[✔️] November 19, 2022 - Global Warming News Digest

Sat Nov 19 10:12:14 EST 2022

/*November 19, 2022*/

/[ when and where will you retire? ]/
*‘Do You Really Want to Rebuild at 80?’ Rethinking Where to Retire.*
It’s a small yet noticeable shift, experts say — but climate change is 
causing retirees to start reconsidering moves to disaster-prone dream 
locales.
By Susan B. Garland
Nov. 18, 2022
For a decade, Melissa and Guy Hoagland, both retired physicians in their 
60s, had split their time between their homes on a barrier island in 
Florida and in Half Moon Bay, a small coastal city in the San Francisco 
Bay Area.

But the intensifying drought and wildfires in Northern California and 
escalating hurricanes and storm surges along the Southeastern coastline 
drove the couple to sell both houses.

Mulling the idea of living permanently in Southern California, the 
Hoaglands moved into a rental house in San Diego in 2019 after selling 
their West Coast property. But climate risks there, including drought 
and rising sea levels, put an end to that plan as well...

The couple began to search for a safer place. They pored over climate 
data, including projections of rising temperatures, availability of 
fresh water and the northward expansion of tropical diseases. In 2022, 
they moved to Asheville, N.C., hoping to buy a house there.

A small but growing number of older people like the Hoaglands are taking 
climate change into account when choosing a retirement destination, real 
estate agents and other experts say. Armed with climate studies, many 
retirees are looking for communities that are less likely to experience 
extreme weather events, such as wildfires, drought and flooding.

David Dew, a real estate broker who sells homes near the Rappahannock 
River in and around White Stone, Va., said a larger number of retired 
clients were voicing concerns about weather patterns. With many 
waterfront properties in minimal danger of flooding there, the area is 
attracting retirees from the flood-ravaged Outer Banks of North Carolina 
as well as other Atlantic Ocean communities, he said.

“At first, they will say they want big views and deep water, but then 
they ask whether a hurricane or a nor’easter will wipe out the dock,” 
Mr. Dew said. “They want to be on the water but more protected.”

In an analysis of nearly 1.4 million home sales along Florida’s coasts, 
for example, University of Pennsylvania researchers found that the sales 
volume of homes in areas where 70 percent of developed land was less 
than six feet above sea level dropped by up to 20 percent between 2013 
and 2018, while sales rose on less-vulnerable coastal land. Prices on 
homes in riskier areas declined between 2018 and 2020...

“We loved living along the coast, but we knew that life there was not 
sustainable for us in our old age,” Melissa Hoagland said.
The lead researcher, Benjamin Keys, a professor of real estate and 
finance at the university’s Wharton School, said the biggest sales 
declines occurred in Florida coastal communities where retirees from the 
Northeast — particularly those who lived in counties exposed to 
Hurricane Sandy in 2012 — tended to move.

“It seems like Northeast retirees were looking at retirement 
differently,” Dr. Keys said. “On one hand, you have a strong demographic 
pull of baby boomers who are looking for warmer climate, and on the 
other hand, there is a newfound appreciation of climate risks.”

Florida coastal home sales and prices spiked during the pandemic as 
buyers fled urban living for warmer climes. But Dr. Keys said he 
expected the prepandemic trends would resume as fewer people feared 
living in densely populated areas and as remote work declined.

*Aging and Climate Change Collide*
Extreme weather can be particularly dangerous, and even deadly, for the 
elderly, who are more likely to have chronic medical conditions and 
disabilities, according to numerous studies.

Three-quarters of residents who died in the 2018 Camp Fire, which 
destroyed the Northern California community of Paradise, were 65 and 
older. Well over half of the record-high 323 people who died from 
heat-related causes in Arizona’s Maricopa County in 2020 were at least 
50. And two-thirds of the people who died in Florida during Hurricane 
Ian in September were 60 and older.

Frailty and cognitive impairments make it difficult for older people to 
evacuate and prepare their homes for disasters. Older people are also 
more likely than younger people to die from heat stroke. Extreme heat 
and wildfire smoke can worsen diabetes, heart disease and lung conditions.

“The ability to see a doctor during a king tide could be hard,” said 
Mathew Hauer, an assistant professor of sociology at Florida State 
University in Tallahassee, using a term for exceptionally high tides. 
“And an ambulance may not be able to get to you.”

These health-related dangers are certain to increase as rising sea 
levels coincide with the growing elderly population along the coasts, 
Dr. Hauer said.

In an analysis of all coastal counties in the United States, Dr. Hauer 
predicted that the proportion of people over 65 who lived in coastal 
communities would steadily rise, to about 37 percent of the population 
in 2100, compared with 16 percent today. That population would comprise 
older people moving in and younger people remaining into their later years.

“Two trends we know are happening — the impact of climate change at the 
same time the world is aging,” Dr. Hauer said. “Those two trends, I’m 
afraid, will crash head-on, and we will see more catastrophic impacts 
than if either one had happened.”

The Hoaglands said their stress was mounting as the climate risks on 
both coasts grew.

They moved to Florida in 1992 to raise their four children and practice 
medicine (Melissa, 64, as a pathologist and Guy, 65, as an internist). 
In 2011, they bought a house in the Bay Area, where Melissa had gone to 
medical school and had always dreamed of returning. They retired early, 
living in California in the summers and Florida in the winters.

Over the years, in Florida, hurricanes and storm surges up the Indian 
River threatened their home on a barrier island near Melbourne. During 
one storm, water jumped over a road within several feet of their house.

“Drainage was a problem on the roads,” Guy said. “I noticed the 
localized flooding was higher than it ever was.”

At the same time, wildfires, which were becoming more frequent, were 
spreading smoke in the Bay Area. An avid hiker, Guy began carrying an 
inhaler to help with exercise-induced asthma.