Hmmm, wonder what their new Tea Party dude will have to say about that?

I bet their answer would be: "that's why you have a 'rainy day' fund."  It's not debatable, it's just good government not to spend all rainy day funds for the rest of your children's future so you can plan for this stuff and address it before it becomes a problem.  

That's a really interesting point of view. It would never have occurred to me to put a little bit away in a secret slush fund so you can, you know, rebuild a whole city when the ocean rises repeatedly several feet a year. But don't they all have private insurance? Why should the government even have to be involved?

In any case this is sobering:

As is this:

Yikes.

Worse, scientists expect sea levels in southern Virginia to rise at least a foot (30 cm) and perhaps as much as three feet by 2060. Moreover, that’s only accounting for the sea-level rise. Factoring in subsidence—sinking land—Virginia’s tides could be eight feet higher by 2100 in some areas, according to a study by Virginia Institute of Marine Science, with about six of those feet from sea-level alone.

This is a big problem for coastal Virginia given that the military, tourism and its ports generate a hefty share of the state’s economic output, as well as hundreds of thousands of jobs. Homeowners and insurers, however, are likely to sustain the biggest blow. A three-foot rise in sea-levels would inundate the homes of between 59,000 and 176,000 Virginia residents, according to WRI.

But these nightmare scenarios aren’t confined to Virginia alone; they’re very much a national-level threat. Coastal counties generate just under half of US GDP and support tens of millions of jobs. In the 18 states that abut the Atlantic, the insured value of residential and commercial property totals $10.6 trillion; New York and Florida account for $2.9 trillion apiece. Whether leaders in other states can put aside partisan differences and follow Virginia’s lead, however, is another question