New York City, a climate change leader, challenges enlarged flood maps
In most places, that would be considered folly, said Eli Lehrer, an insurance expert and president of the conservative R Street Institute. Building expensive infrastructure to protect peril-prone development is rarely cost-effective, he said.
That’s not true in New York City.
“In a place like Manhattan, it may make a lot of sense to invest quite a lot in structural mitigation because of climate change,” he said, noting that the city’s “infinitely valuable” real estate could justify spending tens of billions of dollars over the coming decades.
In other words, the city will never be abandoned because of rising seas, no matter how great the cost to protect it. Lehrer said that’s probably not the case with smaller flood-prone towns on the Mississippi River, where “the calculus indicates you should move the town.”
