WEBVTT - Jake Bittle on the Complexities of Climate Migration 0:00:11.560 --> 0:00:12.560 Welcome back to Drilled. 0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:17.120 I'm Amy Westerveldt. We will be bringing you another season soon, 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:20.840 but in the meantime, I'm back with weekly updates on 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:26.920 various aspects of climate accountability and occasionally with some book 0:00:27.080 --> 0:00:31.960 recommendations and interviews related to them. Like today, I have 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:36.519 joining me Jake Biddle. He's a journalist for Grist, and 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:38.840 he also had a book come out just a couple 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:44.000 months ago about internal migration in the US caused by 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:48.240 climate change. It's called The Great Displacement. It's a great book. 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:51.000 All stick a link to it. In the show notes, 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:53.960 Jake talked to me about all kinds of things he 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:58.560 discovered while reporting this book, and it's pretty fascinating stuff. 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:02.120 That conversation is coming up after this quick break. 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:19.280 Hi, my name is Jake Pittle. Okay. 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:22.600 I want you to start by kind of setting the 0:01:22.640 --> 0:01:23.520 stakes for people. 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:24.319 I feel like we hear. 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:27.880 Lots of numbers bandied about around climate migration. So, in 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:32.039 terms of internal migration within the US driven by a climate, 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:34.319 what kinds of numbers are we seeing right now in 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:35.080 the projections? 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:35.840 Right? 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:39.560 So, the most recent numbers suggest that each year, you know, 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:42.399 upwards of a million and closer in the past few 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:45.360 years to two or three million people are displaced from 0:01:45.400 --> 0:01:49.640 their homes for any amount of time by a climate disaster, right, 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:52.080 and so the vast majority of those people end up 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:55.640 pretty quickly moving back to their homes, the original homes, 0:01:55.680 --> 0:01:58.800 once they can repair the damage, or once the immediate 0:01:58.800 --> 0:02:02.280 disaster is over. But a substantial number do not. And 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:05.360 we don't really know what that number is, but it's 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:07.760 probably safe to say that tens of thousands of people 0:02:07.760 --> 0:02:10.040 every year end up having to spend you know, at 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:13.200 least a year out of their home, or they end 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:16.440 up moving to a different home eventually. So the cumulative 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:20.000 toll of this displacement over the next few decades is 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:21.000 going to get pretty large. 0:02:21.040 --> 0:02:21.200 You know. 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:24.520 You could imagine that multiple millions of people over the 0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:26.800 next few decades, certainly by the middle of the century, 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:29.800 will have made a permanent relocation, you know, as a 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:33.400 result of either pressure from a climate disaster or what's 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:35.679 even harder to gauge, you know, they make a voluntary 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:38.800 movement away from a vulnerable area, you know, to avoid 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:39.760 a future disaster. 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:45.239 Yeah, I mean, honestly, that played into my decision to leave. Yeah, 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:48.399 I'm sure, and I know a few other people who 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:52.080 also because we had it wasn't the snow. It was 0:02:52.240 --> 0:02:56.359 like we had multiple summers in a row of being 0:02:56.520 --> 0:03:02.040 trapped inside by smoke from yeahs, like my kids' school 0:03:02.080 --> 0:03:05.720 started to have more smoke days than snow days. Wow, 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:08.240 which was really just brutal. 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:11.320 Ye was it the Caldor fire that was all around 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:14.360 that all around for a few weeks, right, Yeah. 0:03:14.400 --> 0:03:18.400 Yeah, we actually evacuated twice because of that fire. Like 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:21.399 the first time was just the smoke got so bad 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:24.760 that like it was, you know, like my kids were 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:27.560 complaining about their eyes hurting inside the house even with 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:29.600 all the windows closed. I mean, you know, most of 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:32.480 Tahoe's housing stock was like built in the nineteen seventies 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:34.880 and never touched since, so it's not like we've had 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:40.600 really great, you know, seals on our windows. So I 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:42.640 kind of was like, oh, I guess we could just 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:46.119 leave for a few days to get a break from 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:48.800 the smoke. That would probably be good. And since you 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:52.040 know we're able to do that, we should did. And 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:54.720 then the second was actually like they were worried it 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:57.680 was going to kind of like tear up the west 0:03:57.680 --> 0:04:02.400 shore of Lake. So they were everyone in West and 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:07.280 North Tahoe to evacuate, so it wasn't like running from 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:07.800 a fire. 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:08.920 I don't know. 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:10.800 I feel like people have this idea that it's like 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:16.360 that it's always like disaster or not disaster emergency emergency, 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:19.440 and like a lot of people end up, you know, 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:22.120 leaving for either a short period of time or forever 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:24.720 just because of like a building of it. 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:25.120 You know. 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:27.279 Yeah, definitely, definitely. 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:30.560 So anyway, I want to have you talk about some 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:33.240 of the things that you heard from folks about how 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:37.480 they make the decision to stay or leave, both temporarily 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:39.280 and more permanently. 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:41.560 Right, Yeah, I think this is This was a really 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:44.600 interesting and kind of surprising part of the reporting process 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:46.560 for the book is that I guess I had kind 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:49.160 of assumed when I started that there would be a 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:51.920 kind of you know, psychological shift that took place in 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:55.719 most people, where as the risks got larger and more frequent, 0:04:56.080 --> 0:04:59.280 they would, you know, decide that they were more afraid 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:02.719 of then they were hesitant to leave and find a 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:05.960 new home. That was certainly true for a lot of people, 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:08.320 but I think there was this whole other set of 0:05:08.440 --> 0:05:12.320 push and pull factors which were primarily financial that I 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:15.080 don't think I considered at the start. Right, So, the 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:19.520 availability and extent to which someone had bought homeowners insurance 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:21.800 or flood insurance and flood print areas was like a 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:25.320 prime driver of whether they had the resources to rebuild 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:27.200 the same kind of home that they lived in before. 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:31.280 And then the ambient sort of level of housing shortage 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:34.840 in a place was really really important for renters. Right So, 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:38.240 in places like northern California, if there's a wildfire that 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:41.880 destroys hundreds or thousands of housing units, the rents go 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:45.359 up precipitously overnight, and people, even if their homes didn't 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:47.960 actually get destroyed in the fire, they can't find a 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:50.440 place to rent that's anywhere near affordable and they have 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:50.800 to leave. 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:52.200 So there's these hool This is. 0:05:52.160 --> 0:05:56.360 Exactly what happened to me, Like my landlord decided to 0:05:56.560 --> 0:06:01.039 sell the house that we were renting or maybe move 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:02.359 a family member, and I don't. 0:06:02.160 --> 0:06:05.120 Know, you wanted to you know, yeah, yeah, And it. 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:06.440 Was right after the caled Or. 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:08.880 Fire, right right, right, Yeah, it. 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:11.160 Was like, oh my god, there's nothing that we can 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:13.640 find that's less than four thousand dollars a month. 0:06:13.760 --> 0:06:17.920 It's yeah, and I think, like, like the most people 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:20.000 that I spoke to who ended up having to move 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:23.800 or choosing to move, it seems to exist on a 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:26.000 spectrum between having to move and choosing to move. But 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:29.800 I guess I was sort of surprised about how, you know, 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:33.400 their attitudes about leaving kind of existed in this this 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:35.800 limbo where some of them didn't really think that they 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:38.280 were leaving for good, some of them didn't want to leave, 0:06:38.279 --> 0:06:40.200 but they were going to leave. Some of them still 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:42.640 thought of themselves as people who would never leave, even 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:44.720 as they had to kind of come to grips with 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:47.200 the fact that maybe they weren't coming back. I think 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:49.279 I had sort of imagined there would be a binary 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:51.920 between people who chose to stay and people who chose 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:55.839 to leave, and there was really not. The financial pressure 0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:58.760 of the post disaster world, you know, really was the 0:06:58.800 --> 0:07:01.440 main factor I think that made it impossible for people 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:03.960 to stay even when they thought that they would not leave. 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:07.400 That's so interesting. I mean, it makes total sense when 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:09.480 you say it, But yeah, I think a lot of 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:12.080 times you hear about it in this kind of stay 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:17.080 or go binary. Okay, I want to talk about climate 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:22.000 gentrification and this way that black and brown people in 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:26.840 particular are getting pushed into more disaster prone zones. I 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:29.120 think the first time I heard the term climate gentrification 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:31.200 was in Miami, and I just had this image in 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:34.280 my head of people being literally pushed into the sea. 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:37.440 Oh yeah, I'm curious to hear about what you saw 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:38.520 and your reporting on that. 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:40.960 Yeah, it's really really interesting. 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:44.840 I think that that case study in Miami has been 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:47.080 really really influential for the way that a lot of 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:50.880 people see the problem. And it's certainly true that many 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:54.040 of the highest elevated areas in Miami have historically been 0:07:54.360 --> 0:07:57.240 areas of quite low property values home to black and 0:07:57.280 --> 0:08:01.240 brown communities, and now there's like a substantial placement pressure. 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:02.840 Going on in those communities. 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:07.520 Now, whether the developers are actively trying to make investments 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:09.160 on a high ground, I mean, they'll tell you that 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:11.160 they're not, and they just think it's a good place 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:15.280 to gentrify, which in many respects it actually is. It's 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:18.560 like right next to the other gentrified neighborhoods. But I mean, 0:08:18.640 --> 0:08:21.280 it's hard to imagine that they don't have the ability 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:24.480 to look at a map, you know, and see what's 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:26.680 going to happen. But I think that there's this whole 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:29.200 other set of pressures that I think you could call 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:32.240 gentrification pressures, right like what I was talking about before 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:37.400 in northern California and also in other parts of Florida, 0:08:37.440 --> 0:08:41.520 where as financial interests like insurance companies and mortgage lenders 0:08:41.720 --> 0:08:44.839 try to reduce their exposure, you know, they reduced the 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:49.080 total available supply of credit and insurance coverage, and that 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:53.000 increases a lot of pressure, financial pressure on lower middle 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:56.600 class and middle class homeowners in particular. Renters have a 0:08:56.640 --> 0:08:59.160 really hard time of it all the time. But I 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:02.319 think that there's a kind of specific gentrification pressure that's happening, 0:09:02.400 --> 0:09:05.440 especially in Florida with windstorm and flood insurance, where a 0:09:05.440 --> 0:09:07.880 lot of homeowners can no longer keep up with the 0:09:07.920 --> 0:09:12.960 financial burden of paying insurance and keeping that coverage and 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:16.480 sort of like pushing people out of the threshold of 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:20.440 homeownership already, especially in parts of Miami where winstorm insurance 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:22.959 has gotten extremely expensive. I think this is like a 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:26.040 kind of invisible climate gentrification pressure that we don't always 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:29.320 hear about because it's not quite so graphic and visible, 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:35.160 but the risks are getting transferred onto homeowners and residents 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:37.959 of these places, and that's like really really hard for 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:39.720 a lot of people to bear, and it pushes people 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:41.359 out of those areas. 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:46.880 Yeah, I know that in California, as insurers kind of 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:50.920 stopped offering really any fire insurance at all or really 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:53.240 raise premiums to the point that people couldn't afford them, 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:58.000 the state kind of stepped in, which is obviously not 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:00.760 necessarily sustainable in the long term. Are you seeing that 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:03.280 in other states as well, like states kind of getting 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:06.240 in on the insurance game as a way to mitigate 0:10:06.240 --> 0:10:06.800 that impact. 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:07.720 Yeah. Yeah. 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:11.200 In Florida and Louisiana, which have both seem sort of 0:10:11.720 --> 0:10:15.679 downward spirals in their homeowners' insurance markets thanks to the hurricanes, 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:19.320 the state has gotten involved sort of bailed out insurance 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:22.440 that are collapsing, and then in Florida they pumped like 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:25.760 a bunch of money into what's called reinsurance to help 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:30.400 the insurers themselves get insurance. And then they also produced 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:33.679 all these different legislative reforms to try to stabilize the system. 0:10:34.080 --> 0:10:37.080 And in California, I think in particular, there's a lot 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:40.800 of interest in regulating the way that insurers can choose 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:43.640 to set prices not so much in Florida and Louisiana, 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:47.080 probably for obvious reasons. But in California, the state has said, 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:50.360 you know, if a homeowner takes steps to make her 0:10:50.400 --> 0:10:54.400 home more resilient to wildfire, then the insurer has to 0:10:54.440 --> 0:10:56.880 offer them a discount rate. You know, you have to 0:10:57.040 --> 0:11:00.280 take that into account when you set the price of premiams. 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:02.480 I think that's like it's the probably the. 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:05.200 Best policy that the state really has the legal authority 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:07.360 to do, I think, or one of the best, and 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:10.559 it should incentivize homeowners to do some of this, and 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:14.080 hopefully the burdens are not so much that people just 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:16.679 can't afford to pay the money up front, but it 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:20.040 would lead to some big discounts. Yeah, and I think 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:22.040 that that you're going to have to see probably more 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:25.200 that kind of policy in order to prevent like a 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:27.760 serious collapse in one of these markets, which we haven't 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:28.680 quite seen yet. 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:30.600 Yeah. Yeah, Okay. 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:33.600 I want to talk about a term that I find 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:37.000 to be terrifying because it sounds so and bureaucratic, but 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:39.959 it is like kind of a major deal and that 0:11:40.160 --> 0:11:41.760 is managed to retreat. 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:44.120 Yeah, Like every time I. 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:46.800 Hear that term, I think as people like slowly running 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:48.760 and screaming exactly. 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:50.680 Yeah. 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:53.840 It is like a very sanitized term for something that's 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:56.320 often you know, very very painful. 0:11:56.920 --> 0:11:57.319 Yeah. 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:00.320 Yeah, So I'm curious just well, I want have you 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:02.360 defined this term for people? And then I want to 0:12:02.440 --> 0:12:06.520 hear more about what you saw around that, you know, 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:09.480 kind of across the country where people are at with 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:13.240 this idea, you know, where are their local governments that 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:16.360 are actually trying to plan how you know, how it 0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:20.360 gets managed. I know, like sometimes when it gets mentioned 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:23.560 in any kind of official way, like you know, property 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:28.640 values plummet, and get really worried about that too. So yeah, 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:31.559 I'm curious to hear what you saw in them from Yeah. 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:34.520 Yeah, so manager treat is, as you said, the kind 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:38.680 of sanitized term for the government, a state sponsored you know, 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:44.040 relocation of people away from the most flood prone or 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:47.880 disaster prone areas, or I guess relocation to people, buildings 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:50.920 or infrastructure. Right, So any kind of you know, if 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:54.000 you're moving the wastewater treatment plant back from the ocean, 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:56.920 or if you're tearing down a neighborhood and giving people 0:12:56.960 --> 0:12:59.240 money to move elsewhere, that's all under the sort of 0:12:59.600 --> 0:13:02.600 unbrellt of managed retreat. I think that the main way 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:05.560 that this has happened in the United States so far 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:09.800 is through this FEMA's home buyout program, where basically FEMA 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:12.800 will give a local jurisdiction, a city or county, money 0:13:12.840 --> 0:13:15.880 to pay everyone in a certain area to leave or 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:17.840 offer them the opportunity to leave. 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:20.160 Really, it's not a mandatory program. 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:23.200 FEMA gives you money, you leave your house, you find 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:26.040 another house, and then FEMA tears down your house or 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:28.760 the county really tears down your house, and then they've 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:31.800 removed a structure from the floodplain, and that you know, 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:35.080 they've reduced their future risk of flooding, and they've also 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:36.640 reduced your future risk of flooding. 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:38.319 Hopefully. 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:40.760 This is like in theory, right, it's one of the 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:44.480 most cost effective and really like the most sort of 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:48.480 forward looking tools we have to adapt to climate change. Right, 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:51.600 you can build levy you know, x feet y feed 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:55.240 z feet. There's always potential risk that another flood will 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:57.960 overtop it in the future, but if you make sure 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:00.680 that you move somebody away from the world, then you 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:02.960 know the chances are if there's no home there the 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:07.400 home camp flood, right, and so like in theory this 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:10.120 this looks pretty good as the last resort option in 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:13.000 places where there's either no money to adapt, you know, 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:15.760 to build these structures, or where for some reason we 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:17.800 feel like it's not worth it, like the dangers are 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:21.520 just too extensive. The problem, and what I found in 0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:24.440 the book is that almost everywhere that this happens, it 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:28.120 turns out to be really ugly and to leave people 0:14:28.240 --> 0:14:30.920 in quite a bit of pain. So I wrote about 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:34.320 like a test case of this in eastern North Carolina, 0:14:34.840 --> 0:14:36.800 there was this community called Lincoln City. It was a 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:39.920 historic African American community right on the banks of this 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:43.560 river on land that was sort of considered worthless by 0:14:43.560 --> 0:14:46.960 the white planters who had dominated the area in the 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:48.120 late nineteenth century. 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:50.840 And the government, after two hurricanes, came in and said, 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:52.360 we would like to give you all money to leave. 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:54.600 We're never going to build a levee around you, we're 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:56.600 never going to help you elevate your homes because they're 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:57.360 not worth enough. 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:00.000 Everyone basically took the offer. They left. 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:04.240 This community was raised in two years, and now they're 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:07.880 all scattered around and they still retained very painful memories 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:09.880 of like the government coming in ton and they had 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:12.800 to leave this place that was really the only place 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:15.240 that had ever felt like home for them. This has 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:18.440 happened all over the country. Some places people are okay 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:22.040 with leaving, you know, but other places, especially black communities, 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:25.040 where there's not enough home values in the government's has 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:28.520 to justify, you know, the expense of flood protection. This 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:31.440 is often a really painful process, and it's just sort 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:33.640 of like it's one of these things where, you know, 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:37.200 a lot of adaptation experts and sort of planners see 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:41.000 it as a really really sound tool for adapting, and 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:42.920 to a certain extent, it is, but it comes with 0:15:43.000 --> 0:15:46.320 all kinds of implications for racial and economic justice that 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:48.720 we really haven't begun to tease out yet. 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:52.360 Well yeah, I mean, we haven't figured out how to 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:58.360 build housing or approach development in an equitable way, period, 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:01.160 So the idea that we're going to do manage to 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:06.040 retreat in an equitable way seems really implausible unfortunately. But 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:08.160 I also think, like, you know, kind of leaving it 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:15.200 to a disaster to take care of has similar impacts. 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:18.200 Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, at least at least in 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:21.200 the case of you know, a manage retreat policy, you 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:25.560 could in theory design a policy that works better than 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:28.000 the one that they have currently does, right, Like, so 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:30.640 the buyout program, you just get a check for the 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:33.920 pre flood market value of your house, right So for 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:36.640 a lot of people, that's not a sufficient payment for 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:39.280 them to find another house they can afford in the 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:42.000 same area, you know, Like, if you've got to buy 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:45.200 out right now in Austin, Texas, which they've tried to 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:47.800 do in the test, there's no home you could could 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:50.440 afford for the amount that your previous home probably costs 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:54.280 because costs have risen so much. But you could, in theory, 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:56.520 you design a program that would include like a top 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:59.120 up for instance, or a long term relocation STIPE and 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:01.280 to help people make up that difference. But if you 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:03.440 just wait for people's houses to get destroyed and then 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:05.439 let them go willy nilly wherever they want, then you 0:17:05.520 --> 0:17:08.639 definitely know that it won't work, you know. I Mean, 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:10.679 there's just no way that that will end well for 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:13.199 most people. So I think like biots are like a 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:15.320 good start, and there's a way that it could be 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:17.160 done well. It's just that it's not being done well 0:17:17.240 --> 0:17:19.840 right now. But yeah, I mean, managed retreat probably preferable 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:23.640 to unmanaged retreat if you have to retreat right. 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:28.360 Have you seen any examples of either a managed retreat 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:33.720 policy or other types of mitigation policies that have worked well? 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:35.080 I know you get into this in the book. I 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:38.440 want to have you like walk people through, you know, 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:43.520 some examples of things that either you've seen actually implemented 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:46.240 or you've heard people kind of talk about it sound 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:49.080 like they could be you know, effective solutions. 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.280 Yeah, yeah, I mean so probably the best example of 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:56.119 this working well is in New Jersey. So after a 0:17:56.280 --> 0:18:00.960 Hurricane Sandy, the state started this program called Acres, which 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:03.200 is basically like a they. 0:18:03.320 --> 0:18:04.680 Took the FEMA bioprogram. 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:07.600 When they expanded it, they staffed up this office that 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:11.959 does these individual consultations with homeowners. They keep the offer 0:18:11.960 --> 0:18:13.879 to the homeowner on the table for a long time 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:16.800 so the homeowner can really think about it. They I 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:20.520 believe includes some sort of supplementary financial assistance or you know, 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:23.479 connect people with resources that can help them find a 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:23.960 new home. 0:18:24.359 --> 0:18:25.840 They really have approached it. 0:18:25.720 --> 0:18:29.119 From a longitudinal I guess perspective, like it's not just 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:30.840 we show up, we give you the money, and we 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:33.760 look away. Is that we're sort of guiding the homeowner 0:18:33.800 --> 0:18:36.080 from the process of making the decision to sell to 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:38.280 finding a new home, you know, preferably in the same 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:41.360 jurisdictions that the tax base doesn't suffer and people can 0:18:41.720 --> 0:18:44.440 maintain their existing social and economic ties. And I think 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:49.000 the other example of something that's worked well in Norfolk, Virginia, 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:50.960 and this is not a perfect project by any means, 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:54.479 but the Obama administration created a grant program, the National 0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:57.840 Disaster Resilience Competition, and this program basically doled out a 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:00.720 billion dollars to some communities that wanted to experiment with 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:04.720 some climate adaptation projects that had never really been tried before. 0:19:04.840 --> 0:19:08.359 And in Norfolk, Virginia, they took a pretty flood prone 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:11.680 African American neighborhood on the banks of this tidal river, 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:14.119 and they spend about one hundred and fifty million dollars 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:17.960 retrofiting basically every part of the neighborhood's infrastructure. They built 0:19:17.960 --> 0:19:21.000 this big grassy berm along the water to stop storm 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:24.119 search flooding. They fixed the entire sewer system and the 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:27.760 storm drain system. They created these new parks that sort 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:30.440 of function as like tidal estuaries to soak up water. 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:33.600 They really took a kind of holistic approach, and it's 0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:35.800 not perfect by any means. Some people are a little 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:37.960 discontented with what it's done to the way that the 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:41.800 neighborhood looks, for instance, but for most people it's created 0:19:41.880 --> 0:19:43.000 a massive. 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:44.400 Reduction in flood vulnerability. 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:46.560 You know, this was a neighborhood where property values were 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:50.600 falling thanks to the vulnerability, and now they've probably bought 0:19:50.640 --> 0:19:53.800 the neighborhood thirty to fifty years, depending on sea the liverlizer, 0:19:53.960 --> 0:19:56.439 or even longer. And it really does show how with 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:00.320 enough money and enough willingness to take apart the way 0:20:00.320 --> 0:20:04.000 that neighborhood was built, you know, and redo it from 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:07.360 the bottom up, you can kind of control that these 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:09.680 impacts that seemed really scary on the surface of it. 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:14.639 Yeah, that's super interesting. You mentioned one thing that surprised 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:17.160 you before, which was the various factors that come into 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:21.200 people deciding whether to stay or go. I wonder if 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:26.240 there is anything else that was particularly surprising to you 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:28.679 as you did the reporting for the book. 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:29.040 Yeah. 0:20:29.119 --> 0:20:31.360 I mean, I think that for many people this might 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:34.280