Some of you will be aware of Donald Trump’s extensive Florida real estate holdings.
If he hasn’t seen good evidence of climate change, perhaps the interests of his own portfolio will focus his mind.
They have certainly focussed the mind of one of the Florida Mayors, the Coral Gables Mayor Jim Cason.
There’s about $3.5 billion of property just on his 47 mile stretch of coast.
But boats will be his first signal. What matters, he believes, will be the first time a mast fails to clear the bottom of a canal bridge because the water level had risen too far.
“When the boats can’t go out, the property values go down.”
If property values start to fall, Cason said, banks could stop writing 30-year mortgages for coastal homes, shrinking the pool of able buyers and sending prices lower still. Those properties make up a quarter of the city’s tax base; if that revenue fell, the city would struggle. The downward cycle starts.
And all of that could happen before the rising sea consumes a single home.
Inside the link is a useful little animation on climate change and current extreme weather events.
Hope Donald’s personal interests have some useful policy guidance, somewhere.
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