Marble Falls       Working with groups that are part of the Anthropocene Alliance the issue of flooding comes up frequently, whether it’s Miami, Oklahoma, Philadelphia, or Jackson, Mississippi.  Everyone knows that climate change is real, temperatures are going up, record rains are already here. Water is rising.  Areas that always flooded are now flooding more frequently. Neighborhoods that never flooded, are now flooding.  Talking to people active in organizations in these areas, they are all for the big-ticket issues to cool the planet down, but they need help now to mitigate catastrophes that could happen any minute.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, maybe frontline groups are not the only ones who are getting the message.  Investors are starting to realize that money needs to be not only be spent on preventing the future apocalypse, but on adaptation to climate change now.  According to several nonprofits, including the Global Center on Adaptation and the Climate Policy Initiative expenditures on the “effects of climate change accounted for about 5% of the roughly $1.3 trillion spent annually on all climate efforts.”   Admittedly, that’s still not anywhere the amount needed, but is a recognition of what needs to be done.

Part of this is also an efficient allocation.  Spending the money now, prevents spending even more money later.  Smart cash saves money from FEMA, which never has enough these days.  Furthermore, it saves huge amounts for families paying for flood insurance, which has tripled and quadrupled in some areas where the risk is higher and the water has begun rising.  There are signs up and down the Gulf Coast that say, “I flood, I vote.”

There seems to be broad agreement that resilience has to be increased along coastal areas, but it is unlikely that private investors are the answer, even if the Journal is beating the drum.  Many of the mitigation efforts from diversion to seawalls and flood barriers are public infrastructure where the only private returns would be in the public bond market, rather than something with the kind of quick payback that fledgling adaptation funds would need to promise.

That means that more local, state, and federal money is needed for these projects.  Some of this is happening and going into overdrive now.

…a slew of climate tax credits, grants and loans mostly funded by the 2021 infrastructure law and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The Energy Department, Environmental Protection Agency and other offices are racing to award funds and show progress before November’s elections.

More might be in the pipeline in a Harris administration, but observers find it unlikely if there’s a second Trump term.

Luckily for some imperiled communities, there are some big players like New York City and Houston that are also calling for help with louder voices and bigger sticks than some smaller communities have.  That doesn’t mean a conservative Congress would be happy to respond.  Kentucky leads the country in federal disasters, but it’s not like Senator Mitch McConnell is leading the band calling for more FEMA money.

Politicians need to loosen the purse strings now, since we all know that disasters are no longer a maybe, but a certainty in much of the country.