[GWSG] Keys submerging; soon S Fl, too; where to go?; demeated land; with modular homes; and community grids

[Tilley, Al]

1. As the sea level rise overwhelms coastal areas, people may choose to remain in their homes even when partly or intermittently inundated, as many people currently are in the Florida Keys. Eventually, though, the only option left will be relocation. What is happening in the Keys is not far ahead of conditions along our coasts generally. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/24/florida-keys-climate-change-sea-level-rise


2. South Florida is already subject to flooding during rainstorms. https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/dangerous-floods-hit-florida/vi-AA1jZ4nK


3. Drainage in suburban areas of South Florida is routinely managed by canals, which empty into the ocean by gravity. As the ocean rises the water head diminishes and will eventually become negative, so that the canals become flood conduits. Sea valves which allow water out to the ocean but not into the canals can manage that until the sea level rise becomes too great, and pumps can augment weak gravity flow control. Recently those patches on the system appear to have failed as the canals flooded neighborhoods during a relatively weak storm. https://www.wusf.org/weather/2023-11-24/south-florida-canals-failed-no-name-storm-sea-rise-make-worse


4. We have room for substantial new populations in many areas of the country. https://www.redfin.com/blog/states-that-pay-you-to-move-there/

Given the great numbers of people who will need to be settled away from low coastal areas, though, the current slack will quickly disappear and we will need to develop new housing. Where will all those new communities be located?


5. If we are to deal with the climate crisis successfully, we must cut emissions by greatly reducing our meat consumption. Land will be freed from current use to pasture and feed our livestock. Some of that land will be rewilded, some will grow beans and other vegetables, and some will be repurposed to housing. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/is-the-livestock-industry-destroying-the-planet-11308007/

“Half of all habitable land is used for agriculture.” “If we combine pastures used for grazing with land used to grow crops for animal feed, livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land. While livestock takes up most of the world’s agricultural land it only produces 18% of the world’s calories and 37% of total protein”, easily supplied by our new beans and peas. (Paragraphs 3 and 4 of the leading section Breakdown of global land use today.)  https://ourworldindata.org/land-use


6.  Modest modular homes are already being developed which are appropriate for sustainable communities. https://elemental.green/18-inexpensive-sustainable-homes-almost-anyone-can-afford/


7. The new communities will need to be sustainable; that will mean providing much of their own energy, though existing grid supplies should be able to provide current to supplement and stabilize the new demand. A new kind of energy supply is already being installed commercially: the microgrid, or neighborhood, or community grid. Sunrun is one company which is dedicated to developing such grids. Sunrun is already furnishing communities with solar power from rooftop arrays, supplemented by batteries and controlled by a central computer network. https://www.sunrun.com/grid-services


8. Block Energy in Tampa has installed microgrids in two communities. One is 93% power independent. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/11/14/florida-community-teams-up-with-block-energy-on-4-2-million-solar-microgrid/
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