USA: With more storms and rising seas, which U.S. cities should be saved first?
By Christopher Flavelle
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After three years of brutal flooding and hurricanes in the United States, there is growing consensus among policymakers and scientists that coastal areas will require significant spending to ride out future storms and rising sea levels — not in decades, but now and in the very near future. There is also a growing realization that some communities, even sizable ones, will be left behind.
New research offers one way to look at the enormity of the cost as policymakers consider how to choose winners and losers in the race to adapt to climate change. By 2040, simply providing basic storm-surge protection in the form of sea walls for all coastal cities with more than 25,000 residents will require at least $42 billion, according to new estimates from the Center for Climate Integrity, an environmental advocacy group. Expanding the list to include communities smaller than 25,000 people would increase that cost to more than $400 billion.
“Once you get into it, you realize we’re just not going to protect a lot of these places,” said Richard Wiles, the center’s executive director. “This is the next wave of climate denial — denying the costs that we’re all facing.”
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The administration is working on rules governing $16 billion in grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help cities and states protect themselves against the effects of future natural disasters, the largest such award ever made by the department. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is also currently preparing rules for grants to pay for climate-resilient infrastructure.
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Mr. [Eric] Smith, of Swiss Re, said that cities should take responsibility for protecting themselves from the rising toll of disasters, rather than waiting for the federal government.
In his view, the chief obstacle is the refusal by some local officials to acknowledge what is happening.
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