My favorite debate question came during the 2020 Dem primary debates when (I think?) Julian Castro was asked point-blank "Scientists project that Miami is one of several major cities in the US likely to be underwater by the end of this century. When would you start mass evacuations?"
I think about it in any conversation about climate change because we keep imagining the end of the world as like a sudden nuclear winter but nope it's going to be a long, slow slog through miraculously fucked up decisionmaking with no good or politically safe options
Also reminds me of March 2020 when MSNBC had an epidemiologist on and @chrislhayes.bsky.social asked him "how bad could this pandemic get" and the guy (who plainly and blessedly had no media training) said "well the Black Death wiped out one third of humanity so idk pretty bad"
Dr Michael Olsterholm is a friend of a man we know in the Midwest. They were talking when covid first appeared. When he was asked about potential deaths Dr Olsterholm said he estimated a million Americans . We were shocked. He was right. Biden put him on his Covid team.
It was definitely new to me when I heard that. My daughter and her boyfriend came to the cape from NYC as soon as the travel ban was lifted. His dad is friends w/ Dr Olsterholm. When his dad texted him we read it in shocked silence. Such a dark time. Thankfully, we have such smart drs & scientists.
Yeah same I presumed 1.5 to 2.5 assuming we'd let it rip and have no interventions like vaccines
I wonder if we would've exceeded that without vaccines
And of course we proceeded to pretend like it didn't kill a million Americans and that Donald Trump wasn't president during it nor handled it so poorly he has blood on his hands
We're gonna spend hundreds of billions in Florida on spot solutions (eg saltwater encroachment) and rebuilding after storms but it's a losing war in the long term
I don’t get the feeling that the market sees large amounts of customers about to be up for grabs and starting to compete to attract these new customers before they get wiped out and turned into refugees.
