risk prone areas

what it means as we congregate there

As I mentioned yesterday, the metro Las Vegas population went from 600,000 to 2.3 million in a couple of decades, increasing traffic and straining the precious water so scarce in this high desert region. Yesterday’s New York Times validates the challenge Americans face as they attempt to increase financial opportunity and lower living costs (at least initially) in many areas while confronting diabolically deteriorating climate conditions. It’s worth a look at the link below, even if you don’t entirely buy the scientific alarm about climate change. The point, however, is that more of us are going to places where nature poses risks to us yet we are gambling we will not suffer.

Nevada is one of several states along the Sun Belt undergirding the country. It’s wide open, warm, and appealing. Until recent years, it was also pretty empty and thus cheap as a living region. No more as costs rise with the need for more infrastructure and more natural resources.

California, on the other end of the spectrum, has long faced ridiculously expensive housing, especially in the area surrounding San Francisco Bay, and high taxes for its somewhat regulated society for 40 plus million residents. The Silicon Valley craze of the 1990s and early 2000s drove prices to levels ousting anyone but the superwealthy tech gurus from that area. Marin County, north of the Bay, has similarly been pricey for decades with its coves, boat docks, and lovely views of the TransAmerica Tower or Fishermen’s Wharf.

California always has earthquake concerns, of course, following the massive 1906 event that destroyed so much of San Francisco. Purported psychic Jeanne Dixon predicted a massive tremor would break the state from the rest of the country in the late 60s but nothing has quite achieved that scale of natural damage. Instead, the proliferation of people living there over the past forty years indicates that man-made consequences can equal those of the earth’s core.

San Diego has several chic neighborhoods, not the least Coronado Island where old friends of ours grew up mid-century. Janie and Doug’s tales of affordable housing and a traditional “Americana” lifestyle is completely incongruous with what one sees in 2024 as the paucity of land makes any serious horizontal expansion (and single family dwellings there are perhaps at most three stories) on the island impossible. I doubt a one story home on a postage stamp lot goes for less than $5 million. Other sections of San Diego include pricey, beautiful homes and less luxurious (but still high-priced) abodes lure millions to live in the metro area, creating a higher demand on water while curiously increasing the region’s natural ambient humidity levels because of the population actually breathing.

Similarly, Los Angeles proper may not be the most exclusive or desirable zip code but cities or even gated hamlets near to that sprawling area still collect sky high costs while other housing entitles one to extended commutes. Air pollution is better than half a century ago because of strict pollution controls but not everything is electric, thus still affect the environment through battery disposal, as an example. These California three megacities alone drain water to personal use, to grow food, and for other assorted uses.

The reality is that the population unable to live for whatever reason in these three cities alone likely ends up moving into more fire-prone portions of the state to find affordable housing. Building new homes around places like Sacramento, Chico, or Bakerfield reduces the vegetation, accelerating the fire risk. Cities of any size or location spill out onto California’s beautiful but too often parched hills which create fire vulnerabilities. Combined with increased atmospheric temperatures, more water consumption, altered ground cover, and a greater danger of fire in locations nearer the big cities, California is a much riskier location due to wildfires than two generations ago—likely adding costs for all of us as federal aid backs up inadequate insurance for fire-related disasters.

The California millions have begun departing, much as have retirees from the cold north, for less expensive, less crowded, less taxed, and more desirable locations.

Texas joins California desirability but manifests an even broader array of dangers. Geography is unkind to this huge place with lack of water almost a perpetual problem in the western half of the state (half of Texas is about 35 Rhode Islands, I suppose). Fires are hardly unknown to those who move into towns like Fort Stockton where living expenses and services are considerably lower but infrastructure similarly is poorer. Even El Paso along the Mexican border is vulnerable to winds fanning flames from nearby hills into the dry brushy areas.

Fly into San Antonio during the day shows the harshly dry conditions flip into a green, vivid “circle” around the city where irrigation offers a stark divide between water satisfying the 1.5 million (second only to Houston now in the state by population) folks living there versus the sage brush dryness extending for miles in every direction. But that is human-driven watering from the San Antonio River but San Antone doesn’t exactly have a surplus of water flowing around the for population as back up for the exploding communities needs.

The massive heatwaves of 2023 and 2024 showed, however, that searing heat can envelope the entire state for seemingly endless periods of time these days. Millions of people have relocated to the warmth of Texan winters only to find that the temperatures in the summer mimic those of southern Arizonan or the Mexican deserts for months at a time. The heat levels are dangerously high for those same people who can afford homes in more distant suburbs or smaller towns but the ones struggling to pay for increased air conditioning costs are often saddles with relentless costs for water. Those outside the cities tend to earn less, thus face greater risks.

As if that weren’t enough, the Texas coast suffers from the same natural disaster pattern as does southeast China (although not as often): increasingly potent hurricanes slamming in from the adjacent warming seas. Several massive cyclones flooded flat, vulnerable Houston over the past decade alone. These deadly, messy storms remind locals of their inability to control natural disasters coming into previously swampy regions. When the storms arrive, the flooding returns the communities to their natural, water-logged conditions, undermining power generation needed to produce the air conditioning maintaining this area at a tolerable temperature. Clean up gets things back to today’s normal but it’s a costly process.

Yet, as I mentioned an Actions column in August, climate intensification has brought dramatic phenomena to Texas and the remainder of the nation. The ice storm which paralyzed the power grid in February 2021, driving Senator Ted Cruz’s family and others to flee to Mexico, was an example of how more marked changes are playing havoc with infrastructure in increasing communities. Many families relocated to Texas for affordable housing, employment, and safety, straining the private power grid, for example. Many current Texans could neither afford nor had the time off to get to Mexico (or anywhere else) when the power was off for several days in frigid conditions and that is likely to occur again.

We witnessed the ramifications of millions of people relocating to Florida and North Carolina in light of last month’s Hurricane Helene. While many affected were longer-term Tar Heels, the explosion of towns near Charlotte and Asheville contributed to the complexity of recovery, as well as some deaths and considerable isolation. These conditions magnify in the sprawling beach communities of the Outer Banks and especially Florida as ever more intensive storms repeatedly lash shorelines. These hurricanes are forcing out insurance companies unwilling to pay the spiraling cost of claims across the Sunshine State.

It’s easy to pick on these high viz locations but the Times map accompanying the article makes clear that most of the country is seeing intensification and expansion of disaster risks, regardless where one goes. A loyal reader updates me regularly about fundamental changes in western Idaho as more people foresake expensive cities for wide, open spaces, hoping that jobs will make their lives so much better; at the same time, they confront fire and drought. Regardless of the need or optimism for employment, more people are up against Mother Nature not necessarily welcoming them.

We don’t think often enough of how our presence alters conditions, setting into motion various effects. Increased population leads to greater numbers of cars requiring a vaster road network built on macadam which creates urban heat islands, whether Bath, Maine or Denver. Those heat islands are raise temperatures, drive up air conditioning demand and threaten agriculture based on another era. Pavement also channels water into torrents under the right conditions of associated intense downpours. Alternatively, water requirements for increased crop yields empties river systems while preventing navigation of the Mississippi even though we still rely on shipping for transporting many of those crops.

In sum, our internal migration patterns coincide with intensifying climate conditions in ways we try to ignore. This does not mean people necessarily cause the changes but most definitely both feel effects while exacerbating consequences and personalization of those effects. Many people relocate because they need to work and a better lifestyle for their families but that doesn’t lessen the realities of humans generating unintended change which may overwhelm the original benefits of their moves, potentially forcing them to move yet again.

The bottom line is that this will likely cost each and every one of us more money, whether it’s because of federal protections, increased insurance rates, higher food costs, or something else. Turns out that a country with 340+ million people needing homes, jobs, schools, food, transportation, and everything accumulates costs. I can’t quite figure how those costs would decline but you may well explain it to me.

Thank you for reading Actions today—or any day. Please feel free to circulate if you find this of value. Thank you to the subscribers who support this with hard-earned cash as I can expand my reading with your support.

Annapolis is beautiful today but the temperatures definitely are cooling. still few absolutely shocking colors but a nice fall. How about where you are?

Do you have a plan to vote? I hope so as it’s an unbelievable privilege not to take for granted if you are a registered voter in your locale.

Be well and be safe. FIN

Mira Rojanasakul and Nadja Popovich, “Where Americans Have been Moving into Disaster-Prone Areas”, NewYorkTimes.com, 30 September 2024, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/30/climate/americans-moving-hurricane-wildfire-risk.html