> The people who can move now, without financial hardship, get to make their own choices about when and whether to get out. The people we, as a society, should be thinking about are the people who cannot get out—either without financial ruination, or at all—because they are the ones we as a society must help.

This is exactly the problematic thinking I’m talking about. Your obsession with using society to help those whose problems are the most intractable leads you to conclude to majority should be left “to make their own choices.”

But the most effective use of social action is helping the majority. They can benefit from social organization and their problems are tractable. Here, leaving the majority to its own devices is going to cause the most damage in the long run. Society should push them to make good choices and relocate in an orderly manner while there’s time.

▲

danaris 2 days ago | parent [-]

I assure you, the proportion of New Orleans residents who would be able to leave now without financial hardship are not the majority.

Even for reasonably-stable middle-class people, moving—especially out of a place like NOLA—is going to cause financial hardship.

▲

rayiner 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

We don't need them to "leave now." We don't need them to move to California. We need them to move to Baton Rogue over a period of decades. Under a high emissions scenario, sea level is projected to rise 6 feet by 2100. New Orleans is on average 1-2 feet below sea level (up to 10 feet). Baton Rouge is 60 feet above sea level. The average elevation of the state is 100 feet.

In any given year, 15% of the population moves, and 40% of them move to a different county. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/09/why-people-mo.... It's insane to say that most people wouldn't be able to make a once-in-a-lifetime move just a couple of towns over sometime over the next few decades.

▲

selimthegrim 2 days ago | parent [-]

Baton Rouge is partially on a bluff. But didn't you see the 7m map? The coastline will be lapping at St. George, southern EBR Parish along Burbank Road and the south part of LSU campus at that point.

	▲	rayiner 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What’s the relevance of the 7m map? Are sea levels expected to rise much higher in the Gulf than the global average of 2m by 2100?

▲

LargeWu 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This is true. It is also true that waiting until things bottom out will make things even worse. It will be more expensive and options will be more limited.

There will need to be a federal bailout to relocate everyone who needs help. The government should also probably announce a policy that there will be no future disaster relief that involves rebuilding, only relocating.

New Orleans will be the first, but not the last American city to collapse. Miami is probably next. Salt Lake City could very well run out of water, nevermind the increasingly toxic lakebed. Phoenix too. In the next hundred years people are going to learn why environmentalists use the word "sustainability" so much.

	▲	hollerith 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Global warming increases evaporation and consequently increase global rainfall. Although it is true that it can shift the location of rainy spots and dry spots, unless you have some magic way to predict the locations they will shift to, I'm going to assume Phoenix's access to water is going to increase because it seems extremely unlikely to me that the entire watershed of the Colorado River (encompassing most of the American part of the Rockies probably) will become dryer on average.