The Nation thinks it’s time to plan for evacuating Miami.

Because of course they do. They have a record of being always wrong, and they need to keep the losing streak going.

The Miami-Dade County government has some clever mapping tools to help people visualize the impending climate risks—rising seas, swelling groundwater, flooded buildings. But too much detail can distract from the bigger picture: Miami is drowning.

In 2020, a report from the climate think tank Resources for the Future declared Miami the most vulnerable major coastal city in the world.

Well, if Resources for the Future thinks Miami is going to drown, it must be true.

Miami has long been seen by investors and average Americans as a city on the edge of collapse. You can sense the fear, with people fleeing the city before its inevitable doom arrives.

Only 1.2 million people have settled in the Miami metro over the last 20 years. The fear of drowning under rising seas is palpable.

The Nation and “Resources for the Future” are certain that all these people and the investors who have financed a massive boom, including construction near the coastline, are idiots. In the next few decades there will certainly be a massive reversal in population, including an exodus from Miami/Dade. They could all be gone, becoming climate refugees who will descend upon unprepared Middle America.

Of course, the city’s future is uncertain—we don’t know quite how much sea-level rise we can still prevent or how well we’ll adapt in place. When I visited a few years ago to talk with people about climate change, many told me that they were sick of outsiders parachuting in to tell them they’re screwed. I get that. And yet in the coming decades, many of the county’s 2.6 million residents will leave. Maybe most of them.

Preparing for Miami’s evacuation would help them immeasurably. Just as important, it would force municipalities across the United States to get serious about hosting climate migrants in egalitarian ways.

“Hosting climate migrants in egalitarian ways.” You can’t make this up. Time for DEI trainers to expand their business into climate equity trainings.

Climate conversations about moving out of harm’s way often use the concept of “managed retreat.” People debate how to help communities stay or leave and how governments should buy out groups of vulnerable homeowners. Sometimes tenants get a mention. But the bigger challenge is managed arrival: building huge quantities of green, climate-friendly housing in existing urban and suburban spaces while reconstructing communities to feel even more like home.

The scale will be vast. Matt Hauer, a climate demographer at Florida State University, has shown that millions of Americans will be displaced by rising seas this century, largely from South Florida. Millions already live in areas threatened by wildfire. Even more face a future of unimaginable heat and drought. And worldwide, countless people will flee a “catastrophic convergence” of violence, poverty, and climate change. Much of that can be traced to American imperialism and carbon. In the US, we should aspire to resettle tens of millions of climate migrants in the coming decades.

Serious question: are these people dumb enough to actually believe what they are saying, or merely assuming that everybody else is too stupid to see how insane what they are saying actually sounds?

I can’t tell. Honestly.

One thing I can tell for sure is that this think tank “Resources for the Future” is well funded by some big players.

Government and Other Organizations

• Breakthrough Energy
• Center for Applied Environmental Law and Policy
• Climate Change Commission
• Economic Research Service (USDA)
• Environmental Defense Fund
• Georgetown Climate Center
• International Energy Forum
• Mistra
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA)
• National Science Foundation
• New York State Energy Research and Development Authority
• Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
• Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth
• United States Department of Energy
• U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, Inc.
• United States Environmental Protection Agency
• United States Forest Service (USDA)
• University of Pennsylvania
• University of Virginia
• The Wilderness Society

Foundations

• Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
• Arnold Ventures
• The Barr Foundation
• Bernard and Anne Spitzer Charitable Trust
• ClimateWorks Foundation
• The Energy Foundation
• The G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation
• Generation Foundation
• The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
• Heising-Simons Foundation
• John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
• Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
• Linden Trust for Conservation
• The Oak Foundation
• Peter G. Peterson Foundation
• Riksbankens Jubileumsfond
• Sall Family Foundation
• Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust
• Schmidt Futures
• Smith Richardson Foundation
• Stand Together Trust
• Waverley Street Foundation
• The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

That’s a lot of government and foundation money pouring into a nonprofit that is pushing total nonsense. Do they really believe that DesMoines has to prepare for an influx of “climate refugees” from Miami by building “huge quantities of green, climate-friendly housing in existing urban and suburban spaces while reconstructing communities to feel even more like home?”

Are they writing a science fiction dystopian novel, or simply grifters happily taking tax and foundation money with no other task to complete than writing pure nonsense?

One of the things that is frustrating about debating with people from the Left is how they ignore everything that doesn’t fit their narrative. Sea levels have risen over 400 feet since the last glacial maximum; there are Greek ruins underwater in the Mediterranean from cities that got swamped by sea level rise.

This is what the continents looked like just a few millennia ago. There literally were no British Isles, and the Mediterranean didn’t connect with the Atlantic.

That rise has slowed dramatically as most of the glaciers have melted. A foot increase in sea levels is nothing compared to what has happened over the past few thousand years. We are measuring increases in sea levels in millimeters, not meters these days.

Miami will be fine because human beings can adapt. Human beings have the technology to adapt in a way that has never been the case until the past few decades. Yet the hysteria about these matters has never been greater.

Islands that were predicted to be underwater by now are thriving vacation hotspots. They are growing in population, in GDP, and in popularity. Billions of dollars are being invested in regions that climate alarmists have predicted to be gone by now.

Remember the Maldives? They were supposed to be underwater by now. They are still begging for reparations for the damage Western countries have done to their islands. Except they also have expanded their tourism industry with billions of investments, and their tourism website brags that it is “the world’s leading destination.” And, as in the ’80s, they are only 30 years away from being underwater.

In 2050 they still will be 30 years from disappearing.

Will Miami have to adapt as things change? Of course it will. Things change all the time.

But I can confidently predict that the only people who will benefit from massive investments in green climate-friendly housing are the people who get subsidies to build it.