According to a report on today’s Huffington Post,
A Republican congressman says the U.S. government can’t keep paying to repair homes that are repeatedly damaged by floods.
On Thursday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) claimed that the “federal government is encouraging and subsidizing people to live in harm’s way.”
After citing a $60,000 Baton Rouge property that received almost $500,000 in public money after it flooded 40 times, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee added, “At some point, God is telling you to move.”
Let me get this right out of the way: Hensarling is a nitwit. He’s an LGBTQ-folks-hating, wanna-abortion-banning knuckle-dragger who voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act and for constitutionally defining marriage as one-man-one-woman. He’s pretty much worse than medieval.
His judge-y, blame-y, “you don’t deserve help” take on disaster relief is vintage GOP nonsense. And his insistence on dragging his “god” into everything drives me right around the bend and out the other side.
That said: in his own twisted, Christianist way, and for all the wrong reasons, Jeb Hensarling may have started a conversation about something we really need to discuss.
I wouldn’t for a moment suggest that the Federal government should do anything but help the victims of the recent spate of hurricanes get their lives back together, their businesses rebuilt, and their homes restored. It would be heartless and foolish to suggest otherwise.
And as I heard reported multiple times on CNN and MSNBC during hurricanes Harvey and Irma, zoning laws have improved in Florida since Hurricane Andrew did so much harm. There was less catastrophic damage this time, and that’s a very good thing. Incremental positive change, made in response to natural disasters, is a step in the right direction. Perhaps Puerto Rico will also change and improve building codes as they rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Maria – that seems likely, and would be sensible.
But at what point do we start realizing that the climate isn’t going to stop changing any time soon, and larger and larger areas of now heavily populated land are going to become more and more difficult to live in? At what point do we open our eyes, face the truth, and start planning for how to adapt? Because adapt we must.
Every year, every rainfall that’s “heavier than normal” (whatever “normal” is any more), every hurricane that’s “a monster” and “unprecedented,” every flash flood, storm surge, wild high tide and “unexpected” deluge that floods a downtown… they’ll add up. The effects will be cumulative. We won’t bounce back and be the same again.
Things fall apart. The edges fray. The space of time between events will get narrower. There will be less time to regroup, regrow, rebuild.
We won’t be able to just pick ourselves up, wait for the waters to recede, and start over in situ. The land will be boggier, the river higher, the storm surges unmanageable. The drains will overflow and the muck will stink and the mold will grow black and thick on the window sills.
Coastline will crumble, and crumble some more, the sea gnawing back the land it once gave up to sedimentation and uplift. Foundations will split, houses wash out to sea. Moving a mile or two inland might make sense, but what if the river rises? What if the bridge washes out?
We’ve got to tackle this head on, and soon.
And if the odious Jeb Hensarling is the one to start the conversation, however stupidly and maladroitly he does so, that is fine with me. Because somebody has to do it.
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Edit: thanks, wind off the lake, for pointing out I could have been more explicit.
Hensarling is NOT trying to start that conversation. He wouldn’t engage, would deny climate change is happening, etc., etc. I’m just pointing out that we do have to think about the wisdom of sinking dollars into rebuilding in places that are going to be under water in a few decades — or years. We’re going to need to start sinking those dollars into infrastructure, wetland restoration, etc. — climate action, in short. -SP