With more property than ever in harm's way, and the planet and oceans warming dangerously, it won't be long before we see a $250 billion hurricane. Why? Because Americans have built $3 trillion worth of property in some of the riskiest places on earth: barrier islands and coastal floodplains. And they have been encouraged to do so by what Gilbert Gaul reveals to be a confounding array of federal subsidies, tax breaks, and low-interest loans, that shift the risk of life at the beach from private investors to public taxpayers, radically distorting common notions of risk. The result is one of the worst planning failures in American history, Gaul argues, and here he speculates on how we can still reverse course.