Most people have been ignoring climate threats, despite obvious trends and expert predictions. Presumably they’ve been waiting for actual damage before believing and acting. Maybe they’re waiting for a cure. Maybe they haven’t known what they can do.
A few, like myself, have been doing the opposite, getting way too far ahead of the curve. For instance . . .
Migrating from the seashore Hilary, Buddy and I sold our home on an oceanside salt pond in 2012. Our backyard, right up to the house, was in the floodplain. It was easy to imagine storm surge destroying the narrow beach separating that pond from the Atlantic Ocean, knocking down the beach club buildings on it. We thought the danger would soon be recognized, and not only our safety but the value of our house would be reduced. We sold, moved and rented in town.
That was 14 years ago. Since then the value of that property in Newport, Rhode Island has more than doubled. Our vision of a real estate crash around the pond was way ahead of its time!
Telling people to climate-proof their finances I wrote a book warning families about the growing economic dangers of rising prices, taxes, and insurance costs, and threats to our jobs and home values driven by climate change.
That was 8 years ago. The book got great reviews and endorsements, but disappointing sales. My hopes that many families would take some of the 105 protective steps I recommended were way ahead of their time!
The time has come, maybe?
This week I read about two developments I’ve been waiting for.
First, the threat to those Newport beaches is suddenly acknowledged.
Consultants have told the City Council that iconic First Beach will be gone by 2070. The city has issued a request for proposal to demolish the snackbar and carousel buildings. Managed retreat from some neighborhoods is now being discussed in City Hall. [Newport This Week]
Second, one of the biggest conferences of economists met in San Antonio and, for the first time, focused predominantly on climate costs. Dozens of presentations indicate there’s lots of “work in figuring out how societies can deal with the effects of climate change — now a new normal, not a faraway threat.”
There were papers on the local economic impact of wind turbine manufacturing, the stability of electricity grids as they absorb more renewable energy, the effect of electric vehicles on housing choices, how wildfire smoke strains household finances. Others analyzed the benefits of a sea wall for flood risk in Venice, the economic drag of uncertainty about climate policy, the flow of migrants displaced by extreme weather, how banks are exposed to emissions regulations and the impact of higher temperatures on factory productivity — just to name a few. [We’re all climate economists now, New York Times]
What took us so long?
Those are topics I've been covering for years, all the time thinking the world is being too slow to recognise them. But maybe I’ve been too fast - like the leader of that sidewalk group in the Beyond the Fringe End-Of-The-World skit. When the world doesn’t end on their timetable, he says “Nevermind, lads. Same time tomorrow. We must get a winner one day.”
The Times report goes on to say “Not only economists but everybody else is realizing that this is a first-order problem, and it’s affecting most people in some way.”
Let’s hope “everybody else” will in fact wake up this year!
And those in perpetual denial will still be denying climate change when the water is up to their chests, Rather like those folks who, on their death beds, were still denying that COVID was a problem right up to their last gasping breath. Why would some people prefer to be right--and dead?