Should we be getting a little concerned?

• Venice is inundated and locals fear the old city isdoomed.
• London struggles to find engineering solutions to hold backregular flood threats from the Thames.
• Recent scientific studies suggest the viability of major Asiancoastal cities is under serious threat in coming decades…likesoon.
• Here in the U.S., tinder-dry California suburbs recently dealwith another round of worsening annual brush fires, which lead tomud slides in the ever-shorter rainy seasons.
• Miami Beach now floods on at least a monthly basis. The entireEastern Seaboard is increasingly vulnerable to rising tidal levels,including the coastlines in the New York metropolitan area.
• Below sea level New Orleans is only one of the major citiesalong the Mississippi River vulnerable to extreme flooding whilesections of the Gulf Coast erode in the face of rising tides.
• Unrestrained development in Houston has created a vast floodplain at risk to increasingly powerful Gulf storms.
• West of Denver to the California Coast the problem is toolittle water as mountain runoff into the Colorado River doesn'tprovide enough to supply increasing populations in vast dry ordrying out regions.

Should we be following this course?

• The US pulls out of the Paris climate accords, abdicating aglobal leadership role to deal with climate change.
• Various environmental restrictions are eased to allowdevelopment in watershed areas or permit various forms of farm andindustry related pollution to flow into available watersources.
• Air pollution and CO2 emission rules are weakened while federallands are opened to more oil and gas drilling (that could lead tomore not less CO2 emissions).

The US is clearly back tracking from Nixon era clean air andwater acts which had demonstrably improved the nation's environmentand public health.

And the real estate industry—where does it stand?