If only they'd heeded the 2,000-year-old advice in Matthew 7:24-27:
Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.
The article describes several houses either built or bought at seemingly considerable distances from the ocean - yet now near or at the point of ruin.
A competent gov't would keep maps of projected future shorelines, and enforce very wide "no build", "no mortgage", and "no insurance" zones. OTOH, that would require both a great deal of effort, and a great deal of political resolve. Vs. Congress can't manage to deal with even the immediate mess that the article describes.
The second half of NPR's headline is bullshit - as the story makes clear. FEMA is stuck working in Congress's Customer Service Dept. Congress is very aware that their CS policies suck. But Congress is too dysfunctional to fix the problems.
(And people do have saner options - but Congress's laws attach huge financial penalties to those.)
reply