If I were Queen.

Even if we had not caused it, we would be responsible. Similar to a comet slated to collide with Earth. We’re the only folks around capable of diverting it (possibly) and if we don’t we’re culpable.

In my humble opinion. As humble, anyway, as I can get.

The responsibility and the culpability came when we began to realize the issue was upon us, and as the evidence started to accumulate and industry mobilized to misdirect and obfuscate the facts. And not just capitalism, Soviet and Red Chinese and Third World industries polluted too. And no, I don’t think it was wrong to be skeptical, but it was very wrong to simply refuse to even consider there might be a problem because it might mean inconvenience and expense for some of our commercial entities and their political lapdogs.

We’ve seen it before, with pesticides, pharmaceuticals, with lead in the gasoline, with tobacco products, even with the Corvair independent suspension and the exploding gas tanks of the Crown Vics; with every single caution and warning and concern that the enormous effect we have on our environment with our technology might possibly backfire on us.

The commercial response has always been the same, denial, evasion, propaganda, political contributions, and dirty tricks, enormous sums spent to deny the problem and to avoid spending a nickel to solve it or even research it. “Leave us alone, we know what we’re doing.” We have seen an effort to discredit and destroy the reputations and careers of any who sought to inform or warn the public of any industrial threat, and even to accuse them of treason and sedition–whatever it took to make them go away. There is a consistent history and pattern to these crimes, and crimes they are–they all have a means, a motive, and an opportunity–the characteristics required to define any criminal suspect.

Even primitive man had an effect on his environment, both deleiberate and accidental. The abos in Australia set fires in the bush to provoke new growth and fertility, and our own native Americans and their Paleolithic forebears affected the continent by selective hunting of certain mammal species and slash and burn agriculture. But our population has grown too much and our technology is too powerful for us to subordinate the carrying capacity of our environment to our individual economic preferences.

Don’t piss in the soup, we’ve all got to eat.

Having acknowledged that, since the situation will only get worse and since there is no solution which won’t be overwhelmed, is there any realistic choice but to abandon the area?

I hadn’t thought of infrastructure problems, and they seem to be many and daunting. Fresh water contaminated and difficulty in getting rid of sewage from flooded pipes are only two issues, and they are major.

The economic loss suffered by people displaced by this would probably be handled the way people displaced by the next California earthquake would be. In my opinion they have willingly exposed themselves to a certain disaster, by choice, no coercion, and should be responsible. However, politicians would be making the determination and would at least see that the larger corporations would be indemnified. Your basic schnook wouldn’t be, though the law which covered large corporations would seem to include Joe Six-Pack.

I suspect habitation in the flooding areas of Florida will be allowed until the last people can’t make it. Then the papers will be filled with sad articles of folks losing their last dimes and doomed to homeless starvation unless the government reimburses them for their folly. And, Florida being Florida, it will.

And, it should be abandoned, sooner rather than later.

No one in their right mind believes we don’t contribute to Global Warming. In your opinion, What percentage of the world wide warming issue are we responsible for?

There is a trade off somewhere between our culpability and our technical ability to mitigate a natural process. In the end, our greatest failure may be, not doing the things that should be done to meet the crisis.

But all the water that’s being liberated from glaciers worldwide has to go somewhere, and that “somewhere” is everywhere. Denial won’t keep even the most ardent conservatives dry.

It may be too late to turn this ship around, at least in our lifetimes, no matter what we do. It snuck up on us too quickly, its moving too fast, its too big, and the crew is too lazy, too stupid or too cheap to do anything. But we can take steps to mitigate the damage and spread it out in time and space, giving us time to adjust to the new world we’ve created.

The efforts at the municipal level are not aimed at stopping climate change, but at dealing with its effects. Better land management practices could extend our water resources, and good zoning and land use regulations could protect infrastructure and private property. We have to get away from the idea that the only value of land today is what we can sell it for tomorrow.

One thing I would do if I were king is forbid all new construction on the barrier islands, and as buildings aged and were abandoned I would replace them with sand dunes, shore vegetation and mangrove swamps–i.e., return the land to its natural state so it could remain productive (as an attraction for tourists) and to protect mainland properties from storm damage. This would do nothing to stop rising seas, but would buy us more time, and the costs would be spread out over more time and people.

But Florida is an essentially cannibalistic state. It produces little of value, its primary source of economic nourishment is to feed on itself: people sell each other real estate, and tear down what’s perfectly useful just to be able to rebuild it for profit. The idea that land has an intrinsic economic value in itself, not just as a place to locate structures and settlements but to renew environmental resources, has been forgotten in our desperation to make it into a commodity that can be turned over and over until the last owner gets stuck holding the bag.

We can learn a lesson from Louisiana, where construction by the oil industry (canals, shipping channels and dykes), and pollution led to increased loss of vegetation and erosion that has caused enormous damage to the Mississippi river delta. The sea is encroaching onto the land, and a subsiding New Orleans has become increasingly vulnerable to storms, relying solely on its levees for protection.

When the local State agency set up to address these problems after Katrina successfully sued the oil industry for financial help in restoring some of the damage they had caused, the state legislature passed ex post facto legislation to prevent them from doing so.

I suspect much the same thing will happen in Florida.