President Donald Trump will rescind an Obama administration policy requiring government agencies to take into account global warming-induced flooding and sea level rise for federally-funded projects.Now look at the data on sea level rise from Baltimore (one of the longest US records):
Trump will repeal the climate order that President Barack Obama signed in 2015 as part of a broader effort to streamline infrastructure permitting. Administration officials said the current process is long and cumbersome.
“For far too long, critical projects have been delayed by duplicative permitting and environmental requirements which added time and unnecessary expenses to much needed projects,” Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said in a statement obtained by Bloomberg.
Trump wants to push a $200 billion infrastructure spending bill through Congress this fall, which he hopes will mobilize $800 billion in state and private funding. A cumbersome permitting process could hold up infrastructure projects.
Furthermore, Obama’s executive order to “improve the resilience of communities and federal assets against the impacts of flooding” could increase the upfront costs or even eliminate projects in the pipeline.
No hint of a modern acceleration of sea level rise due to global warming. There's nothing to take into account.
That said, it's not a bad idea to put your houses and other buildings above the reach of flooding. But if you want to, you should be prepared to pay for it yourself when it floods, or buy a flood insurance policy based on an appropriate probability of damage, not one subsidized by the feds.
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