how to
shift populations away from the most risky coastal areas, and use the best
available science to update the woefully out-of-date coastal-zone risk profiles
that government agencies currently rely on to determine danger. We also need to
encourage more stringent building codes that take into account the full range of
climate risks.

Which is also precisely what Michael Gerrard, director of the Columbia Center for Climate
Change Law emphasised in his recent
piece “What Hurricane Sandy was not.” Herewith, his conclusion – which, you
will be relieved to know, I shall use as mine:

The prospect of future storms like Sandy is not something where our best
future course of action at all plain and obvious. The magnitude of public
investments that has been discussed is immense, and these projects must compete
against a great many other compelling priorities.  The land use decisions we
face are heartbreaking — we seem to be left with a choice between rebuilding
communities in places that will continue to be vulnerable to storms like Sandy, 
or not rebuilding them and requiring their residents and the rest of us to lose
an immense amount of what we value. Perhaps a small fraction of the tens of
billions of dollars we’re talking about for sea walls and flood gates should go
to offering to buy out the homeowners in the extremely vulnerable areas — that
should probably be on the table.  After the devastating earthquake and tsunami
in Chile in 2010, serious land use restrictions were imposed on coastal areas
that continue to be vulnerable to such events.  That, too, should be on the
table.  Some really tough decisions lie ahead — and failure to make a decision
is itself a decision, but often the worst one. SIGNATURE

Originally published at: https://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2012/11/index.html