Will Climate Change Transform the Florida Dream?

In 1957, my grandparents moved from Provincetown, Mass., to Stuart, Fla., bringing with them my mother, who was 11 at the time, and her three brothers. For the next half-century, my family lived the Florida dream.

My grandfather helped develop Sailfish Point, an upscale housing community on a spit of land in Stuart jutting into the Atlantic Ocean. My grandmother ran a small store and tended to a growing congregation at the local church. Their children grew up playing on the beach and picking oranges off trees in the yard.

My mother left Florida as an adult, but two of her brothers remained in Stuart. And for most of my childhood, I spent summers there, playing in the waves and fishing near Lake Okeechobee.

Families like ours transformed Florida over the past 70 years or so. When my grandparents moved there, the state’s population was just over four million. Florida is now the third-most-populous state in the union, after California and Texas, with more than 22 million residents.

Now, on this October day, almost the entire state is feeling the effects of Hurricane Milton, which roared ashore Wednesday with catastrophic consequences. More than three million people are without power. At least five are dead. And “this was not the worst-case scenario,” as Gov. Ron DeSantis said.

Climate change in the Sunshine State

Milton is the second major hurricane to hit Florida in two weeks, and climate change is creating new risks across the state.

Warm oceans are making storms more powerful, sea level rise is leading to flooding and erosion, and overdevelopment is putting more people in jeopardy. All of which is raising new questions about the future of Florida.

Around midnight last night, as Milton was thrashing Orlando, I called the novelist and journalist Carl Hiaasen, a Florida legend and longtime chronicler of the state’s grifters and glories in books like “Hoot,” “Strip Tease” and “Bad Monkey.” Hiaasen, who often writes about environmental issues, told me that global warming had forever changed a state he loves.

“When I was a kid in the ’50s and ’60s, hurricanes were always thought of as a South Florida phenomena,” he said. “Now, there’s no place in Florida that’s safe.”

Hiaasen lives near Fort Pierce, more than 120 miles north of Miami. Yesterday, a tornado hit one of his neighbor’s apartment buildings. His home was spared.

There is every indication that the natural threats will continue to get worse. The rapid intensification that made Milton so powerful is expected to become more common as oceans get warmer.

Scientists expect sea levels to rise several feet in some parts of Florida by the end of the century, according to a report by Resources for the Future, a nonprofit research group. That could lead to the displacement of millions of people and untold billions of dollars in damages, and it is prompting Miami to consider building a 20-foot sea wall to keep the rising tides at bay.

This year’s hurricane season isn’t over yet. Scientists predict that as the oceans keep heating up, more powerful storms will take aim at Florida more often.

“The future is what you’re watching tonight on the Weather Channel,” Hiaasen told me.

The lure of development

Beyond the weather, Florida faces other challenges that are compounding the threats posed by climate change.

Two weeks ago, Hurricane Helene killed at least 11 people in Florida and inflicted widespread damage. Last year, Hurricane Idalia was not as bad as feared. But the year before that, Hurricane Ian cut a path of wreckage across the Gulf Coast, the same densely populated area now reeling from Helene and Milton.

Unrelenting development is placing ever more people, homes, businesses and infrastructure in the path of increasingly ferocious storms. That combination will inevitably lead to more damage, and more costly disasters.

“When you’re talking about selling every square inch of waterfront property for as much as you can sell it for, with only a cursory glance at what’s happening with the climate and hurricanes, it’s irresponsible,” Hiaasen said. “They built so many houses in the worst possible places, and they get wiped out, and they just put them back in the same place.”

Another problem: It’s getting harder to insure homes and businesses. Florida is now the most expensive state for homeowners insurance, and some insurers, including Farmers, are pulling out of the state. When the insurance companies can’t make money, Hiaasen said, you know things have gotten bad.

An additional complication is that many of Florida’s elected officials are unwilling to acknowledge the risks posed by man-made climate change. DeSantis this year signed a law barring state agencies from considering climate change when writing energy policy.

Florida’s disaster cycle

Despite all this, Hiaasen believes Florida will endure.

The numbers bear this out. Even with storms getting worse and insurance premiums rising, people keep flocking south. In 2022, Florida was the fastest-growing state in the union, attracting almost half a million new residents.

“The nature of overdevelopment is that you always find someone else who wants to get out of the tough winters and come to Florida and is willing to take the risk until one storm, two storm, three storms hit, and then they bail,” Hiaasen said. “But there will be someone else that’s willing to buy that piece of property that’s under six feet of water tonight. There will be someone else willing to fall for that dream.”

Stuart was mostly spared from Milton’s wrath, but has been hit before. In 2004, two hurricanes, Frances and Jeanne, thrashed the city in the course of just three weeks. My family didn’t leave then, and they won’t be leaving now.

Hiaasen is also staying put.

“I don’t know where else I could live,” he said. “I mean, where else could I get this kind of material?”

THE CLIMATE FIX

How to reopen a closed nuclear plant

The problem: The U.S. aims to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. But to do that, it’ll need cleaner sources of energy. In 2023, about 60 percent of U.S. electricity generation came from fossil fuels, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The fix: Two companies, Constellation Energy and Holtec International, are currently working on restarting shuttered plants that could be test cases for the somewhat retro future of nuclear power in the U.S.

Constellation recently announced plans to restart one of two nuclear reactors at Three Mile Island, the Pennsylvania nuclear plant that it shut down in 2019. Three Mile Island partly melted down in 1979, in the worst nuclear reactor accident in U.S. history.

And in Michigan, Holtec is working on restarting the Palisades nuclear plant, which shut down in 2022.

The Biden administration is working “in a very concrete way” to restart nuclear plants, Ali Zaidi, the White House climate adviser, told Reuters this week. The White House did not respond to a request for comment about what this might entail.

How it might work: Restarting a nuclear plant takes more than just flipping a switch. First, there’s hiring. Holtec’s work force fell from 600 to 220 when it shut down, but Nick Culp, Holtec’s senior manager of government affairs and communications, said the company intended to be fully staffed by spring. Holtec requalified more than two dozen workers to operate the Palisades plant who will also need to be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, he said.

Then, there’s inspection work. Holtec said in August that the plant’s primary coolant system had been cleaned. The company is working on inspecting the plant’s main turbine and transformers, among other parts, and on moving some of its spent fuel to an on-site storage facility, it said. Holtec aims to have the plant up and running again by the fourth quarter of 2025.

Constellation spent more than a year and a half inspecting the reactor it’s working to restart at Three Mile Island, which will be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center. The company said it planned to spend $1.6 billion to get the reactor operating again and hoped it would reopen in 2028.

Last month, the Biden administration approved a $1.52 billion loan guarantee to help Holtec reopen the plant. Constellation is also reportedly seeking a federal loan guarantee.

The obstacles: Restarting mothballed nuclear reactors takes a lot of time, investment and regulatory approvals. And it would reverse a trend: More than a dozen reactors shut down in the U.S. between 2012 and 2022.

“A lot of people are watching to see how this goes for us,” said Culp, the Holtec senior manager. “When we restart, I think it’s going to change the conversation a bit.”

Public opinion on nuclear energy has also been changing. More than half of Americans in 2023 said they were either strongly or somewhat in favor of nuclear energy — the highest level of public support for the industry in a decade, according to Gallup.

What’s next: The Energy Department said, the country will need 200 gigawatts of added nuclear capacity by midcentury to meet increasing electricity demand while reaching net-zero emissions.

But, as Brad Plumer reported, only one other dormant nuclear plant in the U.S. could plausibly be restarted: the Duane Arnold plant in Iowa. Other reactors that have recently shut down are already being dismantled. — Allison Prang

More climate news:

• Zillow will now show climate risk data on all home listings, The Washington Post reports.

• Tesla is scheduled to introduce a prototype of its self-driving taxi on Thursday, but many experts are doubtful it will hit the road anytime soon, The New York Times reports.

• Some Republicans in Congress pushed back against hurricane-related misinformation coming from members of their own party, CNN reports.

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