DL Open Thread: Thurs., May 23, 2024
Oh, Nos! Not Another Plague Hitting Florida!!??:
For all the obvious challenges facing South Florida as sea levels surge, one serious threat to public health and the environment remains largely out of sight, but everywhere:
Septic tanks.
Millions of them dot the American South, a region grappling with some of the planet’s fastest-rising seas, according to a Washington Post analysis. At more than a dozen tide gauges from Texas to North Carolina, sea levels have risen at least 6 inches since 2010 — a change similar to what occurred over the previous five decades.
“These are ticking time bombs under the ground that, when they fail, will pollute,” said Andrew Wunderley, executive director of the nonprofit Charleston Waterkeeper, which monitors water quality in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.
An estimated 120,000 septic systems remain in Miami-Dade County, their subterranean concrete boxes and drain fields a relic of the area’s feverish growth generations ago. Of those, the county estimated in 2018, about half are at risk of being “periodically compromised” during severe storms or particularly wet years.
Miami, where seas have risen six inches since 2010, offers a high-profile example of a predicament that parts of the southeast Atlantic and Gulf coasts are confronting — and one scientists say will become only more pervasive — as waters continue to rise.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has taken decisive action. He’s made sure (I can’t make this up) that climate change is banned under Florida law:
Gov. Ron DeSantis is an addict. Not to drugs, but to fossil fuels. He’s showing all the signs, but nobody has had the guts to call it what it is.
You doubt me? Look at what he did last week.
DeSantis signed a bill that deletes most of the mentions of climate change from state law. He did this even as most of South Florida faced record high temperatures.
When he signed the bill, DeSantis boasted in a post on X (formerly Twitter), “We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.”
Folks, the “radical green zealots” who put that language in the law in the late 2000s were his fellow Republicans. They weren’t wearing tie-dyed shirts and sandals. They had on blue blazers, rep ties, and tassel loafers.
They could see that rising seas and temperatures were becoming a serious threat. That’s why they wrote laws that said the state would set up policies for dealing with it. They set goals to cut the use of fossil fuels in Florida and encourage clean alternatives like solar.
Something else DeSantis doesn’t want discussed?:
Drawn to the state’s warm weather and low taxes, baby boomers have been piling into the retirement haven for years, leaving it with one of the most elderly populations in the US. That’s turning it into a harbinger for other states as the consequences of rising temperatures ripple through the economy in ways few had envisioned.
With Florida being threatened by more powerful hurricanes, commercial-property insurance costs last year surged at nearly five times the national pace, according to credit rating firm AM Best Co. Inc. That’s slapping what care providers say is effectively a new — if little noticed — tax on an industry already contending with labor shortages, soaring wages and rising supply costs.
The result? More and more nursing homes are closing down each year, while others are missing debt payments. At the same time, the costs for senior care – at all levels from independent living to around-the-clock nursing — are rising, threatening to become unaffordable for a growing number of retirees.
While climate change has pushed commercial-property insurance premiums up nationwide, few places have been hit harder than Florida. In the five-year period ending 2023, costs surged 125%. Last year, annual premiums soared about 27% in the state — for the second year in a row — while nationwide the growth rate slowed to nearly 6% from about 15%, according to AM Best.
Forget it, G-d. It’s…Florida.
Dog Bites Man: Alito Is Not Impartial. Nobody can do anything about it. He knows it. He flaunts it.
DuPont Company Engages In More Ledgerdemain. You know, to ‘unlock value’.
What do you want to talk about?
Hmm… DeSantis is making cholera great again.
Also, I wonder what is going to happen to all of those nursing home staffing shortages when Trump rounds up the 11 million undocumented immigrants he promises to round up in concentration camps, then deport?
Taken together, I wonder if it is possible that DeSantis and Trump are taking part in Accelerationism? Is their drastic and unsustainable intensification of capitalist growth, and infrastructure sabotage a tool they are using to tear down capitalism?
Can things only get better after we hit rock bottom? Is returning Trump to office the position for real leftists and liberals? So many questions raised by this open thread.
There will be no mass deportations, other than a few photo-op arrests. That’s all just red meat for the racist base. There is bipartisan support for maintaining a cohort of undocumented workers as second-class citizens without all those expensive “rights” of actual citizens.
True. The US economy clearly depends on this ready supply of discount labor. So I guess I’m wondering how much red meat the already understaffed nursing home industry can absorb.
They aren’t “citizens,” as they can’t vote.
I think it’s more accurate to say that Democrats would keep them second-class but would like to create a legal category for doing it.
besides septic tanks, buried propane tanks are also a huge issue. a lot of coastal states, delaware included, won’t insure a home if it has a buried propane tank. im sure in fla they buy the septic tank under the propane tank