Oh, well. It's not like they couldn't have seen it coming - if only they had bothered to open their eyes. North Carolina is about to receive what southerners like to call a big old can of whoopass in the form of Hurricane Florence.
Those North Carolinians think so little of climate change that they banned any mention of it in government policy.
In 2012, the state now in the path of Hurricane Florence reacted to a prediction by its Coastal Resources Commission that sea levels could rise by 39in over the next century by passing a law that banned policies based on such forecasts.
The legislation drew ridicule, including a mocking segment by comedian Stephen Colbert, who said: “If your science gives you a result you don’t like, pass a law saying the result is illegal. Problem solved.”
North Carolina has a long, low-lying coastline and is considered one of the US areas most vulnerable to rising sea levels.
But dire predictions alarmed coastal developers and their allies, who said they did not believe the rise in sea level would be as bad as the worst models predicted and said such forecasts could unnecessarily hurt property values and drive up insurance costs.
As a result, the state’s official policy, rather than adapting to the worst potential effects of climate change, has been to assume it simply won’t be that bad. Instead of forecasts, it has mandated predictions based on historical data on sea level rise.
...Orrin Pilkey, a retired Duke University coastal geologist, wrote in a recent op-ed in the News & Observer that the state has still failed to take the steps that communities in Virginia and New Jersey have taken, to prepare for rising sea levels.
“Instead coastal development flourishes as more beachfront buildings, highways and bridges are built to ease access to our beautiful beaches,” he wrote. “Currently the unspoken plan is to wait until the situation is catastrophic and then respond.”Another southerner, comedian Ron White, figured out North Carolina's problem years ago:
In hindsight, the US Founders seem very wise, at a time like this, in allowing two Carolinas, in case this one becomes permanently uninhabitable.
ReplyDeleteAs the Preznit said, "I love the poorly educated.” And the feeling's mutual.
ReplyDeleteHe's living proof that stupidity is no bar to wealth, power, fame and fortune. If he can make it so can they, because as Fran Lebowitz, a New Yorker who's spent years mingling with its elites, observed, "You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump. You just don’t.”
Cap
Undoubtedly, many of the impending victims lustily support the latest Trump environmental rollback effort: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11092018/methane-flaring-rules-oil-gas-industry-climate-change-obama-trump-epa-rollback
ReplyDelete3,000 dead in Puerto Rico, hundreds of thousands of bottled water, sitting of the airport tramac for a year now, FEMA refuses to distribute it. 28 million tons of donated food, including raw meat, rotting in cargo containers for a year now, because FEMA refused to distribute it.
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