The Geography of Risk

On this rebroadcast of the Ship to Shore podcast from May 2019, host Robert Frump is joined by Gilbert M. Gaul to discuss his (then) new book, The Geography of Risk, Epic Storms, Rising Seas, and the Cost of America's Coasts.  Gaul reveals what he characterizes as the confounding array of federal subsidies, tax breaks, low-interest loans, grants, and government flood insurance that shift the risk of life at the beach from private investors to public taxpayers, radically distorting common notions of risk. Gaul argues that these federal incentives have resulted in one of the worst planning failures in American history, and the costs to taxpayers are reaching unsustainable levels. Gaul twice won the Pulitzer Prize and has been short-listed for the Pulitzer four other times. For more than thirty-five years, he worked as an investigative journalist for The Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and other newspapers. He is the author of three previous books and lives in New Jersey.