> Jacob responded with a declaration that “our urban planning is irrelevant” and decried “shortsightedness of decision-making.” As an example, he cited the Hudson Yards development, just one of many waterfront megaprojects that the city has continued to enthusiastically promote, even after Sandy. He thinks that the government should instead rework its policies to relocate assets away from the water.
I think Jacob commits the opposite error, failing to discount the future. If Manhattan real estate is worth "hundreds of billions of dollars" as an asset, then it's worth tens of billions of dollars a year as a value-stream. If we're talking something like Hurricane Sandy causing $33 billion in property damage in New York, that's maybe one year of the property market's value. That's a quite small "weather tax" in the grand scheme of things, and if we're talking a multi-century trend, well, it might come time to contemplate taking down the skyscraper after a few hundred years, assuming the world hasn't perished in a global thermonuclear war where Manhattan was the first target and assuming that the city still prospers.
And remember that Manhattan is an island literally named "many hills". The Financial District is low-lying but only because it's artificial land. Midtown would be pretty solidly unaffected for a good little while.
Also, because we've lost the ability to build things in the US, we've forgotten that low lying land is a solvable problem. In fact, we already solved that problem in FiDi back before we gave up the social technology of building things.
(Just look at our inability to build subways - something we were capable of 100 years ago and which desperately poor India and China do today.)
When push comes to shove, we can just pay the Dutch or Singaporeans a lot of money to fix things for us.
I think in the US is the environmental regulations and other similar approvals and higher labor costs.
In terms of environmental regulations, much time and money is spend researching and mitigating damage to every little critter and vegetation. That bare field you are building over could be home to some rare field cricket and you have to find a new home for them. In some other countries they just bulldoze over that field and be done with it. I got a little experience on this working for an engineering company fresh out of college. They had to write reams of reports documenting what they found in some former military bases before cleanup. From my understanding nobody ever read those documents... they just read summaries.
I have a college buddy who works for the state transportation department in the engineering design division and he tells me all the red tape he has to go through in expanding a highway. They find a couple of native american artifacts during a dig and suddenly things are halted while that is being investigated. When they widened a highway, some people in adjacent houses started complaining even though the highway existed before those houses were build and space was set aside for future expansion. He ended up adding noise barriers to placate them. Then you have nimbys who will fight and further development.
We use highly skilled union workers for public projects in the US while India and likely China use low cost day laborers. They get paid quite low wages.
> Also, because we've lost the ability to build things in the US
We have the ability. It's just that we've decided having a political process with umpteen layers of environmental review, and having "prevailing wage+" labor unions (who contribute to re-election campaigns) do the construction, is more important than having nice things.
(+ the "prevailing wage", of course, being not the average or median wage, but the highest wage out there.)
Lies! Technology and history don't exist. I bet you haven't even contemplated the world your grandchildren will inherit more than a couple times today.
> If we're talking something like Hurricane Sandy causing $33 billion in property damage in New York, that's maybe one year of the property market's value. That's a quite small "weather tax" in the grand scheme of things,
That's fine in theory. And if the US could get rid of federal flood insurance and not spend any government money fixing up New York when the next storm does damage, then it might be a fine state of affairs. But I don't know anyone who seriously thinks those are politically achievable, much less desirable goals.
I got to see a small scale example of a city sinking when on vacation in some islands off of North Carolina's shore. Some of those islands experience pretty aggressive erosion. Streets simply appear and disappear during tides. Large chunks of asphalt sticking out on the beach were a street used to be. Yet people still live there (well vacation mostly) even though during high tide in part they can fish from their porch.
It was strange to see because that is not usually how homes and property are thought of. You buy, and hold on to it, and then sell it. There you buy and then the ocean comes and takes it, and it's gone. Most of those places were vacation homes, except for one where a little old lady was living permanently. We gave her all our groceries we had before leaving, She seemed rather grateful. I was wondering what her plans were for when erosion got to her house. I imagine asking that would upset her, so I didn't.
> “One way or another, we get educated, and it’s much cheaper to listen once in a while to engineers and scientists.”
Global temperatures and the sea level are rising because of human behavior. If we want different results, we have to behave differently. Engineers and scientists know engineering and science but not so much leading people to change their behavior.
It's easy to blame others: "Listen to me! If you don't you'll be sorry!" isn't effective. Also, what fraction of engineers and scientists have, say, flown in a plane or something similarly polluting in the past twelve months?
If you want to change behavior, you need to learn and practice leadership skills and apply them to yourself as well as others. The science is clear. More is nice and I agree we should keep pursuing it, but the best way to decrease the effects of global warming is to change our behavior. (This is why I moved from science to leadership.)
This article's writing about flood-proof architecture and other rearranging-deck-chairs-on-the-Titanic behavior is necessary since it's too late to stop a lot of change, but it's not too late to stop the change that we -- you and I -- are contributing to now. As much as I wish past generations had changed their behaviors so we wouldn't see these problems today, future generations will wish we had changed our behavior today. Even if you don't have kids or grandkids, I would think caring about human society in general and empathy and compassion for future generations would be enough to focus on changing our behavior proactively, not just reactively fixing problems others bequeathed to us.
Call me a pessimist, but I don't think people will "change behavior" just because somebody told them to. They won't change even if they begin to suffer for it. Homes in parts of Southern Florida are already getting flooded on a regular basis, even in clear weather. Are those homeowners burning less gas because of it? Not really.
The high oil prices of the early 2010s did little to curb CO2 production worldwide. People really don't want to change unless they're too poor to afford fossil fuels, and making everyone poor is probably not a good solution, either. Calling for abstinence doesn't work in energy consumption any more than it does in sex education. To hope otherwise is wishful thinking.
More depressing is the fact that even if a lot of us drastically reduced our carbon footprint right now, what's going to happen is going to happen anyway. The amount of CO2 that's already in the atmosphere is enough to cause catastrophe over the next few decades.
So I think the scientific and engineering prowess of the world would be better spent trying to help people cope with the consequences of global warming than trying to persuade them to change their habits. This Titanic is going down no matter how hard you try to steer it away from that iceberg. Stop wasting time trying to argue with people who think the ship is okay. Use that time to build more lifeboats instead, because we barely have any time to do even that.
Use nuclear power to sequester massive amounts of CO2 someplace deep. Bulld walls around major coastal cities. Relocate people in vulnerable areas to higher ground. Start planting crops that tolerate heat better, and move current crops further north -- there's gonna be a lot of newly arable land in Canada and Russia. Use desalination and new agricultural techniques to fight against drought. Put more research into malaria prevention, or better yet, exterminate mosquitoes altogether. (A very large portion of projected loss of life associated with global warming is due to 1. drought and 2. increased mosquito activity.)
> I don't think people will "change behavior" just because somebody told them to
Telling people what to do isn't leadership.
Confusing telling people what to do and other ineffective techniques with actually, effectively leading them is part of why we have been ineffective at changing people's behavior, illustrating my point.
> I think the scientific and engineering prowess of the world would be better spent trying to help people cope with the consequences of global warming than trying to persuade them to change their habits.
Black-and-white false dichotomies are another problem.
Believing since we've already done so much that the cause is lost is another.
A better life doesn't require releasing more CO2. In fact, it can often come with less.
Effective leaders don't lose their cool in difficult times. Many shine then. Instead of throwing in the towel on prevention, we can improve the future relative to what it would be if we just say since we didn't succeed yet we never will.
> Confusing telling people what to do and other ineffective techniques with actually, effectively leading them is part of why we have been ineffective at changing people's behavior, illustrating my point.
...
> Effective leaders don't lose their cool in difficult times. Many shine then. Instead of throwing in the towel on prevention, we can improve the future relative to what it would be if we just say since we didn't succeed yet we never will.
Please tell us what you are doing. Thanks in advance for whatever it is.
Changing my behavior to pollute less is easy and rewarding.
Changing others' behavior unrelated to polluting less is easy and rewarding.
Changing others' behavior to pollute less is hard and punishing. People get angry and defensive about it. It's one of the main areas I'm trying to develop.
(Other things I do myself include not owning a car, using subways or walking nearly everywhere, not eating meat, avoiding packaged food, not using air conditioning at least at home, and a few things like that, although after doing them long enough, I generally do them because I prefer them to their polluting alternatives. I like walking, eating fresh fruits and vegetables, and so on).
I agree with and do all that also. I was expecting a bit more from you given earlier:
> If you want to change behavior, you need to learn and practice leadership skills and apply them to yourself as well as others. The science is clear. More is nice and I agree we should keep pursuing it, but the best way to decrease the effects of global warming is to change our behavior. (This is why I moved from science to leadership.)
It sounds like you're asserting a "best way" but haven't come any closer than the rest of us to figuring out how to implement, which makes assertion questionable. But I hope that in trying to develop this area you do figure out something new. Thanks in advance, again.
So how does an effective leader "actually, effectively lead" other people to believe that a better life doesn't require releasing more CO2? Any concrete plan that doesn't require a massive dose of wishful thinking?
Sea levels have risen about 130m from 20,000 years ago and are probably set to rise a bit more regardless of what actions we take just now on CO2. While it's good to deal with global warming, realistically we'll have to adapt a bit to sea levels rising a little bit.
Sea levels have risen about 130m from 20,000 years ago
All that water came from, of course, ice that melted.
The New York City Parks Dept says that NYC was under as much as 1000 feet of ice[1] during the most recent ice age. Yeah, ice as high as the top of the old World Trade Center twin towers! Upstate New York (the Adirondacks) was under 5000 feet of ice.
Something to keep in mind as we fret about a 15-foot storm surge.
A lot of the articles that focus on rising oceans, and how they might effect the USA, seem to confuse the general issue of global warming with the specific issue of Florida. The situation in Florida might be hopeless, but why should that effect how we talk about other USA urban centers? This article is an example. It talks about New York as if the situation in New York is as hopeless as the situation in Florida.
It's important to remember that much of the USA coastline can be defended the same way that the Dutch defend their coastline: build a lot of dykes around any urban area that is of high value. This strategy would work just fine for much of the northern eastern coast of the USA.
The big exception is Florida. Because much of southern Florida sits on porous limestone, it is useless to build dykes for Florida. The ocean would simply go under the dyke. Figuring out how we might save Florida is a very difficult issue, and it might be impossible.
But figuring out how to save New York is straight forward. The techniques that the Dutch developed 500 years ago would work just fine for New York today. Yes, it would be very expensive, but the payments can be stretched out over 100 years -- the projects can be implemented gradually, as the oceans rise gradually. A staggering $1 trillion price tag is a trivial $10 billion a year, over 100 years.
One could reasonably argue that we can't build a dyke for the whole east coast. That is probably true. Some farmland will be sacrificed, some fishing villages will be sacrificed. But can we build enough dykes to protect New York? Obviously. If the Dutch could do this in the 1500s, why can't we do it now?
Promoting ways to protect ourselves from global warming instead of preventing dilutes the popular rhetoric of "reduce emissions now or we're doomed!" If there's enough publicity given to your kind of idea, then people might relax and not worry enough. Without them worrying enough, they might not do anything to prevent it. That kind of makes you wonder why try to prevent it anyway.
So to answer "why can't we do it now?" We can. We just don't want to talk about it yet because sheeples.
The novel takes place in a future where New York is underwater and life is now arranged on the skyscrapers that are high enough to step outside. The isolation of the city, culturally and physically from the mainland affected a lot the city and this aspect is highly detailed in the novel.
Why any concern about private land being flooded? Landowners who are worries about it can sell it now, before anyone else has cottoned on or if they want to take a risk, they can keep it. It's an individual decision for each land owner, and they're the ones who'll suffer the effects of their own personal choice. Doesn't seem like something for anyone to really worry about.
The people suffering the effects of their own personal choices don't exist in isolation. They all work for or run businesses that affect the world we live in.
If a significant number of people start loosing their homes or places of business to flood waters, the economic and social repercussions will affect all of us, not just the people whose property is now under water
You're right, no one should worry at all about the simple matter of private land ownership in New York as the sea comes in.
It's a simple matter of private property ownership, right? No complicated information economies need be considered, right? No state programs might seek to intervene and disrupt the predictable linear progression of climate change, right?
Anyone that's worried surely feels silly after reading your comment sir. Thank you for your godly libertarian insights.
Geez. He didn't really take it quite as far as your rebuttal, where you proceeded to beat on the strawman you created. He said nothing about state programs intervening and all of that. He's being downvoted quite unfairly for his apparent political stance, but he did have a point.
While it would never work the way he suggested, it should more often. Instead, we privatize profits and socialize losses. I think a lot of people are or should be very sick of that trend by now. That was his point.
> "While it would never work the way he suggested, it should more often. Instead, we privatize profits and socialize losses. I think a lot of people are or should be very sick of that trend by now. That was his point."
Perhaps the rebuttal was as strong as it was because flooding of land does not only affect landowners, it affects everyone who relies on that land (in one way or another).
To give some examples:
* People could live on the land and not own it.
* People could work on the land and not own it.
* People could rely on the land as part of a major transportation route and not own it.
* People could rely on the land as part of the infrastructure that provides their food (e.g. a local supermarket, a farmer's market, a shipping dock, etc...) and not own it.
Therefore, to restrict the concern to landowners only is shortsighted. The impacts are potentially far greater than just those felt by landowners.
All those people have decades to see it coming too. They too can start changing their dependence on it if they really think it'll affect them. Of course most people don't think ahead nearly that far and won't actually look for a new job until their employer literally goes underwater. But maybe we just need a bit of public education about the predicted future to help those people who aren't thinking about it themselves.
Still, my point was focused on landowners, which the article seems to be too. Of course there are public services and so on that don't follow the free market and they're a different issue. I just don't think we should be fearing for the poor troubles that the owners of NY city property might suffer in 50-100 year's time. Those people are smart enough to evaluate risks themselves and make their own decisions long before anything is forced on them.
I understand exactly what you're saying. As part of my evaluation for a home purchase, I've looked into potential natural disasters and probability of one occurring in my lifetime. While I think most people just wait until something bad happens then lobbies the gov't for a bailout, I personally view the inconvenience of losing my home in that process too much to bear. Even if the gov't will bail me out due to my own lack of research. That's just common sense, and should be a strain that should hopefully run through all ideologues. My situation is a pittance compared to NYC real estate, so those people have as much or more reason for concern than an average homeowner would.
My guess is that the idea faces virulent opposition from those who are absolutely refusing to leave NYC. Deep ties, heels dug in deep, and will wait for the rising tide: and are fully prepared to bribe the government for their reimbursement when problems land. The rest of us are a bit more sensible and prepare ahead of time.
There's always going to be those who, rich or poor, refuse to pack up and settle elsewhere. We shouldn't be rewarding outright obstinance, and there will be a day where the gov't won't be around to redistribute that wealth. So it's all quite the gamble just because someone really loves NYC, when they could relocate today to Chicago or Kansas City.
I'm all for personal responsibility. However, I don't see the problem in the government playing their part also. Whilst some people have enough privately owned resources to work around the issues without too much fuss, there are those who have more limited resources who are less able to do so.
Let's take the case of flooding in Manhattan. Let's imagine it hits the subway first. There's a large number of people in NYC who live outside Manhattan but work in Manhattan, travelling to work on the subway from the other NYC boroughs. Whilst people may choose to move away from NYC over time, what about those first few weeks after the flooding hits the subway? Other forms of transport are already heavily used, so it's not like NYC could continue to function smoothly by all former subway users using buses instead. In cases like this, I'd want the government to intervene to help speed up the implementation of flood defences and organise resources to help people continue to live their lives until they were at a point where they had the resources to move.
One of the reasons that governments have a hard time executing on large public works projects are the costs.
Advocating for regulatory changes that reduce the cost of public works projects (e.g. prevailing wage rules) would result in more of those projects actually being completed.
I'm suggesting that we should look for ways to complete projects with less $$. That doesn't mean 'cutting pay', because that presumes you've already hired someone at a high pay rate. How about don't hire them at that high rate to start with?
I'm not sure why you are posting it at all, since it is not equivalent, unless you think people are not going to move when water slooooooowly rises. Even the big weather events that cause a real flood will be known well in advance. Also, humans are a lot more tolerant about nature then about other intelligence trying to destroy them or their property. And no (just to preempt that argument should it occur to someone), just because global warming is man-made it does not mean people release CO2 in order to destroy New York, not to mention that the New Yorkers participate like everybody else.
I've seen a lot of projections like this, showing areas that will someday be underwater when sea levels rise. But am I missing something? Why wouldn't people just build barriers to keep the water out?
That may be prohibitively expensive for some places, but for Manhattan, I have to imagine the cost would be small compared to the alternative.
The author addresses it in the essay. Flooding comes in the form of storms every X years and super-high, rare tides, so barriers don't help. If storms are unfrequent enough, people keep occupying the area. In Manhattan, they've already thought about a barrier on the Hudson river, but it's prohibitively expensive, covers a few percent of the risks only, and worse, gives people the feeling that there's a solution. Plus they may solve the 2070 problem, but few things solve the 2100 problem, and nothing solves the 2200 problem: When the water is 30 feet higher, you just have to transform NYC into New Venice.
Which makes me think, a change of name into "New Venice" might help people identify better with the new situation than every barrier.
The funny thing is that Venice, I mean the original one in Italy, seems also totally uninterested in this problem. After decades of discussion they have finally built these mobile barriers between the sea and the lagoon, which are supposed to protect the city from the periodic high tides ("acqua alta"). But apparently no one is thinking what will happen when the sea level will rise.
It's ironic that Wall Street, where a great amount of money would've been invested in fossil fuel projects that caused the problem may soon be under water.
Unfortunately all the emissions caused by building defenses will just make the issue worse, it's a slippery slope.
The threat is from storm surges, rather than average sea level, but average level is becoming a problem in Florida as the water comes up through the water table.
My understanding is that while a barrier may be feasible (but still very expensive) somewhere like Boston where there is already a lot of natural protection, NYC's island nature, along with being at the junction of multiple estuaries, makes building barriers there a uniquely difficult challenge.
I think Jacob commits the opposite error, failing to discount the future. If Manhattan real estate is worth "hundreds of billions of dollars" as an asset, then it's worth tens of billions of dollars a year as a value-stream. If we're talking something like Hurricane Sandy causing $33 billion in property damage in New York, that's maybe one year of the property market's value. That's a quite small "weather tax" in the grand scheme of things, and if we're talking a multi-century trend, well, it might come time to contemplate taking down the skyscraper after a few hundred years, assuming the world hasn't perished in a global thermonuclear war where Manhattan was the first target and assuming that the city still prospers.
And remember that Manhattan is an island literally named "many hills". The Financial District is low-lying but only because it's artificial land. Midtown would be pretty solidly unaffected for a good little while.