Seawalls To Protect US Against Rising Oceans Could Cost $416bn By 2040
Source: The Guardian
Defending against rising seas could cost US communities $416bn in the next 20 years, according to a new report.
Spending on seawalls alone could total almost as much as the initial investment in the interstate highway system, the authors said. And the billions involved will represent just a fraction of adaptation efforts governments in coastal states will have to fund if they do not want to simply retreat.
“I don’t think anybody’s thought about the magnitude of this one small portion of overall adaptation costs and it’s a huge number,” said Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), which published the report.
Estimates of how much sea-level rise will cost often focus on impacts by 2100, Wiles said, adding that people will be paying for the climate crisis much earlier. “You’re looking at close to half a trillion spent over the next 20 years and no one has thought about that. So the question is, who’s going to pay for that? Is it really going to be taxpayers? The current position of climate polluters is that they should pay nothing, and that’s just not tenable.”
According to the report, Florida faces the highest costs, $76bn by 2040. Louisiana comes in second at $38bn and North Carolina third at $35bn. For cities, Jacksonville, Florida, New York and Virginia Beach could spend the most: $3.5bn, $2bn and $1.7bn, respectively. -MORE...
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/20/us-rising-seas-defense-seawalls-cost-report
The bills are beginning to be paid by places like Staten Island, New York, which is planning a 5-mile seawall costing $650b to withstand a 300-year storm. $400m of that amount will be paid by the federal government.
A heating planet and land-based melting of ice has caused the average global sea level to rise seven or eight inches since 1900. About 3in of that rise occurred since 1993. By 2100, seas could be up to 3ft higher according to the CCI.
The CCI report notes that cost figures are based on local projections for sea-level rise under the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenario for moderate levels of pollution. In that scenario, called RCP 4.5, emissions would peak around 2040 and then begin to decline.
The CCI report considered how much US communities would pay locally to build sea walls to protect against the storm surge expected in a given year, and many would spend more to build even stronger defenses.
- Hurricane Florence hits North Carolina, 2018.
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the cost to fix the problem would've been dramatically lower, but hey, the oil companies wanted more money added to the gazillions they already had, and Jimmy Idiot Inhofe had to earn his Cherokee name, Postures With Snowballs! 
