The Burning Issue: Too Wet/Vulnerable to Rebuild?

We toss around words like “Armageddon,” “a disaster of biblical proportions,” “a 100 or 500-year natural disaster,” or “incomprehensible destruction” as if we are totally surprised that there is yet another slam from Mother Nature. We do not even know what to call them anymore, but the vast majority of these American mega-disasters are either caused by or severely exacerbated by global climate change… from the total burnout of California communities built too close to vast forest land (drying out fast as temperatures rise) to the recent devastation of Hurricane Ian in the low-lying Florida peninsula, both pictured above.

The closest label we have developed seems to be a “billion-dollar” natural disaster. In 2021, the U.S. experienced 20 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, putting 2021 in second place for the most disasters in a calendar year, behind the record 22 separate billion-dollar events in 2020. This year alone, there were 10 such devastating events even before Ian decimated Florida and points north. We’ve almost forgotten about the devastation of Hurricane Fiona already. On average, these completely destructive events are now occurring more frequently than once a month.

We have developed some really bad habits in our response to this obvious issue. Maybe it’s our stubborn pioneer spirit, but we are bombarded with post-disaster videos of strong Americans, standing by their totally destroyed homes, pledging to rebuild. Rebuild? In areas where we absolutely expect (or should expect) a repeat disaster in the foreseeable future? As insurance claims, for those who even have insurance, threaten to bankrupt even the biggest carriers? We just rebuild and add a few token infrastructure projects to lessen the potential impact of the next disaster in areas where the physical reality of weather patterns, climate change and physical topography are not getting better.

Take a look at the above inflation-corrected chart, prepared by the US government’s NOAA. There is no doubt that the number of severe natural disasters has increased significantly over the last four-plus decades. And there no reason whatsoever to believe that this trend is going to reverse without significant change to our environment, notably because of humanity’s failure to contain greenhouse emissions.

The problem with our overall approach to these disasters is wrong at almost every level. Politicians, bought and paid for by Big Oil, still refuse to vote sufficient funds to wean us off of fossil fuels. Government pays for band aid infrastructure “solutions” and disaster relief/insurance focused on rebuilding, often where rebuilding is a stupid idea. Insurance companies have to up their premiums based on readjusted actuarial data, and consumers even outside the threatened areas are seeing increases needed to spread the risk. Where government “high risk” coverage (e.g., flood or fire insurance in high impact areas), either directly or through guarantees to insurance carries, it only adds to the taxpayer burden that always follows devastation.

The damage done from recent storms is beginning to approach a number for the worst damage of over $200 billion from a single event! We are facing trillions of dollars of costs for expected horribles in the foreseeable future. So are why taxpayers and insurance companies paying for rebuilds in communities where the same level of devastation is a very real possibility. The old 1% risk every hundred years calculation is hopelessly out of date. But the government programs and the clear language of virtually all relevant insurance policies are focused on “rebuilding,” not “replacement.”

We could just declare swaths of land where disasters are likely to happen in the future, because they just happened in the recent past, exempt from prospective government recovery programs or insurance. But that would be a cruel stab in the heart of too many Americans. We may want to reconfigure our statutory reaction to mandate that option, where future coverage is no longer possible but where a home or business owner is reeling from a current massive natural disaster, can level their lot and use the balance of the coverage to relocate. Leveling the lots is important to avoid dangerous properties with hazardous structures from simply being abandoned.

FEMA aid is not particularly large these days, and taxpayers are questioning whether they should be required to subsize stubborn homeowners, tempting fate one more time because that’s where they want to live. We might be stuck with disasters that account for millions of contiguous acres, are not climate related and where major cities are located. Volcanic reactions and earthquakes might fall into this category (or we would otherwise have to evacuate Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California), although construction on major known fault lines would need to be examined too.

But for communities where climate disaster has claimed entire communities, like small California towns in Northern California (e.g., Greenville that was destroyed in the 2021 Dixie fire), the handwriting is on the wall: “Gone could be the political and public will to spend hundreds of millions of dollars — with Southern California taxpayers footing a big chunk of the bill — to replace homes and businesses for a small number of people, knowing that it’s all likely to burn down again as extreme heat and drought keep decimating unmanaged forests… ‘Resources are going to be drained,’ [Greenville resident Ken] Donnell predicted. ‘It’s just the reality.’… By our back-of-the-napkin math — which we calculated because no one in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration could provide an official tally — it will take about $1 billion just to rebuild Greenville. Only about 300 people plan to return, and climate scientists say the town could catch fire again in as little as 10 years.” Erika Smith and Anita Chabria, writing for the September 27th newsletter from the Los Angeles Times.

That’s a small town in California. What about the inevitability of much of Southern Florida’s slowly being reclaimed by ocean waters? Was Hurricane Ian just a hint of what is to come? I do not think the laws of nature and physics will adjust to placate climate change deniers and marginalizers. Unless and until greenhouse gas emissions are contained and reversed, we can only expect worse. Nature also seems unresponsive to our excuses for not taking the obviously necessary steps to stop this nasty trend.

I’m Peter Dekom, and for middle-aged and older Americans, they might not have to face the truly horrific consequences of climate change-driven natural disasters (as bad as they are now), but that is the legacy they are leaving to all the younger and future generations.