Day 26 of 28 brainstorming signs for the People’s Climate March Now that we’re closing in on the march date (this Saturday 4/29 in a location near you!) it’s time to work on some customized signs for everyone in the family. Today’s sign is custom-built for the Floridians in my life. This sign was inspired by last weekend’s New York Times article on the National Flood Insurance Program, which provides subsidized insurance to property owners flood-prone areas. Congress attempted to ‘unsubsidize’ the program in 2012, and quickly found that market-rate flood insurance effectively condemned large amounts of low-lying coastal properties. Congress re-subsidized the program in 2014. From the article: “the N.F.I.P. was meant to encourage safer building practices, but instead it created a perverse incentive — a moral hazard — to build, and to stay, in flood-prone areas by bailing people out repeatedly and by spreading, and in that way hiding, the true costs of risk. ”
At some point in the next 50 years, even under an optimistic CO2 reduction scenario, coastal property owners are going to have to face the reality that the feds cannot bear the cost of increased disasters in low-lying areas. The flood insurance program will end, and it will become cost-prohibitive to reside in many of these communities. Denying this reality, and continuing to subsidize residences that will be underwater in the near-term doesn’t really help anyone, least of all low-income residents who may be relying on the resale value of their house to retire. A managed retreat program for low-income property owners in flood-prone Florida communities needs to be put in place as soon as possible, and should be managed and paid for by the State of Florida. If #Florida is looking for an inventive financing mechanism to pay for managed retreat, perhaps they might want to have a look at seeking climate reparations from real estate developers like Donald Trump.
I also wanted to provide a few black and white printable signs. The idea with these is that you can print them at low cost on colored 11×17 paper (see printing instructions here), or on white paper and then color them in. Take a picture and send to me or tag me @carlablackmar on instagram or @cablackpot at twitter if you use one! Each image below links to a printable 11×17 PDF document. You can download these and send to the printer, or even send the link directly.
