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Amy Knight, Stéphanie Barral, Max Besbris, Caleb Scoville, On Rebecca Elliott’s Underwater: Loss, Flood Insurance, and the Moral Economy of Climate Change in the United States, Columbia University Press, 2021, Socio-Economic Review, Volume 21, Issue 3, July 2023, Pages 1823–1833, https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwad017
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Correspondence: [email protected]
Seven years after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy on the east coast of the USA, a small community on the Pacific Coast stared down their own flood risk profile. Sea level rise projections had just increased from 6 to 10 feet by 2100, a figure that would send entire neighborhoods underwater. In response, the city council of Del Mar, California, rejected a state recommendation to implement a strategy of managed retreat. Defending this choice, then-mayor David Druker said, ‘Del Martians will deal with it [sea level rise] when they see the actual impacts of global warming on a more weekly, yearly basis. And until that happens, it’s still theoretical’ (St. John, 2019). As residents affected by Hurricane Sandy know and as Rebecca Elliott’s book reminds us, the impacts of climate change are not merely theoretical. As the floodwaters lap at doorsteps in Florida and wildfires tear through suburbs in California, it has become clear that cities must change or continue to face destruction. The question is—in the face of enormous loss, who bears responsibility for this change? In Underwater: Loss, Flood Insurance, and the Moral Economy of Climate Change in the United States, Rebecca Elliott’s singular achievement is creating a sociological framework for confronting this question.
