Why This Futurist is Leaving Florida. -2

{I made a couple of mistakes in the editing of the prior edition of this post. Please read this version instead of the prior one. I was checking links and all of a sudden the entire post disappeared! Deep apology!!}

Forecasts for the state of Florida:

-by 2030, Florida will be the number one state in the US for citizens emigrating elsewhere

-by 2035 most Gulf Coast beaches will have largely disappeared due to Sea Level Rise

-by 2040 most of the East Coast beaches will have largely disappeared due to Sea Level Rise

-by 2025 there will have been several gun shootings on beaches

-by 2025 it will become clear that Florida Universities will have declining out-of-state students applying, and they are the most revenue-rich students.

-by 2025 it will have become clear that there is a brain drain of college and university professors from the state due to the state’s politicization of the curriculum

-starting in 2023-24 onward, the total amount of tourists and tourist revenue will begin to decline

-traffic gridlock will continue to increase dramatically

-there will have been several freshwater crises by 2030

When my wife and I moved to Sarasota, Florida, from Evanston, Illinois, back in 2015, we thought that we would spend the rest of our years in Florida.  We are moving back to the Chicagoland area by Labor Day.

Why?

The list is a long one. Tomorrow I will write a more personal column about the loss of a sense of paradise with Sarasota.  Think of this column as a futurist’s view of the state of Florida.

There are many short phrases that apply:

-the state of Florida is rapidly heading to an environmental/climate collapse

-the state is full of short-term greed and an absence of long-term planning

-too little investment in infrastructure while there is an explosion of new housing

-the political ambitions of the Florida governor have been placed above the rights and welfare of the state’s citizens, to the state’s detriment

-K-12 education has and is being corrupted by politics and religion

-higher education is in decline and will continue to become less than it was

-the state of Florida’s brand is being destroyed by the state’s politicians

Or, more simply, the state of Florida is

-heading for a crash landing

-will become an example of how not to run a state

-is hurtling headlong into a collapse

-is no longer the nice place to live that it once was

Let’s start with the environment and the climate crisis

When we moved to Florida, Rick Scott was governor.  As governor, he forbade any state employee to use the phrases “climate change” or “sea level rise”  Both of these existential threats were clear, but to climate change denier Scott, they were not allowed to be discussed.

Scott was taking the ostrich position of the head in the sand.  As I have grown fond of saying in Florida, you will ultimately drown if you stick your head in the sand, due to Sea Level Rise [SLR].  Back in October 2016 a non-profit I co-founded asked Sarasota citizens to come to the world-famous Siesta Key beach for a demonstration of what was coming with SLR.  Using a drone camera, we shot this video.  Shortly thereafter, I was honored to speak to NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center.  When I sent this video to the highest executive I had met in the Earth Sciences part of NASA, she emailed back that she thought it was the best video about SLR she had ever seen as it was not about science but people holding hands.

The problem for Florida is that it was then, and even more so now is regarded as the state most at risk to climate change.  That is still the case.  The problem now is that we have learned a lot more about SLR.  The rate of SLR is increasing and the projections are that there will be twice as much SLR for the Gulf Coast of Florida in the next 25 years as there has been in the last 75 years.  Twice as much, from 8 inches to a range of 14-18 inches.  That is worth repeating. There will be 14-18 inches SLR between now and 2050, roughly twice the amount of the last 75 years and a six times increase.

So, the beaches will be gone from the Gulf Coast by the mid-2030s and from the East Coast by 2040.  As the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic ocean recover the land they gave up tens of thousands of years ago, these waters, particularly the Gulf waters, have become more lethal.  This is due to Red Tide.

For those of you not familiar with Red Tide, here are some short video clips and articles that will explain it to you Basically, the Red Tides from Florida’s past came and went in the late summer, lasting for a few weeks. Since 2017 the Red Tides have lasted much longer, with the Red Tide lasting 12 months in 2021. There are two primary causes to the increasing severity and length of the recent Red Tides: climate change and the run-off of fertilizers and other human waste from the increasing population.

With eight years of Governor Scott denying climate change so he could toe the Republican Party line on this issue, thereby putting Florida citizens at risk and the current Governor DeSantis calling climate change “left-wing stuff.”, the state’s governors are causing harm to citizens, wildlife and the beaches.

Beaches have been the image of Florida for more than a century.  They will largely be gone in 10-15 years, and what’s left of the beaches are covered with hundreds of tons of dead sea life, including dolphins and manatees and harmful to humans.  In the last five years, the Sarasota beaches, one of the reasons we moved to the state, have had Red Tides more often than not.

The rising seas are just one of the water problems for Florida.  The other is fresh water.  According to various state officials there is a plan in place that will allow citizens fresh water for years in the future.  That of course assumes that the weather stays the same with lots of rain.  Well, climate change can severely affect rain amounts.  Just ask California or Canada about what drought can do to areas not used to them.  Florida is one massive drought away from severe water restrictions.

Which leads us to population growth.

Florida has far outpaced the US in population growth.  This disproportionate increase is largely ascribed to beaches [sorry, see above], no state income tax, and the great year-round weather.

This is where the state has become all about economic development, more than concern for supporting infrastructure, the environment, or the relaxed, traffic-free lifestyle.  Everywhere I look in Florida, I see short-term greed winning out over long-term planning.

Again global warming is playing a role.  When my wife and I moved to Florida from the cold north, we marveled at the January and February weather.  We looked at the snows up north and relished the dozen or so days in the first two months of the year when it fell only to the 40s at night and 50s during the day, or 50s at night and 60s during the day.  The last two years, the number of days with those temperatures has  been at least halved.  Here is a look at the increase in temperatures from 2015 to 2023 in Sarasota.

While the “heat dome” summer of 2023 might not always happen, when it does it will always hit the southern states the hardest, So Florida will be one of the hottest states in the country.  That is why there have always been “snow birds”. As a futurist my forecasts have been that by the 2040s the summers of southern states may become so hot that major restrictions on children and senior citizens to stay inside from May through September may be put in place.  And which state has the oldest population in the US?  Florida.

Politics

When we moved down to Florida in 2015, it was technically a purple state.  Obama had carried the state in 2008 and in 2012, and there was one Democratic Senator and one Republican Senator.  Now the state is a solid red state with the governor, both senators, and an overwhelming, gerrymandered state congressional delegation, state senate, and house of representatives.  We didn’t move here because of the politics, but it is one of the reasons we are leaving.

The current Governor, Ron DeSantis, won reelection by 20 percentage points in 2022.  This led him to the delusional belief that he could run and win the Presidency in 2024.  In preparation for this run, he prevailed on the rubber stamp state senate and representatives to lay the foundation for his run to the right of fellow Floridian Donald Trump.  To the right of Trump, when all research and polls show that the overwhelming numbers of swing voters are to the left of Trump.  The consequence of this ego trip is that Florida citizens live in a state where:

-anyone who has a gun can legally carry it on their person anywhere in the state

-an abortion ban after six weeks for all women, something that obstetricians and gynecologists all say makes no sense as a woman may go well past six weeks without even knowing she is pregnant

-allowing parents and local politicians to ban books from K-12 schools

-closing down the “honors college” of the state of Florida to change it to a Christian college

-outlawing diversity programs in all Florida public colleges and universities

-banning the teaching of history as it relates to African-Americans and slavery

-attacking the Walt Disney Company, the largest employer in the state, and the resulting in the cancellation of 2,000 jobs and $900 million investment.  How does that help Florida citizens?

So, to position himself as a culture warrior “to the right of Donald Trump” the governor has positioned Florida to be far more restrictive on human rights, education and jobs that I would guess the citizens of Florida might consider as okay.  Not okay with us, for sure.

 DeSantis will be governor until 2027, at which time many of the forecasts listed at the top of the column will become more apparent than they are now.  He will be held responsible to some degree. 

The problem for the state of Florida is that due to the man being a mean bully with no charisma and fascist tendencies, he will probably be a sore loser and might bring more havoc to the state as one..

Thank god he won’t have the opportunity to “make the US like Florida”

Already the NAACP has alerted all its members that it is unsafe for African -Americans to travel to Florida and numerous conventions have canceled conferences in the state due to the state's policies on LGBTQ people.

All because Ron DeSantis wants to be president.  Fortunately for the US, that will not ever become a reality.  But that means he will be governor for almost four more years.

Insurance

This is a growing problem for the state of Florida.  Insurance is more expensive than in most other states, in every category.  Household insurance is currently four times as high in Florida as the average in the US.  Due to that fact, Florida has twice the number of uninsured homes as other states.  Quoting from this linked article: “

“home insurance is costing Florida homeowners an estimated $6,000 per year compared to the national average of $1,700, in what the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I) described to be a “man-made crisis.”

It is expected to increase by up to  40% in 2024, unless a hurricane inflicts property damage, in which case the increases will be more.

In addition, dozens of companies that had offered homeowners insurance have left the state.  Just this summer two big insurers have also left the state

To quote from this linked article:

“The Farmers Group and AIG made the announcement, and according to the insurance experts, it’s an indication that Florida’s insurance market is still very much in crisis.

Over the past 18 months in Florida, 16 property insurance companies have decided to stop writing new business to new homeowners in one form or the other.

The latest include insurance giants AIG, deciding it will no longer insure houses along Florida’s coastline, and the Farmers Group deciding not to write any new policies at all.”

To offset this the state has set up an insurer of last resort called the Citizens Property Insurance Corporation.  It is expected to have 1.7 million customers by the end of 2023.  As the leaders of it say, it does not have enough reserves to fully cover all its’ customers.  The average price of a Florida home is $400,000, so there would have to be some $680 billion dollars of reserves to cover all the replacement costs of customers.  The current state operating budget is less than $150 billion.  Do the math.

So the uninsured will lose everything and the insured will lose most of the cost of their home.

This is without any property damage due to storms in the future.

Auto Insurance

Auto insurance is double what the average American pays

There are many more problems that point to a dark future for Florida but this column is already longer than most and with a lot of links. As a futurist I find it hard to see any upward trend that is a good one for the future of the state.

 The next column here will be about what I will miss of Florida’s past and what I will miss by moving up north.