It seems like to me that the Bahamas is pretty much uninhabitable for long-term residency. No one knows how long it would take to repair everything, and even if it does, I don’t think there’s enough money to actually do it with improved building codes, so it’s just going to be susceptible to something like Dorian happening again.
I don’t think it’s practical to live in the Bahamas anymore, as an outsider looking from the United States. Unless stuff gets built with much stronger building codes than are even present in Florida (and Florida’s is one of the toughest), it’s all still going to be vulnerable to being wrecked again. There are some places on Earth where it’s just not practical to live anymore. Florida is still doing fine in that respect because most hurricanes weaken by the time they hit the state and don’t stay category 5 for long, and it’s in a First World region so recovery is typically swift and relatively painless. Although with rising seas, the Miami area might be uninhabitable within the next century.
You do realize that not all of the Bahamas was severely affected? There was a lot of damage to the northern part of the country on the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama. Effects were less severe to the south, including the capital of Nassau on New Providence and Andros, and the rest of the archipelago.
Rising sea levels over the next century could well make the Bahamas uninhabitable over the next century or two, but calling them uninhabitable and calling for their total evacuation just on the basis of Dorian is a wild over-reaction.
You don’t need all buildings resistant to hurricanes: just an adequate number of hurricane shelters and law enforcement requiring people to use these shelters.
This. They are a sovereign nation. While the rest of us can make decisions about how much and what kinds of help to voluntarily offer it’s still their nation.
A body like the UN Security Council could try to do something like pass a resolution to do that. I don’t see it passing. Setting a precedent for the UNSC just unilaterally ending the very existence of a nation-state is deeply troubling for the international order. What would you do R3d if they told us to fuck off and went on inhabiting their country? Invade? Kill their security forces? March their people at bayonet point to the docks to be shipped who knows where? Don’t pass resolutions that you aren’t prepared to enforce.
I have no problem with the non-coercive version of this … not compelling people who live in climate-change-effected and other marginal-dangerous areas to move out, but *allowing *them to do so.
As far as I know, this second proposal has not been implemented in any meaningful way. What would the response of a US customs official be right now, if a Bahamian turned up at the border requesting US permanent residence on the grounds that their home is uninhabitable and too dangerous to live in?
Note that it is possible to build dwellings and commercial building that can take a direct hit from most hurricanes and survive with only minor damage.
Examples:
Most brutalist architecture buildings are perfect for this The 9 Brutalist Wonders of the Architecture World | GQ
The main thing they will need is hurricane shutters (metal barriers mounted above each glass window that will unroll automatically if sensors detect high winds or from building control panels.)
Then, obviously any electrical distribution or mechanical equipment needs to be mounted on the second or third story or higher. (the bottoms floors can be for parking and/or temporary shops)
Many areas will become gradually progressively less habitable. Rebuilding foolish to do and no affordable alternatives. There will be more and more climate refugees. The world is not yet prepared for this.
What do you notice? For the most part, the countries doing most of the *emitting *are going to be least affected by the crisis they created.
It’s because most of the countries in this list are wealthy, and thus have available the funds and the access to technology (and in the case of the big boys like USA, China, Japan, Germany, and so on, the resources to invent and engineer new technology as needed) to mitigate most of the negative effects.
The big boys can air condition entire cities, if necessary. (by interconnecting all the buildings with tunnels or having fleets of autonomous air conditioned cars used for all the transport, with the cars picking people up in indoor areas). Grow all their crops indoors in robotic farms. Build armored cities that can withstand routine storm impacts. Build new cities farther inland as the sea comes in.
The people who will really suffer will be the “have nots” left out in India, and a bunch of African and central American countries which aren’t even listed as significant GHG emitters (because they are poor).
Another thing to keep in mind is that news coverage concentrates on the areas with the most destruction and mayhem. They often give a misleading picture of places hit by hurricanes and other natural disasters.
For example, while hurricane Harvey was very destructive in Houston, the whole place didn’t flood- most of the flooding was limited to known low spots and areas in proximity to creeks, bayous and streams. Plenty of areas were effectively untouched- my parents’ house had the water get into the yard, but that’s not really remarkable- that may happen during a good tropical storm or even a heavy thunderstorm. Otherwise, they didn’t lose power or suffer any flooding in their neighborhood. And that wasn’t an unusual state either.
But the news would have had you believe that the entire city was under 4 feet of water. I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar may be going on in the Bahamas as well.
Houston had 35% of the main county flooded. It had actual waves and whitecaps on I-10. It damaged 204,000 homes, and caused somewhere between 125-198 billion dollars in damage.
Now, yes, 2 homes my family owns in Houston were not flooded. But one of them, the immediate neighbors were, and in the other, the entire neighborhood a mile away was completely flooded.
They likely wouldn’t even get that far these days - there was a well-publicized incident where Bahamian refugees boarding a boat in the Bahamas were told to get off if they didn’t have a US entry visa in hand.
