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"the cost of doing this for all at-risk Americans would be eye-watering. Estimates range from $200,000 to $1m per person to undertake a relocation. If 13 millio

"the cost of doing this for all at-risk Americans would be eye-watering. Estimates range from $200,000 to $1m per person to undertake a relocation. If 13 million people do have to move, it seems fantastical to imagine $13tn, or even a significant fraction of this amount, being spent by governments to ease the way. “As a country we aren’t set up to deal with slow-moving disasters like this, so people around the country are on their own,” said Joel Clement, a former Department of the Interior official who worked on the relocation of Alaskan towns."

nerdponx 8y ago
I'm pretty sure the petroleum and coal industries could scrape together that kind of cash.
- tfha 8y ago
  13 trillion? Probably not. That's on the order of magnitude of a full year of US GDP
  - nerdponx 8y ago
    Externalities are a bitch, eh?
    - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
      Not if someone else pays for them.
  - dmoy 8y ago
    Also energy companies don't keep that much cash on hand anyways. Even Exxon only has like $4B.
- rayiner 8y ago
  There is quite a bit of competition in those industries, so changes in cost get passed along quite quickly to consumers. For example, the price of crude oil has varied between $40 and $150 since 2008, but Exxon's profit margin has stayed pretty consistently between 7-10%. When costs go down, Exxon doesn't keep the surplus, it has to pass the savings onto consumers. The implication of that is that consumers, not the oil and coal companies, were the primary beneficiaries of externalizing the costs of pollution over the past decades, in the form of having access to cheap fuel. Put another way: Exxon last year had revenues of $240 billion, and profits of about $20 billion. If allowing pollution to be externalized means that gasoline costs half of what it should, that means Exxon's customers saved $240 billion by pollution the environment. That's more than Exxon's profits in an entire decade.
  - nerdponx 8y ago
    Thanks for the reasonable analysis. Do you think that, if climate change research hadn't been actively suppressed by the petroleum industry, we would still be on our current usage trajectory, and Exxon still would have made their $20 bn profit this year?
    - rayiner 8y ago
      Yes, absolutely. Whatever they attempted to do, the petroleum industry didn't do a good job suppressing research on climate change. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was ratified in 1992. Being a child of the 1990s, I grew up learning about anthropogenic climate. Yet, the 1990s were the era of cheap gas and SUVs. Indeed, SUV sales were completely unphased by all the additional information coming out on climate change in the 1990s and 2000s, dipping down temporarily only in response to the Great Recession, then quickly picking back up. People are completely unwilling to alter their lifestyles to reduce CO2 emissions, except in token ways. (Perhaps that's rational, because reducing carbon emissions isn't going to do squat to avert climate change in light of the rapid industrialization of the developing world.) We can treat the petroleum industry as scapegoats, but at the end of the day we'd be trying to divert responsibility for their selling a product that we desperately wanted.
      - nerdponx 8y ago
        I don't buy this analysis. Surely you also remember how quickly people ditched their SUV infatuations as gas prices rose after Hurricane Katrina. And you must also remember strongly politicized and partisan climate change discussions were until about a year ago. That said, my understanding of the fossil fuel industry is that consumer automobiles only make up some small fraction of carbon emissions. I don't have a source (and I would love to see one), but I was under the impression that the majority of carbon in missions were due to commercial shipping and electricity generation. Nobody was out in the streets demanding cheaper electricity and cheaper products on Walmart shelves. Industry simply provided those things. You basically can't blame consumers for shifting consumption towards cheaper goods, that is why externalities are externalities. Also consider this erratum from my previous post: how much ExxonMobil shareholder equity and executive compensation over the last 20 years can be attributed to lack of political will to action on carbon emissions and climate change? Surely that number is big enough to at least make a dent in the relocation task at hand.
jessaustin 8y ago
This seems like an extremely expensive move. Reading TFA, it isn't clear whether these are the costs of moves or of home buyouts. If these estimates are for buyouts, they should be multiplying by the number of households, not the number of people. Also many of these properties are vacation homes or rentals. It's fine to help people whose primary residences are threatened, but we shouldn't subsidize poor investments.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  They're also forgetting that, in some sense, the relocation effort will be a massive fiscal stimulus. You want to create a whole shit ton of blue-collar US jobs? What better way than resettling entire cities?
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
Sometimes I wonder what in the world people are thinking. Does anybody actually find this a remotely reasonable estimate? Or even anything completely short of absolutely ridiculous? I moved, along with my wife, literally half way around the world for less than $5k. For $200k, you could spend a like 2% of that on moving costs and then practically retire in many parts of the world. In the US the median personal income is around $35k. So you spend let's say $2000 moving and then you have $198k, or more than what most people will earn over the next 5 years for what?
- mikeash 8y ago
  The only reason you can move so cheaply is because someone else is going to move into your living space. Somebody with a mortgage can’t move for $2,000 unless they can find a buyer.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    This is a process that will play out over 80 years. It's not like everybody will be trying to sell tomorrow. Values for affected properties will go down slowly over time.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      I'm pretty skeptical of that. It seems like individual property values will hold steady, then drop suddenly once an event occurs that convinces people the property is no longer viable.
- gascan 8y ago
  Things get pretty weird when you start contemplating doing things at this scale. My father likes to tell of how, supposedly, McDonalds was considering introducing a new menu item, let's say it was an eggplant burger (I forget). The first question they had to answer was does the entire world produce enough eggplant? Also, critically, if due to catastrophe you abandon your $100k home and buy another $100k home in another place, your move cost $200k.

nerdponx 8y ago

I'm pretty sure the petroleum and coal industries could scrape together that kind of cash.

tfha 8y ago
13 trillion? Probably not. That's on the order of magnitude of a full year of US GDP
- nerdponx 8y ago
  Externalities are a bitch, eh?
  - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
    Not if someone else pays for them.
- dmoy 8y ago
  Also energy companies don't keep that much cash on hand anyways. Even Exxon only has like $4B.
rayiner 8y ago
There is quite a bit of competition in those industries, so changes in cost get passed along quite quickly to consumers. For example, the price of crude oil has varied between $40 and $150 since 2008, but Exxon's profit margin has stayed pretty consistently between 7-10%. When costs go down, Exxon doesn't keep the surplus, it has to pass the savings onto consumers. The implication of that is that consumers, not the oil and coal companies, were the primary beneficiaries of externalizing the costs of pollution over the past decades, in the form of having access to cheap fuel. Put another way: Exxon last year had revenues of $240 billion, and profits of about $20 billion. If allowing pollution to be externalized means that gasoline costs half of what it should, that means Exxon's customers saved $240 billion by pollution the environment. That's more than Exxon's profits in an entire decade.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  Thanks for the reasonable analysis. Do you think that, if climate change research hadn't been actively suppressed by the petroleum industry, we would still be on our current usage trajectory, and Exxon still would have made their $20 bn profit this year?
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Yes, absolutely. Whatever they attempted to do, the petroleum industry didn't do a good job suppressing research on climate change. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was ratified in 1992. Being a child of the 1990s, I grew up learning about anthropogenic climate. Yet, the 1990s were the era of cheap gas and SUVs. Indeed, SUV sales were completely unphased by all the additional information coming out on climate change in the 1990s and 2000s, dipping down temporarily only in response to the Great Recession, then quickly picking back up. People are completely unwilling to alter their lifestyles to reduce CO2 emissions, except in token ways. (Perhaps that's rational, because reducing carbon emissions isn't going to do squat to avert climate change in light of the rapid industrialization of the developing world.) We can treat the petroleum industry as scapegoats, but at the end of the day we'd be trying to divert responsibility for their selling a product that we desperately wanted.
    - nerdponx 8y ago
      I don't buy this analysis. Surely you also remember how quickly people ditched their SUV infatuations as gas prices rose after Hurricane Katrina. And you must also remember strongly politicized and partisan climate change discussions were until about a year ago. That said, my understanding of the fossil fuel industry is that consumer automobiles only make up some small fraction of carbon emissions. I don't have a source (and I would love to see one), but I was under the impression that the majority of carbon in missions were due to commercial shipping and electricity generation. Nobody was out in the streets demanding cheaper electricity and cheaper products on Walmart shelves. Industry simply provided those things. You basically can't blame consumers for shifting consumption towards cheaper goods, that is why externalities are externalities. Also consider this erratum from my previous post: how much ExxonMobil shareholder equity and executive compensation over the last 20 years can be attributed to lack of political will to action on carbon emissions and climate change? Surely that number is big enough to at least make a dent in the relocation task at hand.

jessaustin 8y ago

This seems like an extremely expensive move. Reading TFA, it isn't clear whether these are the costs of moves or of home buyouts. If these estimates are for buyouts, they should be multiplying by the number of households, not the number of people. Also many of these properties are vacation homes or rentals. It's fine to help people whose primary residences are threatened, but we shouldn't subsidize poor investments.

nerdponx 8y ago
They're also forgetting that, in some sense, the relocation effort will be a massive fiscal stimulus. You want to create a whole shit ton of blue-collar US jobs? What better way than resettling entire cities?

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

Sometimes I wonder what in the world people are thinking. Does anybody actually find this a remotely reasonable estimate? Or even anything completely short of absolutely ridiculous? I moved, along with my wife, literally half way around the world for less than $5k. For $200k, you could spend a like 2% of that on moving costs and then practically retire in many parts of the world. In the US the median personal income is around $35k. So you spend let's say $2000 moving and then you have $198k, or more than what most people will earn over the next 5 years for what?

mikeash 8y ago
The only reason you can move so cheaply is because someone else is going to move into your living space. Somebody with a mortgage can’t move for $2,000 unless they can find a buyer.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  This is a process that will play out over 80 years. It's not like everybody will be trying to sell tomorrow. Values for affected properties will go down slowly over time.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    I'm pretty skeptical of that. It seems like individual property values will hold steady, then drop suddenly once an event occurs that convinces people the property is no longer viable.
gascan 8y ago
Things get pretty weird when you start contemplating doing things at this scale. My father likes to tell of how, supposedly, McDonalds was considering introducing a new menu item, let's say it was an eggplant burger (I forget). The first question they had to answer was does the entire world produce enough eggplant? Also, critically, if due to catastrophe you abandon your $100k home and buy another $100k home in another place, your move cost $200k.