gracchusdixit

In the wake of the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Ian, millions faced days or even weeks without power or water, and now, the state of Florida and the United States of America are confronting the prospect of paying for what will undoubtedly be billions of dollars worth of damage.  Again.  Although this particular storm was more destructive than most, it was not the first nor will it be the last to bring such catastrophic consequences.   On the contrary, the cascade of climatological catastrophes is growing more daunting by the day.

Perhaps it is finally time to ask ourselves whether all these ultimately futile attempts to fend off the depredations of nature are worth it.  Perhaps we should discuss the hitherto unspeakable possibility that the people of Florida, along with all those who knowingly choose to live in places perched on the razor’s edge of climate change, should be asked to accept responsibility for the choices they have knowingly made.  Perhaps, in short, they should be left to fend for themselves. 

Before you howl in horror at this admittedly cold-blooded suggestion, hear me out—because there are at least two reasons to consider it seriously.  The first is practical, and the second is ideological.

Let’s begin with the practical reason.

After decades of refusing to accept the reality of global warming, it is no longer possible to evade the obvious.  How many times and at what cost can a sprawling conurbation like Houston, which sits scarcely 50 feet above sea level and lacks even a dollop of rational zoning, be rescued from the malfeasance of its public officials or the delusional irresponsibility of its citizens?  How many times can a city like New Orleans, no matter how precious its history, architecture, and culture, be saved from its untenable geography?  How many times and at what unimaginable cost can an entire state like Florida—which is and always has been a Ponzi scheme cooked up by the real estate industry—be bailed out by the rest of the nation?  The time is fast approaching when such follies can longer be paid for if we are to have any chance of surviving an increasingly perilous and uncertain future.

The climatological chaos caused by human greed and folly is going to affect us all, but it will hit some much harder than others.  Among the hardest hit will those who choose to live, against all reason, in states like Florida, which once upon a time was little more than a pestilential swamp, dismissed by the first Europeans who “discovered” it as all but uninhabitable.  Indeed, in the not-so-long ago year of 1900, the population of Miami was a mere 1,681 souls.  

Then, the great American con euphemistically called “real estate development” came along.  Subsidized by vast expenditures of public money and spurred by the invention of air conditioning and countless tons of DDT, the tropical swamp we now call Florida became a dreamscape in which the fantasies of countless suckers were to be realized, no matter what Mother Nature might ultimately have to say.  

Like other concoctions of this con—the artificial desert oases of Las Vegas and Phoenix, the once arid ranch-lands of Denver and Dallas, the boggy bayous on which the multi-million dollar mega-mansions of Houston now sit—most of Florida is a complete fabrication, less a place or a state than a delusional state of mind.  As the planet burns, as glaciers melt and sea levels rise, such fantasy-lands can no longer be sustained without vast expenditures of public money.  

It is only fair for those who have not been gulled by such fairy tales to ask why they should be compelled to subsidize the deluded fantasies of those who have.  Why should a penny more of public money be squandered to bail out the self-indulgent multi-millionaires of Naples, Palm Beach, and Boca Raton or to rescue the humbler fools who have been duped into thinking that they could get something for nothing by squatting in a swamp?  The same question, of course, can and should be asked of Rocky Mountain and West Coast “liberals” who insist on settling in waterless deserts, where every summer brings voracious wild fires, or continue to build lavish homes perched on little more than sand dunes, which slide into the sea every time it rains.  The truth of the matter is that all of us, no matter what our politics may be, are running out of time.  

Do not mistake my point.  I wish no harm to the inhabitants of the increasingly uninhabitable parts of our country.  What is the purpose of a human community, after all, if not to help those who are victimized by the vagaries of nature or history?

But that is not the issue here.  Those who choose to deny climate change and suffer as a result are not “victims” in any meaningful sense of the word.  By virtue of the choices they make, they bring disaster upon themselves and have no claim on the sympathy or the wallets of those who choose more wisely.

Which brings us to the question of ideology.  

Liberals and conservatives alike may be guilty of failing to come to grips with the realities of climate change, but the burden of guilt does not fall equally, and to pretend otherwise would be absurd.  There are, to be sure, liberals who skirt the issue and do so hypocritically, but conservatives have turned its denial into a rallying cry.  Indeed, for many conservatives, the denial of climate change has become a shibboleth, an article of ideological faith.  And that, alas, is where their ideology crumbles.

The most fundamental tenet of the conservative political catechism is “personal responsibility”.  Thus, the beneficiaries of so-called “welfare,” particularly when they happen to be black, brown, or poor, are lectured and hectored to “make better choices,” “get off the dole,” “get to work,” and “pick themselves up by the bootstraps”.  This sanctimonious sermonizing has been going on ever since the days of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.   Indeed, it has become so ubiquitous that even tepid liberals like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama chimed in, either because they believed it or because it served their self-interest.

It’s time for this sanctimonious chorus to put up or shut up.  If such people truly believe in their preachments about “personal responsibility,” it follows that the inhabitants of environmentally doomed states like Florida should suffer the consequences of their own bad decisions.  No decent person actually wants such people to drown; I certainly don’t.  But it’s time for them to learn how to swim and, if they truly believe what they preach, to learn how to swim on their own.