Notes from an Environmentalist.
Tides, Drought, Fires and a Coming Economic Depression.
Drought, Fires, Tides and a repeat of the 1930’s Depression
November 17, 2024 was a cool crisp day. Tinder dry leaves blew down the streets and collected in huge piles against trees and houses.
Normally these leaves would form wet flat mats that would cling to the pavement. However, although the preternaturally hot days of early November were gone the drought and smoke from almost a hundred local fires continued.
But I wanted to see the extreme high tide. It covered both the Argilla Road and Jefferey’s Neck causeways and was encroaching on the downtown parking lots of Ipswich, Massachusetts.
This would be the highest tide of 2024, measuring 10.2 feet at the mouth of the Merrimack River. Then the tides would moderate again until they peaked at 10.3 feet in June.
By 2035 the high tides would be two to three feet higher. Homes were already tumbling into the ocean at the rate of one a month and with 157 more in danger of being swept away in North Carolina alone.
Similar numbers of homes were at risk up and down the East Coast, particularly Florida that housed over a fourth of the 1.4 million coastal homes in the country.
Climatologists expect such drought, fire, and flooding events will get exponentially worse by the mid-Thirties.
Interestingly some top economists also expect a major depression in the 2030’s brought on by protectionism tariffs and the collapse of real estate prices.
If those dire predictions happen it will be like the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression fitting together like hand and glove almost a hundred years ago .
