By Steven Cohen, Ph.D., Director of the M.S. in Sustainability Management program, School of Professional Studies
With over 200 people confirmed dead and many still missing, Hurricane Helene has been one of the worst natural disasters in American history. My colleagues often discuss the likelihood of large-scale climate migration as people move away from perceived or actual climate impacts. But where can you move? Some of the worst impacts of Helene were in places far from the ocean shoreline and many feet above sea level. The sad fact is that you can run, but you can’t hide from climate change. While there may be some locations that are simply too dangerous for human habitation, in most places, the best strategy will be to construct a stronger, more climate-resilient built environment. Doing so is no guarantee of success, so we will need to develop the capacity to reconstruct our homes after they are damaged.
Hurricane Helene is an example of what climate change is doing to storms. In an insightful piece in the Washington Post, Simon Ducroquet, John Muyskens, Naema Ahmed, Nicolas Rivero, and Niko Kommenda reported that:
“…inland mountain communities are often safe from tropical storms. The cyclones that batter the U.S. southeastern coasts typically weaken as they come ashore…But this time, something different happened. Helene moved fast and carried its warm, moist air hundreds of miles inland into the Carolinas… Helene formed above unusually warm water in the Gulf of Mexico. As that water evaporated, it gave the storm the fuel it needed to rapidly intensify into a Category 4 hurricane and evolve into one of the widest cyclones to ever hit the United States… Climate change makes the freakishly hot conditions that fueled Helene’s growth more common…When Helene hit the mountains, it dumped all the remaining water it had collected from the Gulf of Mexico. Across the region, several months’ worth of rain fell between Sept. 25 and Sept. 27.”
The rapid and massive rainfall caused flooding, mudslides, and incredible damage to places thought to be safe havens from climate change. We saw similar though far less destructive damage in 2021 when the remnants of Hurricane Ida caused five inches of rain to fall in one hour in a part of Queens, New York, flooding basement apartments and causing fatalities. This leads to two conclusions: First, we need to work harder to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and second, we need to construct a stronger, smarter, and more resilient built environment to adapt to the global warming we have already baked into the atmosphere.
Here in New York City, we have begun to make our underwater subway tunnels better able to recover from floods. We are building shoreline infrastructure to absorb stormwater and adding to the acreage of permeable surfaces within the five boroughs. Developers are moving building utilities out of basements onto upper floors. On the south shore of Long Island, new construction is elevated to protect buildings from floods, and beaches have been rebuilt while dune planting is expanded to protect communities from storm surges. While much has been undertaken, inadequate drainage still causes combined sewer overflow, and the threat of flooding remains in New York City. Much more must be done, and over the next decade, billions of dollars will need to be spent in this region to reduce the damage from the next superstorm we will surely endure.
This is expensive, and not everyone can handle the increased price of a stronger built environment. Back in 2021, half of the Champlain Towers South condo in Surfside, Florida, collapsed when corrosion from sea air caused concrete and steel supports to fail, killing 98 people. The cause was under-regulation of building structures and failure to maintain the reserve funds needed to keep buildings in good repair. Condo boards throughout Florida, influenced by retirees on fixed incomes, refused to increase assessments to make repairs. As a result, even the anti-regulatory Florida government passed a law requiring more frequent inspections, repairs, and accumulation of reserve funds in older buildings. The impact of this deferred maintenance on some condo owners could be devastating. According to Julia Echikson of the New York Times:
“About a million condo units meet the age requirement [for inspection and additional reserve funds]… leaving owners with a stark choice: pay up, sell, or go into foreclosure. Retirees on pensions or fixed incomes often cannot afford the renovations, which are meant to shore up the entire building. And would-be buyers are avoiding older buildings because of the assessments. All the while, insurance premiums for condo associations are rising in the face of strengthening storms like Hurricane Helene, which devastated the Gulf Coast of Florida last week.”
Inadequate government oversight created a crisis in Florida when buildings were not properly inspected and maintained. The costs of housing were lowered by deferring maintenance. Reluctance to regulate is not limited to Florida. In North Carolina, where the home building industry has long pushed an anti-regulatory agenda, some of the damage caused by Hurricane Helene was exacerbated by weak building codes. In a recent report in the New York Times, climate reporter Christopher Flavelle observed that:
“The amount of rain that Tropical Storm Helene unleashed over North Carolina was so intense, no amount of preparation could have entirely prevented the destruction that ensued. But decisions made by state officials in the years leading up to Helene most likely made some of that damage worse, according to experts in building standards and disaster resilience. Over the past 15 years, North Carolina lawmakers have rejected limits on construction on steep slopes, which might have reduced the number of homes lost to landslides; blocked a rule requiring homes to be elevated above the height of an expected flood; weakened protections for wetlands, increasing the risk of dangerous storm water runoff; and slowed the adoption of updated building codes, making it harder for the state to qualify for federal climate-resilience grants. Those decisions reflect the influence of North Carolina’s home building industry, which has consistently fought rules forcing its members to construct homes to higher, more expensive standards…”
Sadly, catastrophe is one of the most reliable methods for stimulating political change. A deadly building collapse in Florida moved the conservative state government to act. The devastation in North Carolina includes the collapse of the transportation system in parts of the state, particularly Interstate 40 in western North Carolina. Water filtration plants, cell phone service, and the energy grid also suffered substantial damage. The economic, social, and psychological damage of catastrophe requires a response from communities, institutions, businesses, and government. Hurricane Helene’s destruction focused on the American southeast, but climate-accelerated storms are happening everywhere. First response is typically massive and effective in the United States, but prevention and reconstruction are costly, neglected, and in need of a dramatically new approach.
Prevention requires upgrading building standards for residences and businesses but also for infrastructure: energy, water, sewage, transportation, and communication. This means that we can’t get away with cutting corners to cut costs. That, in turn, means that many of the necessities of life will be more expensive. But we truly have a choice of paying more now or much more later when a poorly constructed built environment fails.
I’ve written many times about our need to develop a systematic, fully funded approach to post-disaster reconstruction (see The Disaster of Disaster Reconstruction, Climate-Fueled Extreme Weather: Protection, Recovery, and Reconstruction, and Adapting to our Warming Planet Despite our Dysfunctional Congress).
The current insurance system is not designed to deal with the risks of climate change. Many of the homes in the southeast that were destroyed by floods had no flood insurance. Even if homes were damaged by other causes, insurance companies have gotten better at developing policies that provide inadequate coverage for extreme weather events. Much of the damage caused by Hurricane Helene will end up being uninsured. Some may be eligible for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding, but the process of requesting and receiving those funds is slow and painful.
A climate-resilient built environment will be expensive, but so will rebuilding when even our strongest structures fail. Once again, I maintain that the funds needed for resilience and reconstruction need to come from a dedicated trust fund, built on progressive increases to our income taxes. It will cost everyone money, but by spending it as an investment and with predictability, the long-run cost will be lower than the current ad hoc, emergency response approach. The fundamental, irreducible job of government is to protect the population from harm. This requires a strong military and capable domestic first responders. It also requires more resilient buildings, transportation, energy, water, sewage, and communication infrastructure. This must be paid for upfront, and when it fails, reconstruction payments should be automatic and by right. It is time to rethink our approach to building and reconstructing our communities. How many more catastrophes will it take before we get the message that the current approach is failing?
Views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Columbia School of Professional Studies or Columbia University.
About the Program
The Columbia University M.S. in Sustainability Management program offered by the School of Professional Studies in partnership with the Climate School provides students cutting-edge policy and management tools they can use to help public and private organizations and governments address environmental impacts and risks, pollution control, and remediation to achieve sustainability. The program is customized for working professionals and is offered as both a full- and part-time course of study.
