(Bloomberg View) -- If the latest projections about the pace and scope of sea-level rise are even close to accurate, then get ready for a fight — not starting in decades, but right now — over which communities get saved, and who pays for it.
Detailed online mapping tools, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Sea Level Rise map and the nonprofit Climate Central's Surging Seas project, can tell us which states would be hit the hardest by the effects of melting Antarctic glaciers and other environmental changes.
|States in most danger are among the poorest
Two things jump out. First, thanks to the vagaries of topography as well as tidal and development patterns, the social and financial burdens that the coastal states will have to bear are wildly unequal from one to the next. Second, the states in the most danger are generally among the country's poorest.
There are different ways of measuring risk. Start with the most obvious: How much land would each state lose if sea levels rose by six feet, the amount projected by 2100 in a recent paper? The clearest takeaway is the disproportionate vulnerability of Louisiana, and to a lesser degree Florida and Delaware.
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