
SF Fed: Banks could stop lending in climate-threatened communities - mortenjorck
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/climate/federal-reserve-climate-financial-risk.html
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nostrademons
> Home values could fall significantly.

> Banks could stop lending to flood-prone communities.

> Towns could lose the tax money they need to build sea walls and other
> protections.

That's exactly what _should_ happen. If a city is about to be reclaimed by the
sea, the very last thing you want to do is build more houses there. This
incentivizes people to do the sensible thing - move away from areas that'll be
hard hit by climate change - without _compelling_ them to do anything or
engaging in expensive unlikely-to-work boondoggles. The town'll die, but the
people survive.

~~~
gus_massa
Perhaps the best example is the effort to rebuild the flooded part of New
Orleans after Katrina. I think it was important to help the victims, but it is
also important to understand that building a major city under the sea level in
a hurricane zone in dangerous. Sooner or later the walls will fail.

~~~
eesmith
It's also important to understand the role of negligent maintenance and
improper design, as well as long-term decisions to prioritize commerce and
profits over safety.

Otherwise it's all too easy to point to the people affected by the floods,
rather than the system which changed the risk factors.

For example, you write "building a major city under the sea level".

It's below sea level because "engineers accidentally sank half the city below
the level of the sea" \-
[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/how-h...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/how-
humans-sank-new-orleans/552323/)

> What was beginning to happen was anthropogenic soil subsidence—the sinking
> of the land by human action. When runoff is removed and artificial levees
> prevent the river from overtopping, the groundwater lowers, the soils dry
> out, and the organic matter decays. All this creates air pockets in the soil
> body, into which those sand, silt, and clay particles settle,
> consolidate—and drop below sea level.

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cascom
How should banks think about the risks of areas of the country that are prone
to earthquakes/wild fires/mudslides vs flooding?

What if areas that are prone to flood risk are disproportionately minority
owned?

