The future of Florida does not look pretty. With just a 3 foot rise in sea level, one third of South Florida will disappear. With a 6 foot rise in sea level, half of South Florida will disappear.sappear. But disappear is not quite the right word. The flooding of South Florida by a 3 to 6 feet rise in sea level will easily destroy over ONE MILLION buildings. And unfortunately, these buildings and their contents will not disappear. Everything from single family homes, apartment buildings, office towers, strip shopping centers, indoor shopping malls, schools, churches and grocery stores. To hazardous buildings such as gas stations, auto repair shops, pharmacies, manufacturing facilities, chemical and refining facilities, water treatment and sewer treatment facilities, hospitals, police and fire stations. All these flooded buildings and their contents will be part of the Florida coastline long after people have abandoned them.
Over time, these buildings will be pulverized and broken apart by ocean waves. The resulting wreckage and contents of these MILLION buildings will then be deposited upon the new inland coastlines of Florida for thousands of miles. Ironically, the sandy beaches WILL disappear. And a visitor to the new Florida coastline in say 2075 will behold a shallow sea filled with floating debris: plastic of all shapes and sizes, pink housing insulation, yellow discolored Styrofoam, white PVC piping, wooden housing beams filled with nails, tennis shoes, and a slick of toxic chemicals oozing in and out with the tides. A vast poisoned dead zone stretching out dozens of miles from the new shoreline. And, these new muddy shores will be strewn with plastic garbage, more tennis shoes, and building fragments as far as the eye can see. An endless panorama of trash, most of which will NEVER biodegrade. And this assumes there are no landfills in the flood zone. If a large garbage dump is flooded as well, the contamination will be worse. In the future, no one will want to visit Florida. EVER. And all the jokes about new ‘beach front’ property in formerly inland Florida won’t be funny anymore.
Fortunately, the people will evacuate themselves from these flood zones long before the ocean moves in. But there is neither enough money nor time to empty out all the contents of these MILLION buildings and disassemble them before the ocean moves in. This infrastructure was built up over decades, and it would take decades to take it all apart before the flood. And even if we could pull this off, where on Earth would we put all the trash and toxic material? Georgia won’t want it. If we are lucky, the Federal Government will at least decommission the Turkey Point nuclear power plant on Biscayne Bay before the flooding begins. And safely relocate all the radioactive fuel and contaminated equipment to higher ground outside of Florida. If we are lucky.
This is the fate of South Florida’s buildings if we keep burning fossil fuels. When will it happen? Much sooner than you think. The estimates for sea level rise are getting higher and sooner with each new scientific study. But even if we are extremely lucky and sea levels rise “only 2 feet" by 2060, Florida property values will probably peak during the 2020s. Why? Because banks will stop writing 30 year mortgages in South Florida within the next 15 years. Don’t believe it? Then just add 30 years to the year 2030 and you are at the year 2060 when many low lying properties will either be flooded or worthless due to rapidly rising seas. And when the banks lose confidence in Florida real estate in the 2020s, the Florida economy will collapse.
So there you have it. Global Warming will tank Florida’s economy within the next 5 to 15 years. And the collapse of Florida’s economy guarantees that a MILLION abandoned buildings and all their contents will be left to the ocean. The ocean will then slowly chew these structures up and spit out all the tiny pieces across thousands of miles of Florida’s new changing coastlines. Of course this assumes that the Republican Party maintains control of Congress and the White House and continues to block all efforts to slow down global warming. And it assumes the Florida state government is controlled by Republicans who refuse to acknowledge that global warming is both real and is about to bring real financial ruin to all Florida property owners. If the Democrats were to win Congress in 2018, and the White House in 2020, they could pass bold policies to rapidly replace fossil fuels with renewable energy and lead a global effort to reforest the Earth. Bold action this late in the game might be enough to turn the tide and change the current fate of South Florida’s buildings. Stranger things have happened — Trump was elected President. But still, that is a big gamble. And if I had a 30 year mortgage on property in Florida, I would take advantage of the current market. Because compared to the future, today is a great time to sell.