Occasional total destruction is a way of life in the Caribbean. If your generation hasn’t taken a hit, that’s considered a blessing. In 1979 Dominica was hit by Category 5 hurricane David. I was there in 1990 and the people were still recovering.
In 2017 Hurricane Irma caused catastrophic damage in Barbuda, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, Anguilla, and the Virgin Islands as a Category 5 hurricane. I visit St Martin yearly and they are still struggling to rebuild.
Inhabitants of the Caribbean move to other islands like inhabitants of the US move to different states. I’ve met people who left an island in despair after a hurricane only to have their new island home get hit the following year.
On a global scale, that is an issue the temperate zone countries are going to have to get to grips with, and pretty soon. And show no signs of doing so (we haven’t done too well with the fallout from Syria and the like, and this will be many times greater).
It’s totally dependent on where your houses were- if you look at the maps, almost all of the damage was near existing creeks, reservoirs or bayous. Or existing areas that are known to be prone to flooding, like Meyerland.
Either way, the place wasn’t nearly as destroyed as the news elsewhere would lead you to believe. Which is not to say there wasn’t a lot of damage, but that the news always makes it seem apocalyptic, when it’s not always that way.
It’s when it switches from “occasional” to “frequent”, from once a generation, to once a decade or even every few seasons, that rebuilding is no longer a reasonable response.
Large populations live in coastal and island communities that will be uninhabitable in the not overly distant future; others in area in which fresh water scarcity will create climate refugees, even under optimistic projections.
Yeah, we need to develop policies and plans in advance of the crises that we can clearly see are on the way.
For starters - the USA has something like 95,471 (NOAA estimate) miles of coastline. Everything immediately adjacent to those 95,471 miles in danger from rising sea levels. That includes some huge cities like New York and Miami. What is the US doing to plan for this?
Zip. Nada. Jack and shit.
We don’t even have the excuse of being an impoverished third-world island dependent largely on tourist dollars.
Fine with me. Very interesting data–thank you. The last book I read about Tuvalu was prior to 2014, and I’m sure they’re happy not to be progressively under water.