Actions Around the Home
The Frog will explore The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions by Heidi Roop in the first 100 days of 2024
In the first `100 days of 2024 we will explore 100 climate solutions that may “empower you to evaluate, engage, and act” to address on-going climate change as an individual on your terms.
You may be planning where you are going to retire or move to next for a job or to be closer to family. You should consider this carefully. For instance, I had a colleague you decided to retire with his wife to Florida near the coast. They are relatively young and could live 20 or 30 years in their new home. Increased likelihood and intensity of hurricanes aside, I hope they consulted NOAA’s Sea Level Rise viewer when they made their decision on where to invest in retirement properties. Knowing his politics, unlikely.
Enjoy visiting Key West, Florida? Better enjoy it while it is above water.
To paraphrase Heidi, wherever you go, something you care about is at risk from climate change. If you are moving, you do research on the area on what is important to you, cost of living, housing prices, quality of schools and healthcare, etc. Presumably the possibility of catastrophic loss for your family and your possessions would be something you would consider as well. As the impact of weather events intensify with on-going global warming, a given area’s sensitivity to sea level rise, flooding, wildfires and drought should increasingly become critical data informing your decisions.
“In 2021, there were twenty billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the United States, causing $`152.6 billion in damage”
Heidi Roop
If you don’t consider it, the insurance companies surely are. Coastal areas in the US are home to 42% of the population in the US. With the increased risks for people, habitats, infrastructure, etc., insurance companies are increasing the cost of policies or dropping coverage altogether. The National Flood Insurance Program, run by FEMA, ostensibly provides subsidized flood insurance to policyholders living in flood-prone regions. But it is increasingly less likely to be able to pay claims in years with catastrophic losses.
It is idyllic to live along a river until the climate change intensified torrential rains come and it isn’t.
Minnesota is not a bad place to live, as we are generally unaffected by earthquakes, and hurricanes. We do have the occasional tornado, and blizzard, I suppose and you learn to live with that. With climate change, we are going to be warmer, wetter, and more prone to damaging rain events, which means flooding is going to be a bigger problem. Still, even with all that, it might be a good place to retire.
Useful decision making tools include FEMA’s Flood Maps, NOAA’s Sea Level Rise viewer, and the US Forest Service’s Wildfire Risk to Communities maps.
Next Up: Climate Action in 2024 – Day 52: Check Your Insurance Policy
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