The Washington Post - 02.11.2019

A2 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2 , 2019

reddest place in Iowa,” said Tam- my Growth, a 48-year-old pastor. “His willingness to listen to every- one is what attracted me to listen to him.” Ryan Holliday, 40, who had traveled from Galveston, Tex., was hurt because, he said, O’Rourke didn’t plan his campaign for years like some candidates who outlast- ed him. “It’s so disappointing that he did this before Super Tuesday,” Holliday said. “We have all these new voters coming out, and we needed him to come to Texas.” Rosia Dumey, 35, said that O’Rourke was unfairly dismissed by Democrats who made fun of his Spanish speaking, blaming the party’s focus on winning back white voters in the Midwest. “They just lost Texas,” said Dumey, who had driven from the Fort Worth area. “Do you think we’re going to do this for other candidates? No. We knew what we had in Beto.” When O’Rourke arrived, he began by thanking his supporters “We’ll miss you!” a supporter cried out. “Beto! Beto! Beto!” a chant began. O’Rourke stood in the center of the swarm of people and spoke on a sound system that wasn’t always loud enough. He had made the decision so recently and so reluc- tantly, he said, that his wife could not be by his side and was instead in El Paso with their children. He spoke of his campaign’s ad- vocacy of action on climate change, guns, structural racism and immigration and pushing back against Trump. “I will do everything that I can to support the eventual nominee.

... I will still be part of all of the
causes that brought us together,”
he said. “I will still be part of the
fight, and so will you.”
[email protected]
[email protected]

David Weigel contributed to this report.

knew that the most fundamental of them is fear — the fear that Donald Trump wants us to feel about one another; the very real fear that too many in this country live under; and the fear we sometimes feel when it comes to doing the right thing, especially when it runs counter to what is politically convenient or popular.” Trump quickly mocked O’Rourke on Twitter as his decision became known. “Oh no, Beto just dropped out of race for President despite him saying he was ‘born for this.’ I don’t think so!” Trump wrote, in a reference to O’Rourke’s quote in Vanity Fair that he was “born to be in it.” Steve Ortega, who once served on El Paso’s city council with O’Rourke, said he learned that his close friend had dropped out of the race when reporters called him Friday evening. “I’m proud of him. I’m proud of the race he ran.... Part of his charm is what hurt him in a race like this. He’s not testing and polling everything he says. He speaks from his heart.... He shot from the hip and wasn’t running the traditional campaign with the canned lines,” Ortega said. He said that while O’Rourke focused on immigration and gun control, voters in key states might have wanted to hear about other issues. “I’m glad that he ran, being from El Paso, because he brought a needed voice to border issues and gun control issues.” The news of O’Rourke’s decision slowly arrived at a rally he had planned Friday on the river- front in Des Moines. Tickets were still being distributed at an en- trance, and some supporters ex- pressed disbelief at the news, ask- ing to be shown some proof. Volunteers, some of whom had awoken early to decorate a park and line the road with signs, hugged each other, wept and sometimes screamed expletives. “I saw him in Sioux Center, the

my service will not be as a candidate nor as the nominee of this party for the presidency.” The moment was a sober end to a campaign that began with am- ple optimism. He attracted top political talent — Jennifer O’Mal- ley Dillon, one of the most sought- after Democratic consultants, was his campaign manager — and he had one of the field’s best fundraising hauls on his first day as a presidential candidate. But what had seemed sponta- neous and refreshing in a Senate campaign — constantly live- streaming activities both person- al and political, driving his own car and going on treks off the beaten political path — never ful- ly translated for presidential voters. Early social media posts — including one in which he broad- cast a trip to the dentist — rein- forced an impression that he was self-involved and lacked sub- stance. He made little impression during debates. In the final debate in which he would take part, he was dressed down by South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, one of his competitors as a fresh Demo- cratic face. A fellow Texan, former San Antonio mayor Julián Castro, likewise belittled him on another debate stage. In both cases, O’Rourke was visibly stunned. He was also struggling to meet the polling threshold to be part of the next debate, and with dona- tions drying up, aides said he faced a decision: He could cut staff to save money and then spend that money on ads to lift his standing in the polls — or he could end the campaign. He made the decision to drop out on Thursday morning, according to a campaign aide. “I decided to run for President because I believed that I could help bring a divided country together in common cause to con- front the greatest set of challeng- es we’ve ever faced,” O’Rourke wrote in a Medium blog post an- nouncing his decision. “I also

O’Rourke’s departure demon- strated the winnowing of what began as a historically large and diverse presidential field and now is largely controlled by four candidates, all of them white, most of them in their 70s, and two of them far to the left ideologically. His decision, coupled with Biden’s and Harris’s difficulties, leaves es- tablishment moderates worried about the shape of the race three months before the Iowa caucuses. O’Rourke, 47, was supposed to be the sort of candidate that Dem- ocratic voters would embrace: a young, charismatic politician who spoke passionately about uniting a divided country and embraced social media in a way that garnered him a large follow- ing when he unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate from Texas last year against Sen. Ted Cruz (R). He had lived most of his life on the border, spoke Spanish fluently and made reaching out to diverse communities a cornerstone of his campaign. The former punk rock musician and three-term con- gressman hated labels and often operated on his own, indepen- dently of the Democratic Party. He didn’t have a pollster and said he tried to follow his heart instead of the crowd. But it wasn’t always clear what O’Rourke’s heart was telling him. He launched his campaign with- out a manager or a clear plan, instead choosing to go on a listen- ing tour of the country, starting in Iowa, a place he had never visited. He declared that his top issue was combating climate change, later shifting toward bringing what he said was needed humani- ty to the U.S. immigration system and, later, fighting hate. After a deadly shooting in his native El Paso in August, he shifted toward gun control. He merged moderate positions on some issues with stances that even some Democrats criticized as extreme, including a proposal for a mandatory buyback pro- gram for military-style weapons that Republicans seized on to lambaste the entire Democratic field. As his presidential campaign foundered in recent months, he was encouraged to jump into the 2020 Senate race in Texas, but he repeatedly declined. Two people close to him said Friday that he would not run against Republi- can incumbent John Cornyn, leaving his political future un- clear. As O’Rourke comforted supporters in Des Moines on Fri- day evening, he promised to continue fighting for the issues he highlighted during his campaign. He repeatedly insisted that he’s optimistic about the future. “This is a campaign that has prided itself on seeing things clearly and on speaking honestly, and on acting decisively,” he told a group of shocked supporters in Des Moines, where he had been scheduled to attend a multicandi- date dinner. “We have to clearly see at this point that we do not have the means to pursue this campaign successfully. And that

O’ROURKE FROM A

CORRECTION

A caption in a photo essay about a man reentering society after 15 years in prison in the Washington Post Magazine, which was printed in advance, incorrectly says the subject visited Orchid Beach. It is Orchard Beach in the Bronx.

Twitter to ban political ads ahead of 2020

Twitter on Wednesday said it would ban all advertisements about political candidates, elections and hot-button policy issues such as abortion and immigration, a significant shift that comes in response to growing concerns that politicians are seizing on the vast reach of social media to deceive voters ahead of the 2020 election. washingtonpost.com/business

Park service ends plan to make protesters pay

The National Park Service announced it is withdrawing a proposal that could have made protesters repay the federal government for the cost of security at demonstrations. washingtonpost.com/local

The Washington Post is committed to correcting errors that appear in the newspaper. Those interested in contacting the paper for that purpose can: Email: [email protected]. Call: 202-334-6000, and ask to be connected to the desk involved — National, Foreign, Metro, Style, Sports, Business or any of the weekly sections. Comments can be directed to The Post’s reader advocate, who can be reached at 202-334-7582 or [email protected].

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Some reports that you may have missed. Read more at washingtonpost.com.

Calif. Rep. Katie Hill

quits over ethics probe

Rep. Katie Hill announced her
resignation from Congress amid
an ethics inquiry into allegations
that she had an intimate
relationship with a staff member
in her office. Hill, 32, who flipped
a Republican-held seat in a
district northeast of Los Angeles,
was seen as a rising star in the
Democratic Party.
washingtonpost.com/national

London Fire Brigade

faulted in tower blaze

Fewer people would have died
in the deadly Grenfell Tower fire
on June 14, 2017, if the London
Fire Brigade had evacuated the
burning building sooner, a public
inquiry found. The fire at the 24-
story public housing complex
killed 72 people.
washingtonpost.com/world

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BY CHRIS MOONEY

Rising seas will be much worse
and more expensive to deal with
than previously thought, new re-
search finds, not because of faster
changes in sea levels but because of
an increase in estimates of the
number of people living on low
ground.
The upshot of the study is that
110 million people worldwide live
below the high-tide level; that in-
cludes many partly protected by
sea walls or other infrastructure, as
in New Orleans. Even under a sce-
nario of very modest climate
change, that number will rise to
150 million in 2050 and 190 million
by 2100.
If climate change and sea level
rise follow a worse path, as many as
340 million people living below the
high-tide level could be in peril, to
say nothing of how many could be
affected by floods and extreme
events.
Such figures are three times — or
more — higher than earlier esti-
mates.
“We’ve had a huge blind spot as
to the degree of danger, and that’s
what we’ve been striving to im-
prove,” said Benjamin Strauss of
Climate Central, who wrote the
new study in Nature Communica-

tions with colleague Scott Kulp. The reason for the big change is that prior research has relied on data about coastal elevations that comes from radar measurements from the 2000 space shuttle En- deavor mission. But that data set has problems. The instrument de- tected the height not only of the coastal land surface but anything else that was on it, such as houses and trees. This introduced errors in land-elevation estimates averaging about 6½ feet globally, the new study says. “For all of the resources we have rightly invested in improving our sea level projections, we didn’t know the height of the ground be- neath our feet,” Strauss said. Some wealthy countries, such as the United States, have used laser- based coastal measurements to gain more accuracy, but most have not been able to do so. The new study uses the more accurate U.S. measurements as a guide, training an algorithm to ap- ply similar adjustments to the global data set from the space shuttle. This is where the much higher numbers for exposed populations come from, with the biggest changes in exposure coming for countries in Asia. “In terms of global estimates, I

think the analysis convincingly shows that the situation is prob- ably even worse than previous studies suggested,” said Stéphane Hallegatte, an economist at the World Bank who studies climate change and disaster exposure. “We are talking about hundreds of mil- lions of people who will be directly exposed.” The changes are certainly very large. The study estimates that 110 million people live below the current high-tide level vs. an estimated 28 million for the older data set. About 250 million people would fall below the level of the worst yearly flood, the study says, up from the previous estimate of 65 million. Projections illustrate how exposed people will be as seas continue to rise. The study considers a scenario that would lead to 2 degrees Cel- sius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, of global warming by 2100, the tem- perature rise that world leaders have set as an absolute limit. The study projects that 150 million people would live below the high tide line by 2050 and 200 million by

Those exposed to an annual
flood in that year would be 360 mil-
lion.
The world is on course to warm
considerably more than 2 degrees

Celsius, however, so there are more dire scenarios. If key instabilities kick in in Ant- arctica, 480 million people would be exposed to an annual flood in 2100. The findings are worst for Asia, notably in China, Bangladesh and India. In the worst-case scenario, 87 million, 50 million and 38 million people in those countries, re- spectively, would fall below the high-tide level in 2100. The situation is, if anything, more ominous than these figures suggest, according to the World Bank’s Hallegatte. That’s because in addition to high-tide and annual worst-case flood events, there are major floods from hurricanes and other storms and disasters to con- sider, even if they do not occur every year. The impact of these severe events will be worsened and affect larger populations as seas continue to rise. “Most dikes and protection systems have been built for the sea level of 50 years ago or more, and will be increasingly ill-designed to protect people against floods, lead- ing to rapidly increasing coastal flood losses in the absence of large upgrades,” Hallegatte said. “Up- grading those systems will be expensive but is unavoidable if one

wants to avoid unacceptable eco- nomic losses in large cities.” Several other researchers said the new estimates are a step for- ward, although some criticized the work. “This study is an important step toward a more accurate estimation of population at risk from global sea level rise,” said Pinki Mondal, a University of Delaware researcher who uses satellite and other re- mote-sensing tools to study climate change risks and effects. “With ad- vancements in technology, com- puting resources and machine learning, it is becoming increasingly possible to have highly accurate estimates of say, elevation, as shown in this study.” Athanasios Vafeidis, a sea level expert at the University of Kiel in Germany, agreed that the research presents “new, improved informa- tion on coastal elevation.” “However,” he said, “important factors such as socioeconomic de- velopment and adaptation are not considered in these estimates. Physical processes are represented in a rather simplistic manner.” Vafeidis noted that it’s not clear how well the algorithm, which is trained on the U.S. coastline, per- forms in other countries. He also said that the way populations grow

and adapt to rising seas is more complex than the study was able to account for and that the effects of floods, too, depend on much more nuanced factors than the sheer elevation of the land. Climate Central’s Strauss ac- knowledges that the study does not give any “explicit consideration” to current adaptation measures, such as sea walls, in assessing present- day exposure; it is merely measur- ing the elevation of the land itself and the number of people living on it. That, he argues, may be good news — an indication that humans are already capable of adapting to threats from the sea. “We infer that there must be coastal defenses protecting those 100 million-plus people below to- day’s high tide line,” Strauss said. “Because only a handful of them can be living in houseboats or homes on stilts.” Still, whatever their current defenses, people already living below high-tide lines are likely to be increasingly tested in coming years. “This new study suggests that a lot of the assessments published on climate change risks are underesti- mated and would need to be re- vised,” Hallegatte said. [email protected]

Study: Rising seas threaten 3 times as many people as previously thought

Lacking funds, traction with public, O’Rourke ends run

SALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POST Beto O’Rourke, seen in Alexandria in 2018, is the highest-profile aspirant to drop out of the 2020 race.

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