The nature of overdevelopment is that you always find someone else who wants to get out of the tough winters and come to Florida and is willing to take the risk until one storm, two storm, three storms hit, and then they bail.” ... “But there will be someone else that’s willing to buy that piece of property that’s under six feet of water tonight. There will be someone else willing to fall for that dream.
David Gelles, The New York Times
The quote, above, is from an article in the October 10, 2024, edition of The New York Times. The article is titled, "What will happen to the Florida dream?" Gelles is quoting Carl Hiaasen, a best-selling author, whom Gelles identifies as "a Florida legend and longtime chronicler of the state’s grifters and glories."
Let me make an observation. Just because Carl Hiaasen says that there will always be someone else willing to "fall for that dream," that doesn't make it so.
As we forge ahead in the New Year now with us, perhaps it's time to stop "dreaming." Global Warming is radically changing conditions on Planet Earth (including in Florida). It makes sense, I think, to start thinking about what that new "reality" means for those existing communities that are now facing continual climate catastrophes. My own hometown of Santa Cruz, California has had some recent experience with one such catastrophe.
If we can set aside our "dreams" at this point, in the face of the facts, I believe that we will find that the "reality" is that we, collectively, are going to have to figure out how to make sure that our resources are not wasted in fruitless efforts to recapture a dream now past, but are mobilized, instead, to preserve and protect human life, and to preserve our communities, and to safeguard the people.
Given that climatic conditions are now dramatically different from the conditions that pertained at the start of the 21st Century, my suggestion is that we start figuring out how to live in the world that actually exists. "Dreaming" is only good when you're asleep, and haven't we all woken up, by now?
Continuing to expend scarce resources to rebuild communities that will, given the "realities," be wiped out again (one time, two times, three times and more) is not a winning formula.
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