Trump rejects climate science, but his Mar-a-Lago club could be lost to the sea – Floridians in Palm Beach spend millions to deal with rising seas

Desdemona Despair

By Michael Smith and Jonathan Levin
16 December 2016

(Bloomberg Businessweek) – Donald Trump shelled out $409,759 for property taxes in 2016 on Mar-a-Lago, his oceanfront club above billionaire’s row in Palm Beach, Florida. Some of those tax dollars will go toward combating the ravages of climate change, a phenomenon the president-elect has dismissed as a hoax. Trump tweeted in 2012 that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese” to make U.S. industry less competitive. In early December he told Fox News that “nobody really knows” whether climate change is real. He’s picked Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a staunch denier of climate change, to run the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

That’s not stopping officials in Palm Beach from preparing to deal with its effects. This year, the town overhauled 12 pumping stations to push storm runoff up a huge pipe to the Intracoastal Waterway under a 20-year, $120 million infrastructure plan to deal with increased rainfall and street flooding, among other issues. Palm Beach’s system can now suck up almost 1 million gallons of runoff a minute. “I just deal with the reality that sea levels are rising,” says Palm Beach Town Manager Thomas Bradford. “I don’t want to rile people up about it.” [more]

Trump Rejects Climate Change, but Mar-a-Lago Could Be Lost to the Sea