Dampened Spirits, Migrating Souls

Far away in West Antarctica floats an 80-mile-long chunk of ice the size of Florida, called the Thwaites Glacier. It’s also known as the ‘doomsday glacier,’ because if it were to collapse, it could bring about a catastrophic rise in sea levels… But if ice surrounding the Thwaites were to fall as well, in a sort of domino effect, it could raise sea levels by another devastating 10 feet. FastCompany.com, February 16th.

Miami residents are getting used to flooded streets after a heavy rain, obviously much worse after a hurricane. Floridians, living not too far from the Atlantic or Gulf coasts, understand how much of their assumed “bedrock” is really very porous limestone, a conduit for ground water pushed upwards by rising seas. A recent condominium collapse in Surfside (a Miami suburb) is a painful reminder of that reality. Large Florida sinkholes have become almost legendary, swallowing houses and cars like massive carnivorous underground beasts rising for a major feeding. Maps of Florida as expected in a century or more show 30% of the state gone and reclaimed by the sea. Aware of the issue but still a climate change marginalizer, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis believes the state can elevate roads and build ocean flood control structures to restore normalcy. If only.

We know that sea rise is a global phenomenon. But Florida’s being substantially at or near sea level puts that state particularly at risk, especially with a massive limestone substructure. But the eroding Outer Banks in North Carolina, the rapid demise of coastal barriers and islands in Louisiana, the lost landmass in Northern California, and the destruction of Inuit villages in Alaska… well… they are all part of the accelerating and very obvious cost of letting climate change rage unabated. Coastal Florida just happens to be on the “big urban edge” of the expected demise of coastal America. If you live in a low-lying coastal area in Florida, not only are insurance rates soaring, but longer-term mortgages are increasingly unavailable. For many around the world, their coastal communities have long since passed the tipping point of no return.

The most extreme oceanic encroachment on high value Florida real estate has to be that tail on the bottom of the state: the Keys. Florida climate change journalist, Jake Bittle, focuses on Florida’s state’s battle with these rising waters. His book, The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration (Simon & Schuster), provides an in depth examination of the unwelcomed but inevitable phenomenon, but his views on the Florida Keys is both enlightening and startling, as this excerpt from his contribution to the February 21st BusinessInsider.com illustrates:

“The Keys are … the first flock of canaries in the coal mine of climate change. Over the past few years, the residents of these islands have been forced to confront a phenomenon that will affect millions of Americans before the end of the century. Their present calamity offers a glimpse of our national future.

“Nature is changing. Today's hurricanes tend to be stronger, wetter, and less predictable than those of the last century. They hold more moisture, speed up more quickly, and stay together longer. It's difficult to tell for certain what role climate change plays in any individual storm, but in the case of Hurricane Irma — which slammed the Keys in September 2017 — there is little doubt that the warmth of the Caribbean Sea made the storm more powerful, allowing the vortex to regain strength overnight as it barreled toward the islands. As global warming continues to ratchet up the temperature of our oceans, we can expect more storms like Irma. The danger to the Keys doesn't end with hurricane season, either: a slow but definite rise in average sea levels over the past decade has contributed to an increase in tidal flooding, leaving some roads and neighborhoods inundated with salt water for months at a time.

“In the five years since Irma, the bill has come due. The hurricane made undeniable what previous floods had only suggested: that climate change will someday make life in the archipelago impossible to sustain. The storm was the first episode in a long and turbulent process of collapse, one that will expand over time to include market contraction, government disinvestment, and eventually a wholesale retreat toward the mainland. Irma may not have destroyed the Keys in one stroke, but the storm ran down the clock on life on the islands, pushing conches (the Keys' unique name for residents) into a future that once seemed remote. The impulse to stay, which once bespoke a conch's devotion to his or her adopted home, now looks a little more like denial. The decision to leave, on the other hand, which once signified surrender, now looks more like acceptance of the inevitable…

“For some families the decision to depart the Keys was easy. The storm was a traumatic event, more than enough to convince many people that life on the islands was too dangerous to accept. They came back home, fixed up their houses, and got out. That was the case for Connie and Glenn Faast, who left the island city of Marathon for the mountains of North Carolina after spending almost 50 years in the Keys. ‘It was pretty much immediate,’ Connie told me. ‘It's just too hard to start over when you get older. We couldn't risk it.’…

“Hundreds of people like the Faasts left the Keys of their own volition in the years after Irma, deciding one way or another that the risks of staying there outweighed the benefits. But perhaps the more turbulent phenomenon after the storm was the involuntary displacement caused by the shortage of affordable housing on the islands. The storm destroyed not only the massive mobile home parks on islands like Big Pine, but also hundreds of so-called downstairs enclosures, small apartment-style units that sat beneath elevated homes. 

“It also wiped out dozens if not hundreds of liveaboard boats and older apartment complexes in island cities like Marathon. These trailer parks and apartment complexes had been havens for resort waiters, boat buffers, and bartenders, allowing them to get a foothold in an archipelago that had long ago become unaffordable for anyone who wasn't rich. Now all that housing was gone, and FEMA's 50% rule — which prohibits improvements to structures that cost more than 50% of its market value — prohibited most trailers and downstairs enclosures from being rebuilt.

“Many of those who had been lucky enough to own small homes or campers hadn't been able to afford insurance, which meant they missed out on the payouts that went to wealthy homeowners and part-time vacationers. To make matters worse, the government of the Keys couldn't build enough new homes to fill the gap created by the storm: the state had long ago imposed a de facto cap on the number of building permits Monroe county — which encompasses the islands — could issue, an attempt to make sure the population did not grow too large to evacuate the islands in a single day. Thus it was impossible for most residents either to rebuild their old homes or to buy new ones…

“[After Irma, Rector Debra] Maconaughey knew there was no chance the county government would restore all the housing that had been lost in the storm, but after a year went by, she found herself shocked at how little had been rebuilt. A nonprofit land trust had erected only a handful of new cottages and a $50 million state program called Rebuild Florida had repaired only two homes, a pittance compared to the thousands of dwellings that had been swept away.” The Keys were disappearing, the end was clearly inevitable, and there was no going back. Five years after Irma, Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida wreaking even more havoc. Still, so many Americans believe that confronting climate change is too expensive to implement. Really?

I’m Peter Dekom, and if our betrayal of future generations from this callous arrogance is bad… perhaps the impact on current generations will provide a horrible but smaller example of what is to come.