Dauphin Island is one of the many places in the USA that coastal geologists would not recommend to develop due to its vulnerability to climate change induced sea level rise and hurricane damage, reports the New York Times. Yet, year after year the houses and infrastructure that is destroyed almost each year by storms are rebuilt the same way, at the same place thanks to subsidized insurance coverage and federal aid and the lack of strict building codes.
Eli Lehrer, the president of the R Street Institute, part of the SmarterSafer.org coalition warns that, “We simply can’t go on subsidizing enormous numbers of people to live in areas that are prone to huge natural disasters.” W. Craig Fugate, the agency’s administrator added that, “as a nation, we have not yet figured out” how to use federal incentives to improve resiliency and discourage excessive risks.