Who Will Pay for the Huge Costs of Holding Back Rising Seas? — Jim Morrison

Cost is the reason that climate change is putting many people in deep denial, and even some people most committed to addressing this emerging challenge have not come to grips with what it will take engineering-wise, which determines the cost. Nor is the engineering solution always readily evident.

Engineering solutions to design problems on this scale are enormously expensive in any case.  But the challenge is identifying the proper case, and getting the assumptions right. 

Recall New Orleans and the Army Corps of Engineers charged with building the levies to protect the city against hurricanes. The design solution involved assessing the degree of the challenge. This involved making assumptions. 

In NO, the question was what category of hurricane to protect against as the max expected, with a degree of extra protection in case. The cost among the options is one of the constraints, and upping the category is major cost-wise. So there is a tradeoff between resilience and cost. 

Given the historical data, the experts settled on Category Three. The rest is history. Climate change is even more of challenge in identifying the assumptions that fit the most likely case in a given situation, like fortifying a coastal city, which involves projecting the future for some time to come.

Similarly in Iowa with recent flooding. The 1993 flood was considered at the time a 500 year phenomenon. Then, the 2008 flood came along and was far worse than 1993, resulting in billions of dollars in damages, a quarter billion to the University of Iowa property in Iowa City alone. 

The good thing is that the political and economic universes of discourse are changing, and the debate is beginning. And, of course, holding back rising sea level is just one challenge that climate change is posing.

Naked Capitalism
Who Will Pay for the Huge Costs of Holding Back Rising Seas?

Jim Morrison

Originally published by Yale Environment 360 and cross posted from Grist’s Climate Desk collaboration