Friday, Aug. 31, 2012
The Climate Bites Back
As a wildfire/flash flood cycle ravages the American heartland, "the climate bites back" may be the 21st century's karmic rejoinder to the hysterical screams of "freedom!" and "property rights!" when it comes to urban sprawl.
No doubt, we've long understood the invisible dangers of such sprawl. For years, we've been warned by researchers of the direct connections between unplanned and gluttonous construction projects and human-created carbon emissions. We've been told specifically that suburbanization's spread of population into ever-larger swaths of wilderness inherently results in more roads, more cars, more carbon emissions, more climate change—and thus, more chances for nature-related disasters.
But in go-go America, these scientific truisms were no match for McMansion fantasies. As coastal folk headed to the Rocky Mountain frontier with visions of big-but-inexpensive castles far away from the inner city, the term "zoning" became an even more despised epithet than it already had been in cowboy country. Rangeland and foothill frontiers subsequently became expansive low-density subdivisions, and carbon-belching SUVs chugged onto new roads being built farther and farther away from the urban core. That is, farther and farther into what the federal government calls the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) and what fire experts call the dangerous "red zone."
The numbers are stark: According to the Denver Post, between 1990 and 2000, 40%of all homes built in the nation were built in the WUI—and "a Colorado State University analysis expects a 300% increase in WUI acreage in the next couple decades." In the last two decades in fire-scorched Colorado alone, I-News Network reports that "a quarter million people have moved into red zones," meaning that today "one of every four Colorado homes is in a red zone."
As noted, the super-sized American Dream that came out of 1980s and 1990s mythology explains much of this ongoing homebuyer support for sprawl. But public policy is also actively encouraging the expansion.
At the municipal level, weak building codes and zoning regulations often do not mandate what's necessary to prevent—or mitigate—fires that all taxpayers then have to pay to put out. At the national level, the nonpartisan watchdog Headwaters Economics reports that federal funding formulas mean "local governments have little disincentive to stop zoning mountain areas for more housing when they know the federal government will come in and pay most wildfire suppression costs when the blazes spark." Meanwhile, more homeowners living in wilderness areas means more preemptive fire suppression, which leaves more underbrush on the forest floor—underbrush that becomes extra fuel when a conflagration eventually ignites.
Ultimately, just like the federal flood insurance program was creating incentives for construction in flood areas, America is creating incentives for localities to permit development in fire red zones and for homeowners to avoid investing in expensive fire-mitigation planning. Worse, these incentives are being created at precisely the moment when climate change is making floods and fires bigger than ever.
Fortunately, after Hurricane Katrina and other weather-related cataclysms, the most recent federal transportation bill included some modest steps to reform the flood program. That is a welcome—if tacit—admission that the consequences of climate change can no longer be ignored. The climate will, indeed, bite back.
Whether living near an ocean or a forest, that's a motto all homeowners will have to learn. It's a lesson reminding us that Mother Nature doesn't care about ideological notions of "frontier freedom" or "property rights."
Having ignored that lesson for too long, we now face consequences. Should McMansion dreams, weak zoning laws, perverse federal policies and climate change denialism collectively lead us to pretend such consequences don't exist, the inevitable result will be more destruction.
David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He co-hosts "The Rundown" on AM630 KHOW in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.
© 2012 CREATORS.COM
No doubt, we've long understood the invisible dangers of such sprawl. For years, we've been warned by researchers of the direct connections between unplanned and gluttonous construction projects and human-created carbon emissions. We've been told specifically that suburbanization's spread of population into ever-larger swaths of wilderness inherently results in more roads, more cars, more carbon emissions, more climate change—and thus, more chances for nature-related disasters.
But in go-go America, these scientific truisms were no match for McMansion fantasies. As coastal folk headed to the Rocky Mountain frontier with visions of big-but-inexpensive castles far away from the inner city, the term "zoning" became an even more despised epithet than it already had been in cowboy country. Rangeland and foothill frontiers subsequently became expansive low-density subdivisions, and carbon-belching SUVs chugged onto new roads being built farther and farther away from the urban core. That is, farther and farther into what the federal government calls the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) and what fire experts call the dangerous "red zone."
The numbers are stark: According to the Denver Post, between 1990 and 2000, 40%of all homes built in the nation were built in the WUI—and "a Colorado State University analysis expects a 300% increase in WUI acreage in the next couple decades." In the last two decades in fire-scorched Colorado alone, I-News Network reports that "a quarter million people have moved into red zones," meaning that today "one of every four Colorado homes is in a red zone."
As noted, the super-sized American Dream that came out of 1980s and 1990s mythology explains much of this ongoing homebuyer support for sprawl. But public policy is also actively encouraging the expansion.
At the municipal level, weak building codes and zoning regulations often do not mandate what's necessary to prevent—or mitigate—fires that all taxpayers then have to pay to put out. At the national level, the nonpartisan watchdog Headwaters Economics reports that federal funding formulas mean "local governments have little disincentive to stop zoning mountain areas for more housing when they know the federal government will come in and pay most wildfire suppression costs when the blazes spark." Meanwhile, more homeowners living in wilderness areas means more preemptive fire suppression, which leaves more underbrush on the forest floor—underbrush that becomes extra fuel when a conflagration eventually ignites.
Ultimately, just like the federal flood insurance program was creating incentives for construction in flood areas, America is creating incentives for localities to permit development in fire red zones and for homeowners to avoid investing in expensive fire-mitigation planning. Worse, these incentives are being created at precisely the moment when climate change is making floods and fires bigger than ever.
Fortunately, after Hurricane Katrina and other weather-related cataclysms, the most recent federal transportation bill included some modest steps to reform the flood program. That is a welcome—if tacit—admission that the consequences of climate change can no longer be ignored. The climate will, indeed, bite back.
Whether living near an ocean or a forest, that's a motto all homeowners will have to learn. It's a lesson reminding us that Mother Nature doesn't care about ideological notions of "frontier freedom" or "property rights."
Having ignored that lesson for too long, we now face consequences. Should McMansion dreams, weak zoning laws, perverse federal policies and climate change denialism collectively lead us to pretend such consequences don't exist, the inevitable result will be more destruction.
David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He co-hosts "The Rundown" on AM630 KHOW in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.
© 2012 CREATORS.COM
And think of all the property changing hands... ocean front high-value real estate that can be bought for a song... or condemned and left for the local governments to deal with, and the near inland property that is low value now becoming high value, as it will be the new waterfront property.
Think of all the Mortgage Backed Securities on that former high-value land being "underwater" in both the environmental real sense and to the banking industry, think of all the bank bail-outs we will again do to preserve the interests of hte millionaires in Congress, again leaving the working class taxpayer to deal with! (The top 1% will be protected from harm, not have to pay).
Will Romney-Ryan solve this? No, they will bring it on faster.
Will Obama-Biden stop this? No, the corporate interests will not let him!
Huh? That sounds like a Joel McNally rant.
Let me summarize the Sirota article another way, one that both McNally uber-liberals and Sykes ultra-Conservatives can both say...
"Privatize the gains, socialize the losses."
or... If my "business activity" made money, it's all mine, not to be shared; but if it failed and left me with a bill for damages, you all have to pay it, can't touch what I "earned" in my other business, past present or future.
It is the unfortunate modern truth, one that is only good for those who are "well-positioned" to receive those profits (as tax-free as possible), and then renounce their citizenship so they do not participate in the public's covering of the "oops, we did not see that coming" losses.
Oh, I get the concept of high-risk investments being you can win big, but it is balanced with you can also lose big, but when the system is set up so that the prize-winners can take the cash out of the system but escape paying the losses they cause, that goes against the face of fairness and decency.
Rules of "Moral Hazard" says why be careful with smoking in bed when you know that insurance will pay for it? So insurance companies charge higher risk policy holders more, apply high deductibles. This "Moral Hazard" also applies in business (and bail-outs), why be careful with your "business" when you have the laws set up so that someone else will get stuck with the bill? It sure saves me the time and cost of planning it to be failure free.
Like the "Dine and Dash" trick of the 70's, but raised to a much higher level.
Global warming is real, but its a good thing too. Artctic development, expanded farming. New housing growth opportunties at higher lattitudes. Just go with it because we are not going to stop it.