Climate Liar David Perdue Enjoys A Beachfront Home W. Expensive Protections From Rising Sea Levels

[hatrack]

If Sen. David Perdue wins reelection in Georgia’s runoff in January, the Republican Party will almost certainly maintain its Senate majority. Perdue, an outspoken climate denier, urged President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords; voted against a Senate resolution that affirmed that climate change is real and that human activities contribute to it; and dismissed the Green New Deal as a “socialist wish list.” The one-term senator, who is a first cousin of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and golfing buddy of Trump, also vowed to protect the coal industry and was endorsed by the Koch-affiliated Super PAC, Americans for Prosperity. If Perdue wins, the potential for the Biden administration to respond to the global climate crisis will be greatly diminished.

But even while Perdue publicly rejects the scientific consensus about climate change, the Georgia senator and former CEO of Dollar General is part of a gated beachfront community that has taken the global phenomenon and its consequences extremely seriously. Perdue owns a more than 9,000 square-foot mansion with six bathrooms, arched doorways, and a pool on Sea Island, a gated community on St. Simons Island, the wealthiest ZIP code in the state. Over the past few years, as sea-level rise has accelerated, the Sea Island Company, which owns the island resort, has constructed an elaborate and expensive system of jetties and sea walls in an effort to protect the lavish homes there. According to his federal disclosure forms, Perdue’s net worth is somewhere between $13.7 million and $39.8 million.

Although it is just steps from the water in an area of Sea Island known as Ocean Forest, Perdue’s home — and the entire community — has been protected from the ravages of the quickly changing climate, giving the senator the privilege of dismissing the phenomenon even as his home is carefully girded against it. The Sea Island Company has built a sea wall, as well as three jetties, that combat beach erosion. And the company regularly collects massive amounts of sand from the southern jetty and redistributes it to other beaches along the island.

“Senator Perdue is lucky,” said Megan Desrosiers, president and CEO of One Hundred Miles, a Georgia-based environmental group that sued unsuccessfully in 2016 to stop the Sea Island Company from developing a narrow spit of land for the development of eight more multimillion-dollar homes on the grounds that it would disrupt sea turtle and shorebird habitat and potentially increase erosion. “The philosophy of the Sea Island Company is that you can just engineer a solution to everything,” said Desrosiers. “Whether they acknowledge climate change or not, every year the Sea Island Company is putting in money to protect the people who live there. No other place in coastal Georgia has this kind of money to protect the people who live on these islands.”

EDIT

https://theintercept.com/2020/11/12/david-perdue-georgia-senate-climate-change/

[CurtEastPoint]

1. Georgia suffers from these two privileged RICH assholes: Perdue and Loeffler. Vote them out.

I surely plan to.

[modrepub]

2. Joke's On Him (and Whoever Insures That Place)

If things run their course, sea level rise in a warming world is going to be measured in 10s of meters not inches and centimeters. No one is going to be able to hold the sea back at that magnitude.

I'm sure these folks will expect and get a government hand out in terms of getting beach replenishment, infrastructure enhancements and government backed property insurance.

I suggest climate deniers get free burial on their beloved beach front properties. Weigh down their coffins so they don't float away. Their decedents will have to visit them in boats and scuba gear and be reminded of the implications of their actions when they were alive.