This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It first appeared at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1396202
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1396202
A strong similarity between Ida and Katrina still emerged: Low-income communities and communities of color remain at high risk from hurricanes.
They should have studied harder in school and achieved good grades.
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Not much surprise here. The poor have always been relegated to the most unpleasant, unhealthy housing alternatives - down by the rivers that flood, the swamps that breed disease-carrying mosquitos, the coal-fired power plants belching soot, near the airport with its window-rattling noise and carcinogenic jet fumes.
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On the other hand, in a lot of places it’s the ocean waterfront property that has become super expensive and the humble summer cottages have been replaced by vacation megamcmansions. And places like Miami Beach and the Jersey barrier islands have been expensively built on wall to wall (and never should have been) and will probably be untenable locations in a couple decades.
Not to mention Manhattan.
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More and more we’re all going to be dealing with this. I live in an area where traditionally natural disasters just weren’t a thing to think about. We’re a hundred miles from the seacoast, we’re not subject to any sort of severe weather as a rule. But a couple of years ago a neighbor just a few blocks away had her car totaled because of floodwater—there was a very strong thundershower and the town’s drainage system was overwhelmed. The water rushing in the street rose up into her floorboards and ruined the electronics there, and it wasn’t worth salvaging. First time I’ve heard of that happening but I bet it won’t be the last.
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At the risk of excessively nitpicking, this fact is hardly a new discovery in 2021. The high rise luxury beach condos of Gulf Shores, and Orange Beach, AL, for instance, were fully repaired and open for tourists within a few short weeks of Katrina. Meanwhile, the unrepaired wreckage left over from Ivan, or what wasn’t washed away by Katrina anyway, remained apparent just a few blocks inland. I quit going there for lack of anyone to visit after my mother died, but I guarantee the pattern holds across the whole confederacy. What I think of Dixie health care is a whole other sore subject.
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I’ve seen it in the mid-Atlantic seacoast too. Once-sleepy shore towns are now lined with multistory condos. And yes, we’ve been warned for many years about this. What’s new is that now what we were warned about is happening.
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Seriously…
Have they never heard of bootstraps?
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They were issued bootstraps, but sold them to buy Oxy.
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To the U.S.
Call the Netherlands…make sure that the Republican Party is neutralized enough so that what they say to you will be paid proper attention to.
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An interesting question in WRT this situation: would it be better to build flood barriers around Manhattan (assuming those zillions of dollars worth of real estate are worth protecting) or to build a barrier around NY harbor and install locks, etc… There are of course significant infrastructure and environmental costs to doing this.
The Dutch have been dealing with this reality for centuries. But it’s not clear that their approach would work in the more general case.
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They were issued bootstraps, but sold them to buy Oxy.
----This is a rich person’s joke, right?
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Poor people disproportionately impacted by the negative side effects of what rich people do.
In other news: Water—still wet.
Don’t start with the class warfare now…
[quote=“jkrogman, post:12, topic:214690”]
steviedee111
So you say something classist, starting class warfare, and now you accuse me of offending your class warfare.
Got it.
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Looks like your Snark-o-meter might need adjusting 
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If poor people would just make more money it would fix a lot of their problems.
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Forget that, I think that they should just go back and be born to richer parents like the rest of us…
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It’d get… tricky. It’s not just NY Harbor, after all. To protect Manhattan, you’ll also need to deal with the Long Island Sound. Buuuuut…
If you try to protect Manhattan, you’re gonna see pushback from the outer borroughs, too. And as much as they get treated like second-class sections of the city, all four of them do have some serious pockets of money. Add in places like New Rochelle, the Hamptons… you’re looking at needing a continuous set of seawall and locks probably from Asbury Park to Rockport.
The line of fortification winds up looking something like this… and it is massive:
And yes, it’s likely that Nantucket gets folded into that as well. But of course, at the same time… that’d kill fishing inside of that barrier, because the fish just can’t move in and out easily. And you can’t just put the barrier at the top of the water, obviously…
Martha’s Vineyard, etc.
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