Axel de Tarlé
Accelerating sea level rise threatens billions and billions of real estate assets. In Florida, insurers are reluctant to insure real estate for fear of a cyclone.
The latest IPCC report warns of rising waters which is faster than expected. First consequence of this rise, the city of New York wants to build a giant dike.
It is the American army which is at the maneuver with the mayor of New York. They want to build a 10-kilometer-long seawall facing the Atlantic capable of containing a six-meter rise in sea level.
Six meters that may seem huge but the IPCC report on the oceans published this Wednesday is very pessimistic. The rising water levels are accelerating and one meter more is expected by the end of the century.
Above all, warmer oceans also mean more extreme phenomena. What “happened once a century, will happen once a year by 2050”, writes the IPCC.
However, in New York, we remember Hurricane Sandy in 2012 when a wave five meters high had ravaged all of southern Manhattan. The metro had been flooded, hospitals had been evacuated and 40 people had been killed. This is to say if this dike capable of containing a wave of six meters, is not superfluous.
Especially since there are economic issues because the south of Manhattan is Wall Street and buildings galore.
As a reminder, the two twin towers of the World Trade Center were compensated to the tune of four billion dollars. You can imagine the anguish of insurance companies.
This rising water level does not only concern New York, all the coastal cities are threatened?
In Florida, insurers are also thinking about it.
Hurricane Dorian pulverized the Bahamas, one day it will be Miami’s turn. The psychosis is therefore there, we must “leave the coastal zone, before it is too late”.
We are all concerned, including in France.
This morning, in Le Figaro, real estate agents recognize it half-heartedly, seafront apartments on the Atlantic (in Lacanau for example) are selling less and less well.
We now want to settle preferably inland, in the dry.
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