Tim Chitwood: The sunny side of global warming

Why do people keep bugging us about climate change?

Nothing's wrong with climate change. Climate change is going to be awesome, especially here.

I can't wait, literally, because I'll die first, but just speaking for me, personally, I never got to spend as much time by the sea as I wanted to, when I was young, so I look forward to future generations enjoying the rest of this sea level rise.

With any luck, the sea will rise far enough to reach Phenix City, and it will be a resort area.

The drive to the beach will get incrementally shorter, and eventually, if all the ice caps melt again, the beach will come here, so no one here will have to go there anymore.

If the government is as impotent on this as with most global initiatives, then eventually our progeny may own beachfront property long enough to make some money off it.

Or your progeny, rather, not mine. I don't have any, which is why I don't care whether people believe in climate change or do anything about it. I won't be here when it floods.

And that's a shame, because one day this could be priceless real estate, because it is, after all, the Fall Line, where the sea used to be. Back when the ice caps melted and the ocean swallowed Florida like the whale gulped Jonah, this was the coast.

It was like Jurassic World with giant sharks and huge crocodilians and other great monsters.

Going condo

I think of that world each time I pass that hill off U.S. 431 in Phenix City where the Post Ridge Apartments are. It was high ground back when this was the seacoast the dinosaurs roamed.

So just think: If the ocean comes back, Post Ridge could go condo. The hotels just below the apartments, the Quality Inn and Hampton Inn & Suites, could become luxury beachfront lodging.

For centuries two Phenix Cities might coexist: Phenix City and Phenix City Beach, just like down in Panama City.

Spring breakers may swarm there once a year, and old people from Up North may move down for the winter, while cruise ships with casinos and all-you-can-eat seafood buffets dock there, and sport fishermen launch expeditions south to hunt radioactive mutant sharks.

Columbus' National Civil War Naval Museum will finally be on the coast, and talk about pirate festivals, we'll throw pirate festivals to make Blackbeard blush.

So, with an impotent government that's obviously going to take no action on this, locals over time could find a lot of oceanfront property available here, an enormous investment opportunity.

You probably should start buying now, before the rush.

Just make sure you keep that land in the family for generations to come, because just one or two probably won't live to see the sea get back here where it used to be.

Tim Chitwood, tchitwood@ledger-enquirer.com, 706-571-8508.

This story was originally published December 6, 2015 at 10:44 PM with the headline "Tim Chitwood: The sunny side of global warming ."