Florida's ecosystems are some of the most beautiful on earth, but climate change has begun to take a heavy toll on marine systems, mangrove forests, seagrass, and local biodiversity. Florida is also home to 21,000,000 people, the vast majority residing along the coasts, most of which are barely above sea level.
Florida has over 1350 miles of coastline and millions of low-lying acreage, and rising seas threaten every inch by the rapid melt of the polar ice caps and thermal expansion. During the day and night, temperatures with heat and humidity have soared. Floridians' have begun to notice the changes. Rising seas threaten the state's aquifers by saltwater intrusion. Corals, mangrove forests, and seagrass beds are all in crisis.
When the Thwaites glacier's marine extension shatters in just a couple of years (the land ice is left exposed without a buttress and is free to empty into the ocean raising sea levels) even less time will be available for the world’s coasts to retreat.
The IPCC report titled AR6 Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability was released Monday. Florida media reported on the findings that the state is destined to succumb to irreversible changes that will at some point make Florida uninhabitable.
The reality is that there will be no do-over for the climate, anywhere.
Alex Harris writes in the Miami Herald:
The nearly 2,000-page report had a global focus, but Florida was repeatedly used as an example of a place where the impacts of climate change were already being felt, both economically and environmentally.
Those impacts aren’t news to resident of the Sunshine State. It’s tidal flooding from higher sea levels, even on perfectly sunny days, it’s hotter days and nights, more harmful algal blooms and mosquito-borne illnesses, stronger and wetter hurricanes and less productive crops, livestock and fisheries.
Financially, studies have repeatedly shown buyers are already selecting homes and buildings that face less flood risk, which has already taken at least a $500 million toll on the Miami-Dade real estate market alone, according to a study cited in the report. This has led to the displacement of poorer communities, usually communities of color, from higher elevation neighborhoods in a process known as climate gentrification.
Adapting to it all is doable, but pricey. Florida has already spent hundreds of millions raising roads, homes and seawalls to defend against the incoming threats, but the report noted that at a certain point, there isn’t enough money or technology to keep everywhere in the world habitable.
The IPCC report mentioned Florida specifically multiple times as an example of dreaded climate change impacts, including:
- Tidal flooding worsened by sea rise has led to almost $500 million in lost real estate value from 2005 to 2016 in Miami-Dade alone, “and it is likely that coastal flood risks in the region beyond 2050 will increase without adaptation to climate change.”
- Miami-Dade’s efforts to raise roads and build stormwater pumps have raised property values, leading to inequality for vulnerable populations
- Floridians could be forced to retreat from the coast as sea levels rise
- Florida’s coral reefs are bleaching and dying as temperatures rise
- As coral reefs die, Florida could lose up to $55 billion in reef-related tourism money by 2100
- Harmful algal blooms along Florida’s west coast spurred by climate change led to massive economic losses
Meanwhile, Democrats in the Florida House of Representatives voted Monday to advance legislation that would include clean energy as a tool to slow down global warming while providing crucial time for possible adaption. The GQP naturally voted down clean energy provisions but voted for a “net-metering bill that will make rooftop solar more expensive over time in support of established utility companies, which trade primarily in oil and gas”.
One day after an international scientific panel warned that climate change has begun causing “irreversible” damage to the planet and its forms of life, the Florida House of Representatives refused Tuesday to add clean-energy solutions to its legislative plan to defend the state against climate-induced sea-level rise and flooding.
The House also advanced a net-metering bill that will make rooftop solar more expensive over time, in support of conventional utility companies which trade mostly in oil and gas.
Democrats offered myriad amendments to the bills in support of clean energy, but the GOP majority defeated them.
“My concern here is we’re just recklessly passing a bill on assertions … not based on the facts,” said Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an Orlando Democrat, who supported an amendment to HB 741 to study how users of rooftop solar and users of conventional utilities can co-exist. Scores of solar advocates have lobbied against HB 741 this session, arguing it would discourage rooftop installations and put solar businesses in Florida out of work.
