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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Florida cannot afford to follow Trump’s lead on climate

Many UF students are proud to call Miami home. In the land of sun-drenched beaches, Cuban sandwiches and Mr. Worldwide, it’s almost impossible to imagine the “Magic City” without brightly colored clothing, smiles and Gloria Estefan playing in the background. But all that might change according to a new report from the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Coastal towns like Miami are squarely in the crosshairs of sea level rise caused by climate change. The land of warm people and culture may soon be ankle-deep in seawater. The report illustrates what Floridians already know: We cannot further delay decisive action against the climate crisis. It is both literally and figuratively at our doorsteps.

The city of Miami Beach is a great tourist destination. For now. It’s home to plenty of famous landmarks, world-renowned restaurants and five-star hotels. Its real estate is worth billions of dollars. It also floods at high tide. Miami Beach has been forced to install pumps to clear flood water from the streets. Pumping water out of the street is not normal for the city. This is not an ancient problem that is finally being fixed. The average sea level in the area has been rising steadily since 1995. The pumps were installed in 2014 because the flooding became too troublesome to ignore.

The pumps will not be enough to save the beach from rising seas — they are the infrastructure equivalent of bailing out a sinking ship with a plastic bucket. Both the city’s estimates and the newly released report predict that it will require far more drastic measures than pumps to save the beach’s condominiums and hotels from sinking beneath the waves. Miami Beach is investing heavily in raising the level of its roads and building seawalls to reduce flooding, according to the report.

There are already areas of Miami where the streets flood without rain. Where usually a clogged storm drain turns Miami homes into temporary lakefront properties, the most regular offender for the flooding is now the moon and tides. During especially high tides, known as king tides, knee-deep water creeps up into some neighborhoods with regularity. For some residents, the waters cover their lawns and come up to their houses. For others, it comes up through their drains and into their bathrooms.

A wide range of federal agencies including NASA authored the report that foretells of flooding, disruption and unavoidable retreat from some parts of the U.S. coastline. But even this coalition was not a reliable enough source for President Donald Trump. He remained unconvinced that climate change is real. When asked about the drastic, harmful economic effect of climate change predicted by the report, Trump said, “I don’t believe it.”

Whether we believe it or not, Florida is at risk of economic and ecological disaster. Trump may want to turn a blind eye, but Florida cannot. The report predicts that property values in at-risk areas will drop dramatically, which will spell drastically lower tax revenues. Those same towns and cities will already be dealing with the costs of additional infrastructure, like the cost of elevating and retrofitting major commercial ports. A single port could cost upward of $9 billion dollars. Florida has 11 of them.

The economic realities facing Florida are not a matter of belief. This kind of flat-earth, science denial will cripple Florida’s economy if we do not act now. Hurricanes and tropical cyclones will only become stronger, the seas will only rise higher and more of Miami will become a wading pool the longer we deny the obvious.

The report outlines five stages of adaptation that the U.S. must take to avoid disaster. Simple awareness is the first — we must get past this initial stage, with or without the president.

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