Cost to address rising sea levels will touch everyone
Climate denial takes many forms, but perhaps the least appreciated is our collective denial of the massive cost of climate adaptation.
Protecting America from climate change will be the most all-encompassing transformation of civil society ever undertaken, whether we engage the task wisely or deny it and delay well past when we should act. Either way, climate adaptation will touch every sector of society and every citizen, requiring all the skills and financial resources we can muster in an unprecedented reinvention of the world we live in.
Yet there have been few if any comprehensive assessments of the costs of this epic endeavor.
Understanding these costs is critical. Not just because climate threats are real and here today, but because the climate adaptation price tag is so massive and unavoidable, with the potential to bankrupt hundreds of communities and many smaller states.
To estimate the costs of just one component of climate adaptation, the Center for Climate Integrity teamed with the engineering consulting firm Resilient Analytics to assess the bare minimum price of coastal defenses needed to hold back rising seas and prevent chronic flooding in every coastal community in the 48 contiguous states, over the next 20 years.
The result: These basic coastal defenses will cost the United States more than $400 billion by 2040. This is approaching the cost of the original interstate highway system, and if built, will require the construction of more than 50,000 miles of coastal barriers in 22 states in half the time it took to create the nation’s iconic roadway network. More than 130 counties face at least $1 billion in costs, and 14 states will see expenses of $10 billion or greater between now and 2040.
Things could easily be much worse. Our analysis is based on modest sea-level rise projections that assume some reductions in carbon emissions (RCP 4.5). Seas could readily rise more than we project in this study, they are very unlikely to rise less. And we assumed protections only for a one-year storm (the event that is virtually certain to occur every year), whereas standard practice generally recommends protection from a 100 year storm event.
Based on these very conservative criteria, Texas has 2,700 miles of tidal and coastal shoreline in need of protection at a cost of $19 billion. Galveston County faces $3.9 billion in costs by 2040, and five counties, including Matagorda, Brazoria, Jefferson and Chambers are all looking at more than $1.6 billion in costs.
For hundreds of small coastal and tidal communities, the costs will far outstrip their ability to pay, making retreat and abandonment the only viable option unless enormous amounts of financing emerge in a very short period of time. Yet even retreat comes at a substantial cost, as courts have begun to rule that governments that fail to protect private property must compensate property owners for the value of the property that is abandoned.
As just one example of the scope and gravity of this problem; in 178 communities the cost of basic coastal defenses is more than $100,000 per person. Many of these are small unincorporated localities.
Among cities with more than 25,000 people, Galveston tops the list at $21,000 per person. Texas City is number four nationally, at $12,600 per person, and Port Arthur checks in at number seven, at $10,300 per resident.
For communities of this size retreat is not an option. Protection will be required, and costs of this magnitude shine a bright light on the question of who should pay, and how: Should polluters pay their fair share of these costs, as a growing number of local governments are seeking through the courts, or should taxpayers finance the entire, colossal enterprise? It is worth noting that these expenses represent a small portion, perhaps 10-15 percent of the total costs of climate adaptation these communities will face.
As things stand, oil and gas companies and other climate polluters who knew their products caused climate change at least 50 years ago, and then masterminded an exquisitely effective denial campaign for the past 30 years, are paying none of these costs. Their position, as expressed in courtrooms across the country, is that they should continue to pay nothing at all.
That simply cannot stand. The companies that made and promoted the products that they knew would irrevocably and radically alter the global climate, and then denied it, must pay their fair share to help the world adapt. Failing to hold polluters to this basic responsibility would be to knowingly bankrupt hundreds of communities, standing idly by as they are slowly and inexorably swallowed up by the sea.