Climate change makes "ordinary living" a lot more risky

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This is mostly "old" writing that was in the draft folder, from 2022.

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Remember those Parkay Margarine ads? "You can't fool Mother Nature."

1.  Waterfront development.  The New York Times asks why are we still building on waterfronts, given sea level rise ("Why Is New York Still Building on the Waterfront?").  I have to admit I push waterfront based revitalization initiatives and don't always think about this.

The answer: people want to live on the water and it makes money.

Ricardo Arduengo/AFP via Getty Images. An aerial image shows the only access to the Matlacha neighborhood destroyed in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Fla., on Sept. 30, 2022.

2.  Hurricane and Superstorm prone areas.  Florida.  The Times reports that many people can't afford to rebuild in the face of Hurricane Ian.  

And Florida actually improved its building codes, making them stronger in dealing with the effects of hurricanes, albeit that was when the state was run by Democrats ("South Florida, Tulsa, and Santa Fe as examples of regulatory success and Texas as an example of regulatory failure").  The problem is that as hurricanes become more powerful, those building codes need to be extended across the state.

-- To Save America's Coasts, Don't Always Rebuild Them"
-- "Rethinking Building in Storm-Prone Areas"
-- "Three Ways to Build Back Smarter After Hurricane Ian"
-- "Hurricane Ian's Financial Toll Threatens Florida's Real Estate Market"

3.  Casualty insurance.  Plus, most for profit insurers are leaving Florida, leaving the property insurance market to a state owned insurer of last resort, which can never be capitalized to the rate necessary to cover likely risks ("Will 2022 bring the collapse of the Florida homeowners insurance market?," Bankrate).

... I used to get angry when a person involved in selling insurance argued against creating historic districts in DC because the houses wouldn't be able to get insurance.  I would say, "what about Georgetown, Dupont Circle, Capitol Hill, etc.?"

But it would definitely be a lot higher if there were regular risks from weather. 

New York City.  The Times reports, "‘If We Wait, People Will Die’: New Yorkers Still Fend for Themselves in Storms," on how residents in Greater New York are taking steps to protect themselves in the face of severe rains, flooding, Superstorms, Hurricanes, etc. Especially as the effects are not limited to those abutting rivers and waterfronts.  From the article:

Whatever lessons had been learned after Sandy, which brutalized the area with storm surges, coastal flooding and widespread power outages, they didn’t prepare people for the storm risk that Hurricane Ida exposed: flash floods intensified by climate change, and aging sewage systems that cannot absorb storm water fast enough. In the aftermath of Ida, policymakers are still grappling with blind spots in their post-Sandy recovery plans, and homeowners and renters are wondering what, if anything, they can do to protect themselves from rapidly deteriorating conditions. ...

“Our structures are a lot more vulnerable than we thought,” said Eric Klinenberg, a sociology professor and the director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. “The challenge is more extensive than we recognized, it’s going to cost more than we budgeted, and it’s more urgent than we expected.”

In hindsight, Sandy stands as a book end — the beginning of an era of stronger and deadlier storms, capped a year ago by Ida, a Category 4 hurricane that managed to catch people unaware after making landfall days earlier in Louisiana.

 (We had to add a second sump pump to our DC house, after the terrible rain event a couple years ago, where as much as 5 inches of rain fell in less than an hour in Northwest DC and Montgomery County.  Our area is a little worse because there's an undergrounded creek which leads to a high water table.)

Also see "The Disaster to Come: New York’s Next Superstorm," NYT.

4.  Emergency management failures in Lee County, Florida led to more than 100 deaths ("Facing a Dire Storm Forecast in Florida, Officials Delayed Evacuation" and "Vulnerable and Trapped: A Look at Those Lost in Hurricane Ian," New York Times). "Thanks DeSantis."

Aerial view of the flooding of the Guadalupe River near Kerrville, Texas, on Saturday July 5th, 2025. Photo via U.S. Coast Guard/UPI

5.  Speaking of "if we wait, we will die," that's what happened in Texas earlier this year, with river flooding ("Why Texas Hill Country, where a devastating flood killed more than 135 people, is one of the deadliest places in the US for flash flooding," The Conversation, "24 dead in Texas floods and more than 20 children missing from a girls summer camp," AP).  

Despite past experience with bad flooding, local authorities punted on funding emergency warning systems, partly because they didn't want to spend the money, even with grants as part of the funding mix.  Emergency siren systems are more effective in the middle of the night when people are mostly asleep, and when the flooding happened ("Texas state leaders call for more sirens, flood gauges and mitigation efforts," Texas Tribune).

6.  Wildfire.  Oregonians aren't happy about having to cover the cost of wildfire risk ("Oregon tried to inform residents about wildfire risk. The backlash was explosive," Grist Magazine). From the article:

Last summer, after a series of devastating wildfires, the Oregon state legislature passed a sweeping bipartisan bill to protect against future blazes. The law unlocked money to develop new building codes in vulnerable areas and help residents who wanted to fireproof their homes. It reached the governor’s desk with support from Portland-area Democrats and rural Republicans alike.

Before state officials could implement the new regulations, though, they needed to figure out which areas faced the greatest fire danger. For this reason, the bill required the state forestry department to create a comprehensive wildfire risk map within a year, assigning a risk score to every household in the state. The forestry department finished the map right on time in June. It then mailed a letter to every homeowner who was in a high-risk zone, alerting them that new regulations would be coming soon.

The first version of the Oregon Wildfire Risk Explorer map, published earlier this year. The state retracted the map after public outcry. Oregon Wildfire Risk Explorer

This seemingly anodyne mapping measure produced a frenzy of backlash from every corner of the state. Hundreds of residents showed up at public meetings to berate state officials for designating their homes high risk, and hundreds more wrote in to contest their risk status. Many argued that the state was going to make their insurance more expensive and their property less valuable.

The same Republican lawmakers who had supported the wildfire bill then pounced on the map as an example of state overreach. In early August, the state caved and withdrew the map, vowing to spend another year gathering feedback before releasing a final version. In a tight race for state governor that will be decided next week, the Democratic candidate has distanced herself from the old version of the risk assessment, saying the revision “must address concerns from property owners.”

Like covid, fire pretty much ignores politics.

In Washington State, given federal cutbacks to the US Forest Service and Federal Emergency Management Administration, more wildfires are expected ("WA’s wildfire future: More volatile forests amid slashed budgets," Seattle Times). 

In 2019, Texas paid for billboards in California making fun of electricity shortages in the summer.

7.  Electricity.  With extreme cold and extreme heat, electricity demands are now high throughout the year, rather than peaking and dropping, with demand approaching the edge of capacity.

Supply failures are increasingly likely because of increased demand by Internet data centers ("AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring," Bloomberg, "Big Tech’s A.I. Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone," New York Times, blog entry, "Data centers").

Hundreds of people died in Texas in 2021 because of utility failures in winter ("Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure").  And it turned out that when electricity fails, so do water systems, furthering the negative impacts of the failures.

Drought and power generation.  Note that in the West, where a majority of federal dams generating electricity are located, drought is making it tougher for the dams to be able to generate electricity in the face of water levels dropping below water entranceways for the generating systems ("Lake Powell forecasts show hydropower generation is at risk next year as water levels drop," Colorado Sun).

8.  Extreme heat and deaths.  Communities in hot regions are experiencing a lot more heat-related deaths in the summer, as a result of extreme temperatures having disproportionate effects on those of lesser means. 

More cities are appointing "chief heat officers" to plan for and address the effects ("Planning for heat/climate change | Public health" and "Climate change is already here in many US communities | "Heat Officers" versus Climate Change Officers").

Columbia South Carolina has a pilot program measuring heat islands ("Scientists look for help to exactly measure Columbia’s heat," AP).

9.  Flooding and impact on stormwater and water treatment infrastructure.  Rain events are a lot stronger than they were when most communities built their stormwater capture infrastructure.  Now it is common for the piping to be overwhelmed during storms.  

In 2022, rain-related flooding overwhelmed the water treatment infrastructure in Jackson, Mississippi ("EPA determines water in Jackson, Mississippi, is safe to drink two months after treatment plant failure," CNN), calling attention to how racism leads to underfunding of urban needs, but also the reality that there are billions of dollars in unfunded needs for improvements to existing sewer, stormwater, and water treatment infrastructure.

A man rides his motorcycle through a flooded street in the Melrose Park neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale on Friday. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)

Last Friday, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reported on high-tide induced flooding there ("Heavy rain during high tide swamps Broward roads ahead of weekend cold front").

Residents on the west side of Salt Lake City were flooded out a couple weeks ago, after the strongest rain event in 120 years--rain also made entry into the foundation wall of our bedroom ("The Oct. 4 rainstorm is just one example of the severe weather in our future," Salt Lake Tribune, "Salt Lake City mayor issues emergency declaration in response to weekend flooding," KSL-TV).

People clean up on Sunday, after Saturday’s historic rain caused significant flooding in a Rose Park neighborhood. Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall declared a state of emergency over the flooding late Monday. Wesley Barton, KSL-TV

10. Systems of local government finance, created when the US was growing, are hard pressed to meet demands for new infrastructure needs induced by climate change ("The real lesson from Flint is about municipal finance," 2016).