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Plus cheese and eggs, if you want to go all the way.
It was burrito night — I had some tortillas, salsa, guacamole and red onion in my refrigerator, but all our meat was still frozen, and I didn’t have any beans handy. So I did what any climate reporter with an interest in food systems would do and grabbed a pack of meatless “carne asada” I’d picked up out of curiosity and threw it into the mix. The end result was more “huh” than “wow,” but it held its own — with a little help from some hot sauce.
Growing, raising, processing and transporting food is responsible for roughly a quarter of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, nearly 60% of which comes from meat production, according to one estimation. If you're concerned about your personal carbon impact, eating less meat is probably on your to-do list. But what if you still like a carne asada burrito? Thankfully, there are plenty of companies working on satisfying your cravings, no animals involved.
There are lots of other food system concerns that won’t make it into this guide — things like agricultural livelihoods, water use, and animal well-being. But if you’re curious about how fake meats work, what they taste like, and their emissions impact, here’s what you’ll want to know.
Ben Kelley, owner and proprietor of Kelley Farms Kitchen, a vegan restaurant in Harpers Ferry, WV. Ben and his wife Sondra started Kelley Farms after going vegan themselves more than a decade ago. The cafe offers a mix of housemade and commercially available meat alternatives.
Ismael Montanez, the program manager at University of California Berkeley’s Alt Meat Lab, where he’s focused on food and sustainability broadly. He is co-founder and former CTO of plant-based lamb company Black Sheep Foods and eats both meat and plant-based replacements.
Andrea Cecchin, senior agriculture and carbon researcher at HowGood, a sustainability ratings company. Cecchin told me he and his family limit the amount of meat they eat but are focused on a wider plant based diet.
It’s a multi-trillion dollar question, frankly. While the worldwide food system is far more complex than individual consumer choices, shifts in demand for food products, especially among higher-income individuals, have created changes, such tripling the price of quinoa during a boom in its popularity in mid-2010s. The U.S. and China’s growing middle classes also drove a spike in pork demand, only to have that growth slow and reverse in the past few years over health concerns.
The plant-based meat alternatives currently available at your grocery store may be highly processed, but they’re different from the cultivated or “lab-grown” meat coming from a new batch of food companies that seek to “grow” meat from scratch on the cellular level. In theory, this would create direct replacements for things like steaks or fish without actually requiring us to raise actual animals. Almost all of these products are still in the research and development stage, however, and none are currently commercially available in the U.S.
Let’s not mince words: There is no such thing as carbon-neutral beef. How to reduce cattle’s climate impact is an area of active research, encompassing supplements and dietary changes, breeding programs to create animals that process food more efficiently, and even methane-sucking gas masks. There are also ranchers committed to using specific grazing techniques that encourage extra retention of soil carbon, thereby offsetting emissions from cows, but “the science is not there yet” on the scale of sequestration needed for fully carbon-neutral meat, Cecchin says. “Climate-friendly” or “low-carbon” meat labels have been criticized for a lack of data transparency and only represent a 10% reduction in beef emissions overall.
The process of making plant-based mock meats is basically the reverse of their animal version, Montanez explained. While meat is made by processing animals into specific cuts or parts, plant-based replacements use protein-packed flours and other ingredients to build the “meat” back up.
Almost all fake red meat products will have a smaller greenhouse gas impact than their animal versions, Cecchin explained. Compared to a beef burger, the alternatives “really bring down the carbon footprint — the amount of water we need to use, and the amount of land that we use” per unit of food. But for other products, the savings are less clear. Chicken, for instance, has a much lower footprint, meaning replacements have to compete against a “very efficient industry and a very efficient meat.”
Processing details are rarely public, making it difficult to declare other meat replacements automatic emissions winners. “It’s really company by company, and could even be year by year as processing efficiencies change,” Cecchin said, adding that he hopes more companies will show clear evidence of their total emissions, including being specific about what they are comparing against.
Fake animal products are also not the same nutritionally as actual animal products, in ways that can be positive or negative depending on your specific dietary needs. An allergy to soy or wheat gluten would immediately knock out a good portion of these options, and my carne asada came with a warning to anyone “sensitive” to fungi.
There are generally more carbs, less fat, and more fiber in substitutes compared to meat, but protein levels can vary widely, and sodium levels can be high (e.g. Impossible burgers have just as much fat and more salt than a 80% lean beef burger of the same size, though zero cholesterol). As with any processed or prepared food, a look at the nutritional label is well worth it.
The experts all enjoyed the big-name beef replacements — Cecchin even said he has chosen Impossible and Beyond patties over regular burgers while eating out. If you have a little more time, though, Kelley said to skip the fast food fake burgers and make them yourself. Making good tasting meat replacements isn’t all that different from cooking meat itself: spices, technique and how it integrates into a meal makes all the difference. This is the case whether he’s using Impossible beef on the restaurant griddle or hand-making a black bean and chickpea patty. “Just like a raw piece of chicken,” he said, “it's about how you cook it.”
Everyone I spoke to said most breaded chicken replacements match their animal versions pretty well — Montanez even called them “most consistently tasty” than their actual meat equivalents, which for him was enough to justify the slight additional cost. He said he thinks Impossible’s chicken nuggets are the “most convincing” — although he also cautioned that he doesn’t eat a lot of breaded meat products in the first place.
Morningstar Farms’ Chik Patty has been a go-to at-home lunch in my house for nearly three decades, primarily because of that consistency and ease of preparation. (The “buffalo” flavor is by far the best, in my opinion.) Kelley uses Gardein’s Chick’n on one of their most popular sandwiches at the restaurant — they’re a big fan of the company and product.
Don’t expect a lot of options for raw chicken alternatives, however. Montanez suspects the economics of competing with relatively cheap meat isn’t attractive to companies, especially when prepared breaded versions, both animal and plant-based, are already popular.
“Emulating the flavor of American chicken is relatively easy and shouldn't be seen as a significant achievement,” Montanez said. “What’s truly interesting is creating a versatile analog that can withstand the same cooking conditions as real chicken.”
Kelley’s favorite meat replacement is Beyond’s bratwurst sausage, made with pea protein and avocado oil. He uses it in a variety of meals at his cafe, as well as to grill up at home, sometimes adding it to pasta.
Steak and other meats that include marbled fats have been a particularly tricky nut to crack for fake meat producers because the traditional extrusion process makes it difficult to capture fat alongside protein. Montanez told me Juicy Marbles has developed a process capable of doing both, which it’s used to create filet and loin products.
Montanez’s favorite fake bacon is only available in a vegan deli in Berkeley, California, but generally both he and Kelley haven’t found full bacon strips that really match the experience of eating bacon. “There's no way to hold it after you cook it without it drying out,” Kelley said. Instead, he likes using soy [bacon] crumbles in various dishes, including in his potato salad.
The pepperoni and other fermented charcuterie from Prime Roots is “quite impressive, even from a meat eater’s perspective,” Montanez told me. The company starts its process with koji, a strain of fungus that has been part of Japanese cuisine for hundreds of years, including in the product of soy sauces and sake.
The deli slices Kelley uses in sandwiches like reubens or Italian hoagies are made with seitan or a mix of seitan and soy, from a variety of companies. But the Tofurky brand (not just turkey) is one of their favorites. “We are always testing new recipes of our own and using reliable and ethical companies that we grew up loving,” he said.
Kelley has yet to be convinced by most seafood replacements, he told me. “All the seafood is kind of just the same as the chicken replacements,” he said. Instead, he uses unripe jackfruit – a common meat replacement with a stringy texture – hearts of palm, and spices to replicate crab cakes. Having an exact match isn’t always a priority for Kelley, who’d rather highlight an ingredient that serves as a replacement rather than calling it by its faux name. His lobster roll replacement is made with hearts of palm, but it’s not “vegan lobster” on his menu, it’s a “hearts of palm” roll.
Texture is a “very difficult thing in seafood,” Montanez said. “I haven't seen anything myself where it is 100% convincing,” but he points out companies like Impact Food that are making plant-based sushi without extrusion or fermentation, currently available in some New York and California restaurants.
Montanez also called out vegan cheese as a category that struggles to match its original, citing texture, not flavor, as the sticking point, especially when it needs to work in a multitude of different recipes. “You might see a vegan cheese that’s okay applied in pieces,” he said, “but it's only as good if you put it in pizza oven temperatures.” An exception to the rule for him is Climax Foods’ blue cheese, which almost pulled off a Judgment of Paris-like upset in a food competition this year before being removed from the running.
Montanez identified Quorn as a brand that’s not trying to replicate meat exactly, but tastes good on its own. The British company has a wide range of no-meat products that feel like they could have a home in a Tesco, from a vegan Yorkshire ham to mini sausage rolls to “picnic eggs.”
Approaches to fake meat taste fall on a spectrum. On one end are companies that try to replicate as closely as possible the taste, texture, and smell of some specific meat product — say, a chicken nugget. (Your personal mileage may vary when it comes to replicas of more complicated meat cuts such as steaks or pork chops.) On the other end are brands that offer a functional, hopefully flavorful replacement for meat in a meal but otherwise aren’t trying to fool anyone.
The former approach involves more materials science and chemistry, Montanez told me. For example, Impossible makes a soy version of a key molecule in meat known as heme and combines it with a carefully calibrated proportion of sugars, fats, and water to induce the Maillard reaction, the process that makes meat brown and form a crust. It’s possible to create a similar meaty flavor profile without heme (Impossible has a patent on their version), but they have their own complications.
“It’s those sugars reacting with the proteins and creating these molecules that ultimately result in a meaty aroma or flavor,” Montanez said.
Kelley Farm’s menu is a good example of the wider ingredient possibilities of meat replacements beyond this approach. In addition to Impossible patties, Beyond brats, and Gardein’s Chick’n, the restaurant also serves deli meat replacements made with seitan (basically textured wheat gluten); folded eggs made from mung beans; BBQ pulled pork made from jackfruit, which mimics that stringy texture naturally (I’ve had both Kelley Farms’ barbeque sandwich and commercial jackfruit BBQ versions and would happily eat either again); and a burger patty that’s their own mix of chickpeas and black beans.
It’s also worth noting that there is a more literal approach to eating a plant-based diet that’s already the standard in many other countries — that is, rather than replacing meat products with fake meat products, just eat more plants. If you feel like you’re missing out on protein, beans, lentils, tofu, and certain grains like quinoa, farro or teff, have high amounts.
Highly engineered meat substitutes are often more expensive than the animal products they are replacing, so if you’re struggling with hunger, have specific dietary requirements, anxiety around food, or an eating disorder, concerns about emissions shouldn’t even enter the picture.
For that matter, just reorienting your approach to eating meat saves a lot of carbon on its own. Kelley told me he reaches for meat replacements when he’s craving something specific, while Cecchin prefers meat alternatives when he’s eating out.
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The more Hurricanes Helene and Milton we get, the harder it is to ignore the need.
As the southeastern U.S. recovers from hurricanes Helene and Milton, the destruction the storms have left behind serves to underline the obvious: The need for technologies that support climate change adaptation and resilience is both real and urgent. And while nearly all the money in climate finance still flows into mitigation tech, which seeks to lower emissions to alleviate tomorrow’s harm, at long last, there are signs that interest and funding for the adaptation space is picking up.
The emergence and success of climate resilience advisory and investment firms such as Tailwind Climate and The Lightsmith Group are two signs of this shift. Founded just last year, Tailwind recently published a taxonomy of activities and financing across the various sectors of adaptation and resilience solutions to help clients understand opportunity areas in the space. Next year, the firm’s co-founder Katie MacDonald told me, Tailwind will likely begin raising its first fund. It’s already invested in one company, UK-based Cryogenx, which makes a portable cooling vest to rapidly reduce the temperature of patients experiencing heatstroke.
As for Lightsmith, the firm held the final close of its $186 million growth equity fund for climate adaptation solutions in 2022, which co-founder and managing director Jay Koh told me is one of the first, if not the first fund with a climate resilience focus. As Koh sees it, the evolution of climate adaptation and resilience technologies can be broken up into three stages, the first being “reactive and incremental.” That’s largely where we’re at right now, he said — think rebuilding a dam higher after it’s been breached in a flood, or making a firebreak broader after a destructive wildfire. Where he’s seeing interesting companies emerge, though, is in the more proactive second stage, which often involves anticipating and preparing for extreme weather events. “Let’s do a lot more data and analytics ahead of time. Let’s deploy more weather satellites. Let’s look at deploying artificial intelligence and other technologies to do better forecasting,” Koh explained to me.
The third and final stage, he said, could be categorized as “systemic or transcendent adaptation,” which involves systems-level changes as opposed to incremental improvements. Source Global, one of Lightsmith’s portfolio companies which makes solar-powered hydropanels that produce affordable drinking water, is an example of this. As Koh told me, “It’s not simply improving the efficiency of desalination filters by 5% or 10%. It’s saying, listen, we’re going to pull water out of the air in a way that we have never done before.”
But while the activity and interest around adaptation tech may be growing, the money just isn’t there yet. “We’re easily $50 [billion] to $60 billion below where we need to be today,” MacDonald told me. “And you know, we’re on the order of around $150 [billion] to $160 billion below where we need to be by 2030.” Everyone else I spoke with echoed the sentiment. “The latest statistics are that less than 5% of total climate finance tracked on planet Earth is attributable to adaptation and climate resilience,” Koh said. “Of that, less than 2% is private investment.”
There’s a few reasons why early-stage investors especially may be hesitant to throw their weight behind adaptation tech despite the clear need in the market. Amy Francetic, co-founder and managing general partner at Buoyant Ventures, which focuses on early-stage digital solutions for climate risk, told me that the main customer for adaptation solutions is often a government entity. “Municipalities and other government contracts, they’re hard to win, they’re slow to win, and they don’t pay that much, either, which is the problem.” Francetic told me. “So it’s not a great customer to have.”
One of Buoyant’s portfolio companies, the now defunct StormSensor, reinforced this lesson for Francetic. The company used sensors to track water flow within storm and sewage systems to prevent flooding and was able to arrange pilot projects with plenty of water agencies — but few of them converted into paying contracts. “The municipalities were willing to spend money on an experiment, but not so many of them had a larger budget.” Francetic told me. The same dynamic, she said, is also at play in the utility industry, where you often hear about new tech succumbing to “death by pilot.”
It’s not all doom and gloom, though, when it comes to working with larger, risk-averse agencies. AiDash, another of Lightsmith’s portfolio companies that uses artificial intelligence to help utilities assess and address wildfire risk, has five utility partnerships, and earlier this year raised $58.5 million in an oversubscribed Series C round. Francetic and MacDonald both told me they’re seeing the conversation around climate adaptation evolve to include more industry stakeholders. In the past, Francetic said, discussing resilience and adaptation was almost seen as a form of climate doomerism. “They said, oh, why are you doing that? It shows that you’re giving up.” But now, MacDonald told me that her experience at this year’s climate week in New York was defined by productive conversations with representatives from the insurance industry, banking sector, and venture capital arena about injecting more capital into the space.
Bill Clerico, the founder and managing partner of the venture firm Convective Capital, is also deeply familiar with the tricky dynamics of climate adaptation funding. Convective, founded in 2022, is solely dedicated to wildfire tech solutions. The firm’s portfolio companies span a range of technologies that address suppression, early identification, prevention, and insurance against damages, and are mainly looking to work with utilities, governments, and insurance companies. When I talked to Clerico back in August, he (understatedly) categorized these establishments as “not necessarily the most fast-moving or innovative.” But the bleak silver lining, he told me, is that extreme weather is forcing them to up their tempo. “There is so much destruction happening so frequently that it’s forcing a lot of these institutions to think about it totally differently and to embrace newer, more novel solutions — and to do it quickly.”
People, it seems, are starting to get real. But investors and startups alike are also just beginning to define exactly what adaptation tech encompasses and what metrics for success look like when they’re less measurable than, say, the tons of carbon sucked out of the atmosphere via direct air capture, or the amount of energy produced by a fusion reactor.
“Nobody wakes up in the morning and buys a loaf of adaptation. You don’t drive around in an adaptation or live in an adaptation,” Koh noted. “What you want is food, transport, shelter, water that is resilient and adapted to the effects of climate change.” What Koh and the team at Lightsmith have found is that many of the companies working on these solutions are hiding in plain sight. “They call themselves business continuity or water efficiency or agricultural precision technologies or supply chain management in the face of weather volatility,” Koh explained.
In this way, the scope of adaptation technology balloons far beyond what is traditionally climate-coded. Lightsmith recently invested in a Brazil-based digital health company called Beep Saude, which enables patients to get rapid, in-home diagnostics, vaccination services, and infusion therapies. It falls under the umbrella of climate adaptation tech, Koh told me, because rising temperatures, increased rainfall, and deforestation in the country have led to a rapid increase in mosquitoes spreading diseases such as dengue fever and the Zika virus.
Naturally, measuring the efficacy of solutions that span such a vast problem space means a lot of customization. “Your metric might be, how many people have asked for water in a drought-prone area?” MacDonald told me. “And with health, it might be, how many children are safe from wildfire smoke during fire season? And for ecosystems, it might be, how many hectares of ecosystem have been saved as a means to reduce storm surge?” Insurance also brings up a host of additional metrics. As Francetic told me, “we measure things like lives and livelihoods covered or addressed. We measure things like losses covered or underwriting dollars spent on this.”
No matter how you categorize it or measure it, the need for these technologies is not going away. “The drivers of adaptation and climate resilience demand are physics and time,” Koh told me. “Whoever develops climate resilience and adaptation technology will have a competitive advantage over any other company, any other society, and the faster that we can scale it up, and the smarter and more equitable we are about deploying it, the better off we will all be.”
On the Cybercab rollout, methane leaks, and Taylor Swift
Current conditions: England just had its one of its worst crop harvests ever due to extreme rainfall last winter • Nevada and Arizona could see record-breaking heat today, while freeze warnings are in effect in four northeastern states • The death toll from Hurricane Milton has climbed to 16.
Tesla unveiled a prototype of its “Cybercab” self-driving robotaxi last night at an investor event in California. The 2-seater vehicle has no steering wheel or pedals, and will feature wireless induction charging. CEO Elon Musk said the vehicle will cost less than $30,000, with the goal of starting production by 2027, depending on regulatory approvals. At the same event, Musk unveiled the autonomous “Robovan,” which can carry 20 people.
Tesla
A UN expert group agreed this week on some key rules around carbon markets and carbon crediting. This will be a major topic at COP29 next month, where negotiators will be tasked with deciding how countries can use international carbon markets. As the Financial Timesexplained, a carbon market “would allow governments to claim other countries’ emission cuts towards their own climate targets by trading instruments that represent one tonne of carbon dioxide removed or saved from the atmosphere.” The experts this week said projects seeking carbon credits will have to carry out an extensive risk assessment process aimed at flagging and preventing human rights abuses and environmental harm. The assessment will be reviewed by external auditors.
The first detections from Carbon Mapper’s Tanager-1 satellite are in, just two months after the satellite launched. It spotted a 2.5-mile-long methane plume spewing from a landfill in Pakistan, which Carbon Mapper estimates could be releasing 2,600 pounds of methane per hour. It also identified a methane plume in the oilfields of the Permian Basin in Texas, estimated to be releasing 900 pounds of methane hourly. And it found a carbon dioxide plume over a coal-fired power plant in South Africa releasing roughly 1.3 million pounds of CO2 per hour.
A Permian Basin methane plume.Carbon Mapper
In a press release, the company said the observations were “a preview of what’s to come as Carbon Mapper will leverage Tanager-1 to scale-up emissions observations at unprecedented sensitivity across large areas.”
As the cleanup efforts continue in the southeast after back-to-back hurricanes Helene and Milton devastated the region, pop star Taylor Swift announced she is donating $5 million to relief efforts. Specifically she has given money to a national food bank organization called Feeding America. The charity’s CEO said the funds “will help communities rebuild and recover, providing essential food, clean water, and supplies to people affected by these devastating storms.” Last week country music legend Dolly Parton said she personally donated $1 million to the Mountain Ways Foundation, and then another $1 million through her Dollywood foundation.
AccuWeather estimated that Milton caused up to $180 billion in economic losses, and Helene caused up to $250 billion in losses. Two rapid attribution studies out of Imperial College London found that human-caused climate change could be credited for roughly half the economic damages from the storms. “This analysis clearly shows that our failure to stop burning fossil fuels is already resulting in incredible economic losses,” said Dr. Friederike Otto, co-founder of World Weather Attribution.
In Rhode Island, the Providence City Council passed an amendment this week that bans the construction of new gas stations “while prioritizing the development and installation of electric vehicle charging stations.” That would make Providence the first city on the East Coast to enact such a ban. Mayor Brett Smiley could veto it, but the city council could override a veto with a two-thirds majority, The Boston Globereported. Several towns in California have already banned new gas pumps.
Chiquita has developed a new hybrid banana variety it says is resistant to some fungal diseases that have threatened the future of America’s most popular fruit. The variety is called Yelloway 1.
Chiquita Brands International
It’s known as the 50% rule, and Southwest Florida hates it.
After the storm, we rebuild. That’s the mantra repeated by residents, businesses and elected officials after any big storm. Hurricane Milton may have avoided the worst case scenario of a direct hit on the Tampa Bay area, but communities south of Tampa experienced heavy flooding just a couple weeks after being hit by Hurricane Helene.
While the damage is still being assessed in Sarasota County’s barrier islands, homes that require extensive renovations will almost certainly run up against what is known as the 50% rule — or, in Southwest Florida, the “dreaded 50% rule.”
In flood zone-situated communities eligible to receive insurance from the National Flood Insurance Program, any renovations to repair “substantial damage” — defined as repairs whose cost exceeds 50% of the value of the structure (not the land, which can often be quite valuable due to its proximity to the water) — must bring the entire structure “into compliance with current local floodplain management standards.” In practice, this typically means elevating the home above what FEMA defines as the area’s “base flood elevation,” which is the level that a “100-year-flood” would reach, plus some amount determined by the building code.
The rule almost invites conflict. Because just as much as local communities and homeowners want to restore things to the way they were, the federal government doesn’t want to insure structures that are simply going to get destroyed. On Siesta Key, where Milton made landfall, the base flood elevation ranges from 7 feet to 9 feet, meaning that elevating a home to comply with flood codes could be beyond the means — or at least the insurance payouts — of some homeowners.
“You got a 1952 house that’s 1,400 square feet, and you get 4 feet of water,” Jeff Brandes, a former state legislator and president of the Florida Policy Project, told me on Wednesday, explaining how the rule could have played out in Tampa. “That means new kitchens and new bathrooms, all new flooring and baseboards and drywall to 4 or 5 feet.” That kind of claim could easily run to $150,000, which might well surpass the FEMA threshold. “Now all of the sudden you get into the 50% rule that you have the entire house up to current code levels. But then you have to do another half-a-million above what [insurance] paid you.”
Simple probability calculations show that a 100-year flood (which is really a flood elevation that has a 1-in-100 chance of occurring every year) has a more than 25% chance of occurring during the lifetime of a mortgage. If you browse Siesta Key real estate on Zillow, much of it is given a 100% chance of flooding sometime over the course of a 30-year mortgage, according to data analysis by First Street.
Sarasota County as a whole has around 62,000 NFIP policies with some $16.6 billion in total coverage (although more than 80% percent of households have no flood insurance at all). Considering that flood insurance is required in high-risk areas for federally-backed mortgages and for new homeowners insurance policies written by Florida’s state backed property insurer of last resort, Citizens, FEMA is likely to take a close interest in whether communities affected by Milton and Helene are complying with its rules.
If 2022’s Hurricane Ian is any indication, squabbles over the 50% rule are almost certain to emerge — and soon.
Earlier this year, FEMA told Lee County, which includes Fort Myers and Cape Coral, that it was rescinding the discount its residents and a handful of towns within it receive on flood insurance because, the agency claimed, more than 600 homeowners had violated the 50% rule after Hurricane Ian. Following an outcry from local officials and congressional representatives, FEMA restored the discount.
In their efforts to avoid triggering the rule, homeowners are hardly rogue actors. Local governments often actively assist them.
FEMA had initiated a similar procedure in Lee County the year before, threatening to drop homeowners from the flood insurance program for using possibly inaccurate appraisals to avoid the 50% rule before eventually relenting. The Fort Myers News Press reported that the appraisals were provided by the county, which was deliberately “lowering the amount that residents could use to calculate their repairs or rebuilds” to avoid triggering the rule.
Less than a month after Ian swept through Southwest Florida, Cape Coral advised residents to delay and slow down repairs for the same reason, as the rule there applied to money spent on repairs over the course of a year. Some highly exposed coastal communities in Pinellas County have been adjusting their “lookback rules” — the period over which repairs are totaled to see if they hit the 50% rule — to make them shorter so homeowners are less likely to have to make the substantive repairs required.
This followed similar actions by local governments in Charlotte County. As the Punta Gordon Sun put it, “City Council members learned the federal regulation impacts its homeowners — and they decided to do something about it.” In the Sarasota County community of North Port, local officials scrapped a rule that added up repair costs over a five-year period to make it possible for homeowners to rebuild without triggering elevation requirements.
When the 50% rule “works,” it can lead to the communities most affected by big storms being fundamentally changed, both in terms of the structures that are built and who occupies them. The end result of the rebuilding following Helene and Milton — or the next big storm to hit Florida’s Gulf Coast — or the one after that, and so on — may be wealthier homeowners in more resilient homes essentially serving as a flood barrier for everyone else, and picking up more of the bill if the waters rise too high again.
Florida’s Gulf Coast has long been seen as a place where the middle class can afford beachfront property. Elected officials’ resistance to the FEMA rule only goes to show just how important keeping a lid on the cost of living — quite literally, the cost of legally inhabiting a structure — is to the voters and residents they represent.
Still, said Brandes, “There’s the right way to come out of this thing. The wrong way is to build exactly back what you built before.”