Over the weekend, I had an extended Twitter discussion with Philip Eil, news editor of the Providence Phoenix; here’s the (somewhat jumbled) main thread.

During the course of the discussion (in a side thread), Phil asked me for an example of a local global warming advocate who doesn’t quite live like it’s such a dire threat.  Of course, nationally, Al Gore is exhibit #1, but it’s an aggregate impression; specific examples come and go. One occurred to me, yesterday, though.

A few years back, with his children off to college and boarding school, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI) sold one of his two Rhode Island estates and moved permanently into the other.  He offloaded the one in East Side Providence and moved into the ocean drive one in Newport.  That is, when he had to make a decision about a massive financial asset, he chose to keep the $2.3 million property overlooking the supposedly rising oceans.

As a carpenter, I spent a year working on a house directly across that little inland pond, which was once in large part lined with Whitehouse family properties, and a few more years working on one diagonal and across Ocean Ave.  If I’m remembering the architects’ quick structural history lessons correctly, both of those houses sustained massive damage during the hurricane of 1938.

Lots of things go into the decision of which mansion to keep and which to sell, and somebody of Whitehouse’s means might value a few decades of Newport life enough to face the ultimate demise of the property.  Nonetheless, I find it hard to ignore the message sent when the guy who declares that “God won’t save us from climate catastrophe,” and attacks political opponents in irrational terms, proceeds to settle his life where that catastrophe will eat away his personal fortune each year.*

 

*Note that there’s a low, easily flooded, strip of land between the pond and the ocean.  Until the rising seas erase this distinction, the erosion of personal fortune will not be physical, but a matter of increased risk of owning the property… theoretically.