Unthinkable Things

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[A beach house in Rodanthe, North Carolina succumbs to risings seas. Unthinkable?]

We are faced today with any number of situations that are at first glance incomprehensible, that are so far outside our experience and prior knowledge that they are, in a word, unthinkable. For example:

A recent study examined what would happen in three large Southern cities if a multi-day power blackout occurred during a multi-day heat wave. Such blackouts have doubled in number in the U.S. since 2015, while the number and severity of heat waves has been steadily increasing. If the concurrence occurred in Phoenix, according to the study, half the city’s population, nearly 800,000 people,  would need emergency-room care for heat stroke and heat-related illness. Phoenix has 3,000 emergency-room beds. The study estimates that 12,800 residents of the city would die.

This would be a mass casualty event worse than the deadliest weather event in U.S. history, the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, in which about 8,000 people died.

12,000 dead in a single city from hot weather? Unthinkable.

Last year, in rapid succession, three waterfront homes in the barrier-island community of Rodanthe, North Carolina, fell into the sea, victims of relentless sea-level rise caused by global warming. Another 12 homes nearby are in imminent danger. Desperate homeowners are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to move their homes back from the advancing waters, costs that are not covered by insurance. They are clamoring for the government — someone — to do a beach replenishment, which involves dredging sand that has washed out to sea and piling it back up on the beach. It would cost $40 million to do and $175 million to maintain for 30 years. No one has the money, or knows where to get it.

A century-old beach community wiped out by rising sea levels driven by climate change? Unthinkable.

State Farm Insurance, the largest property insurer in the state of California, announced last week that it will no longer issue policies in California because of the risk of wildfires. This is just the latest sign of widespread deterioration in the health of insurance companies which are being bled dry by the cost of climate-change-fueled destruction. In Florida and Louisiana, the entire industry is on its knees because of the massive costs of last year’s Hurricane Ian. Several insurance companies have simply disappeared, and the state agencies designed to pay the claims of their policyholders are tapped out.  Those who can get insurance in the region are paying triple the rates of just last year, four times the national average, about $6,000 a year for the average home. The situation is survivable as long as no more hurricanes come ashore in the Southeast.

No insurance for beach houses in Florida and forest retreats in California? Meaning the abandonment of two of Americans’ favorite habitats? Unthinkable.

New York City is racing to complete a 2.5-mile-long, 16-foot-high system of  seawalls and floodgates along the shore of Lower Manhattan. The $1.45 billion dollar project was launched after Hurricane Sandy killed 44 people and inflicted $19 billion dollars in damages in New York City alone. If the next superstorm were to succeed in flooding central Manhattan, which is relatively low lying, it could shut down the financial center of the country and much of the world.  

The global financial system crippled by a New York storm? Unthinkable.

Meanwhile, what is taking up all the attention of the country’s movers, shakers and chatterers? Abortion bans, book bans, drag-queen bans, trans athlete and bathroom bans, voting restrictions, proposed limitations on social programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

You know, things that used to be unthinkable.