Overtime Elite – a private school, basketball league and media conglomerate – just sent two players to the NBA

Amen Thompson, left, and his twin brother, Ausar, were selected fourth and fifth in the 2023 NBA draft. John Lamparski/Getty Images for Empire State Realty Trust

Jabari M. Evans, University of South Carolina

When Overtime Elite held its first pro day in October 2022, its arena in Atlanta was charged with anticipation.

Families, scouts and fans gathered to witness the unveiling of the next generation of prodigious basketball talent. I watched the event on a YouTube livestream, which broadcast the players shooting, running sprints and leaping for slam dunks.

Amid the sea of prospects, it was impossible to ignore the magnetic presence of Amen and Ausar Thompson, the identical twin brothers who were just selected as the fourth and fifth picks, respectively, in the 2023 NBA draft.

The duo symbolizes the transformative potential of Overtime Elite, which offers young athletes a new path to maximize their earning potential outside of the NCAA and propel them to professional stardom.

Founded in 2021, Overtime Elite – often called OTE – functions as an accredited private high school, basketball league and media conglomerate.

It allows its student-athletes to monetize their talents, offering them two options. They can accept a $100,000 minimum salary from the school, which means they must forgo NCAA eligibility. Or they can remain amateurs so they can play in college, with the organization offering scholarships to help them pay their college tuition. OTE also acts as an arm of a media company, Overtime Sports Inc., that provides film crews to help players burnish their personal brands.

As a scholar who has explored how athletes use social media, I see a lot of potential in OTE’s unique blend of education, sports and social media.

At the same time, the organization is ultimately part of a for-profit endeavor: Its parent company, Overtime Sports Inc., earns money off video content documenting OTE team members’ daily lives, practices and gameplay. The company has also raised three separate rounds of venture capital from investors such as NBA star Kevin Durant, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and the rapper Drake.

This raises questions about whether OTE players, despite being handsomely compensated, are just as prone to exploitation as NCAA basketball players.

The shortcomings of NIL

The NCAA has long been criticized for exploiting its athletes.

For decades, college athletes couldn’t sign sponsorship deals or receive any form of pay, even as colleges and universities earned billions through TV deals. No matter if an athlete could barely afford food: Any student who accepted money from a business or booster could lose eligibility – which is exactly what happened to college stars such as Jeremy Bloom.

Then, in June 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA’s restrictions on education-related benefits violated antitrust laws.

While the ruling did not directly address athletes’ profiting off their name, image and likeness – what’s known as NIL – the NCAA quickly implemented a policy that allowed athletes to sign endorsement deals, earn money through social media and get paid for being included in video games.

Despite the ability of today’s college athletes to benefit financially from NIL rules, those benefits are mostly limited to those who have existing social media clout or play for basketball and football teams at top Division I programs. Most scholarship players are still full-time students doubling as full-time contract workers for the NCAA. There’s no revenue sharing, and they’re forbidden from receiving salaries as employees of the schools they work so hard to represent.

Even before entering college, many young athletes, particularly those from low-income Black families, face additional challenges. They don’t have the means to pay for the rigorous travel demands of the club basketball circuit. They may have attended struggling high schools that don’t adequately prepare them for college coursework.

Should they make it into college, the NCAA’s rules often prioritize temporary athletic performance over long-term outcomes of its Black student-athletes. For example, in the 2023 NCAA men’s basketball tournament, 11 teams had a 30% or greater gap between the graduation rates of its white and Black basketball student-athletes.

As an academic at a university with one of the top athletic programs in the country, I’ve seen the ramifications of this system play out firsthand. Too many immensely talented athletes from low-income areas – places like my hometown of Chicago – enter college starry-eyed and brimming with hope, only to depart unprepared for a life after sports.

A new path

Sociologist Harry Edwards has consistently advocated for the creation of alternative pathways for athletes outside of the NCAA. Black student-athletes, he argues, deserve more financial and educational support than they’re receiving – and the NCAA, despite its recent NIL allowances, continues to leave those athletes with little guidance on how to leverage their rights and profit off their hard work and talent.

In that sense, OTE may be at the forefront of a seismic shift. Unlike other alternative pathways to professional basketball, such as the NBA’s developmental team, G League Ignite, there’s an emphasis on academics and life skills.

OTE is housed at its arena in Atlanta, Georgia, which doubles as a campus. Through classes and mentorship programs, the school side of the outfit works to teach its students financial literacy, nutrition, time management and entrepreneurship.

To be admitted to OTE, prospective students must go through a rigorous selection process. They’re typically scouted and identified as promising basketball players. But Overtime Elite also says it weighs the character, work ethic and academic potential of its applicants. Currently, OTE has 32 players who are actively in its program.

After viewing the pro day, I spoke with OTE’s head of academics, Maisha Middlesprigger, a former school principal from Washington, D.C.

“Our day isn’t determined by a bell,” she explained. “We focus on depth of understanding through shorter classes. … [We] tailor their learning experiences toward becoming the most compelling candidates for the [NBA] or international [competition].”

“Amen and Ausar,” she added, “epitomize individuals who were once overlooked but have blossomed.”

Schooling students in the art of self-promotion

There’s another unique element to the school. OTE’s parent company, Overtime Sports Inc., helps players create highlight clips that allow them to boost their relatively unknown profiles.

They have their lives on and off the court taped by professional camera crews. And the organization employs film editors who curate clips for athletes to post and share.

A ‘day in the life’ video of the Thompson twins produced by OTE.

In recent research, I explored the growing importance of digital clout among today’s youth – the influence, reputation and visibility that individuals gain through social media.

I argue that the ability of young people – athletes or not – to leverage their online clout for exposure, sponsorships and endorsement deals can create new opportunities and forge new career paths in the digital economy.

In this sense, I see OTE as an important case study. The organization seems to grasp the importance of digital clout; unlike the NCAA, it actually helps players navigate content creation and their NIL rights.

Same song, new tune?

The Thompson twins could be at the forefront of a movement of athletes who decide to opt out of NCAA eligibility in favor of alternative paths.

However some argue that this new model might simply be a different flavor of the same exploitative ideologies that have plagued amateur basketball for years, with sports organizations monetizing younger players while subjecting them to contracts that still don’t reflect their actual worth.

I spoke with Adeoye Adeyemo, a former D-1 football player who’s an education professor at the University of Illinois.

He told me that developing life skills and grasping the business of sports are important, and OTE certainly prepares athletes in that sense.

But he was concerned about the ways in which they’re taught “to navigate a society that disregards their humanity and commodifies their bodies.”

“I’m sure there are intentions for an equal partnership between on-court and off-court activities,” he said. “But how does this unfold in the long run? It’s still too early to tell.”

A video produced by OTE featuring its players in a dunk contest.

I’m also a bit ambivalent about what will happen to the extraordinary athletes who attend OTE once they reach adulthood. They’ll be armed with years of experience carefully honing their personal brands, and they’ll know how to directly engage with their fan base.

But what happens to the players who forgo their NCAA eligibility and don’t make it big like the Thompson twins? Will those students be equipped with the life skills to manage whatever money they made while at OTE? Will they be better prepared for a career than if they had accepted a college basketball scholarship?

The NCAA’s refusal to pay its athletes has created an opening for others options. OTE is one of them. However, the extent to which it can truly offer better learning experiences, lasting mentorship and the development of critical life skills remains to be seen.

Jabari M. Evans, Assistant Professor of Race and Media, University of South Carolina

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Recetas rápidas y fáciles para tu plan semanal de comidas: Comidas sencillas y nutritivas para dedicar más tiempo a la familia

Dedicar tiempo a comer juntos puede tener un impacto positivo en el bienestar de las familias, incluidos los niños y adolescentes. De hecho, las comidas regulares en casa pueden ayudar a reducir el estrés y aumentar la autoestima, según una investigación publicada en “Canadian Family Physician”.

Las conversaciones a la hora de comer también son una oportunidad perfecta para conectarse con sus seres queridos. Un estudio publicado en “New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development” demostró que estas conversaciones ayudan a mejorar el vocabulario de los niños más que leerles en voz alta.

Sin embargo, hacer tiempo para comer juntos no debería requerir pasar toda la noche en la cocina. Un ingrediente fácil de preparar como los huevos puede ayudarle a pasar menos tiempo cocinando y más tiempo con la familia.

Por ejemplo, estas recetas saludables para el corazón de tostadas de huevo escalfado con salsa de aguacate y tomate, picadillo de camote con huevos y frittata poblana de la iniciativa Healthy for Good Eat Smart, respaldada a nivel nacional por Eggland's Best, están listas en 15 minutos o menos. Incluyen una amplia variedad de verduras, frutas, cereales integrales y fuentes de proteínas saludables, recomendadas por la American Heart Association para ayudar a prevenir enfermedades cardíacas y accidentes cerebrovasculares.

Para encontrar más consejos para las comidas familiares e inspiración para recetas, visite heart.org/eatsmart.

Tostadas de huevo escalfado con salsa de aguacate y tomatillo

Porciones: 4 (1 huevo y 1/2 taza de salsa por porción)

• aceite antiadherente en aerosol
• 4          tortillas de maíz (6 pulgadas cada una)
• 4          tazas de agua
• 1          cucharada de vinagre de vino blanco
• 4          huevos grandes

Salsa:

• 1          aguacate mediano, cortado en cubitos
• 1          Chile Anaheim o poblano mediano, sin semillas ni venas, cortado en cubitos
• 1          tomatillo mediano, sin la cáscara, lavado y cortado en cubos
• 1/2       tomate mediano, cortado en cubitos
• 1/4       taza de cebolla morada, en cubos
• 1/4       taza de cilantro fresco picado
• 2          cucharadas de jugo de lima fresco
• 1          diente de ajo mediano, picado
• 1/8       cucharadita de sal

1. Precaliente el horno a 400 F. Cubra una bandeja para hornear con papel de aluminio. Rocíe ligeramente el papel de aluminio con aceite en aerosol antiadherente.
2. Coloque las tortillas en una sola capa sobre papel de aluminio. Rocíe ligeramente las tortillas con aceite en aerosol antiadherente. Con un tenedor, pinche las tortillas para evitar que se llenen de aire. Hornee de 5 a 6 minutos por cada lado o hasta que estén doradas. Transfiera a platos para servir.
3. En una sartén grande a fuego alto, hierva el agua y el vinagre.
4. Una vez que el agua esté hirviendo, reduzca el fuego y cocine a fuego lento. Rompa el huevo en una taza y luego deslícelo con cuidado al agua hirviendo. Repita con los huevos restantes, evitando que los huevos se toquen en el agua. Cocine a fuego lento de 3 a 5 minutos, o hasta que las claras de huevo estén completamente cuajadas y las yemas comiencen a cuajar pero no estén duras. Con una espumadera, escurra los huevos. Coloque cada huevo sobre una tostada.
5. Para hacer la salsa: En un tazón mediano, mezcle suavemente el aguacate, el pimiento, el tomatillo, el tomate, la cebolla morada, el cilantro, el jugo de limón, el ajo y la sal. Servir con las tostadas.

Información nutricional por porción: 185 calorías; 11 g de grasa total; 2.5 g de grasa saturada; 3 g de grasa poliinsaturada; 5 g de grasa monoinsaturada; 186 mg de colesterol; 169 mg de sodio; 15 g de carbohidratos; 3 g de fibra; 2 g de azúcares totales; 9 g de proteína.

Frittata Poblana

Porciones: 4 (2 porciones por ración)

• 4          huevos grandes
• 1/4       taza de leche descremada
• 2          cucharadas de cilantro fresco picado
• 1          cucharadita de aceite de oliva
• 2          chiles poblanos medianos, sin semillas y venas, picados
• 2          tazas de maíz entero congelado, descongelado
• 2          cebollas verdes medianas, picadas
• 1/4       taza de queso Cotija finamente rallado o queso fresco desmenuzado
• 1          tomate mediano, picado
• 1/4       taza de crema agria sin grasa

1. En un tazón mediano, bata los huevos, la leche y el cilantro.
2. En una sartén mediana a fuego medio, caliente el aceite, revolviendo para cubrir el fondo de la sartén. Cocine los chiles poblanos durante 3 minutos o hasta que se doren en los bordes, revolviendo con frecuencia.
3. Agregue el maíz y la cebolla verde. Reduzca el fuego a medio-bajo y vierta con cuidado la mezcla de huevo. Cocine, tapado, durante 10 minutos o hasta que la mezcla esté firme en los bordes y aún blanda en el centro. Evite cocinarlo demasiado. Retire del fuego.
4. Espolvoree con queso. Cortar en ocho porciones. Coloque dos porciones en cada plato. Cubra con tomates y crema agria.

Información nutricional por porción: 244 calorías; 8.5 g de grasa total; 2.5 g de grasa saturada; 1.5 g de grasa poliinsaturada; 3 g de grasa monoinsaturada; 192 mg de colesterol; 177 mg de sodio; 27 g de carbohidratos; 4 g de fibra; 8 g de azúcares totales; 13 g de proteína.

Picadillo de camote con huevos

Porciones: 4 (1 taza por porción)

• 2          cucharaditas de aceite de canola o maíz
• 1/2       cebolla mediana, picada
• 4          camotes medianos, pelados y cortados en cubos de 1/2 pulgada
• 1/2       pimiento morrón rojo o verde mediano, picado
• 2/3       taza de caldo de verduras sin grasa y bajo en sodio
• 2          cucharadita de ajo picado
• 2          cucharadita de pimentón ahumado
• 1          cucharadita de comino molido
• 1/2       cucharadita de tomillo seco, desmenuzado
• 1/2       cucharadita de pimienta molida gruesa
• 1/8       cucharadita de sal
• 4          huevos grandes
• salsa de pimiento picante (opcional)

1. En una olla a presión puesta para saltear, caliente el aceite. Cocine la cebolla durante 3 minutos o hasta que esté suave, revolviendo con frecuencia. Apague la olla a presión.
2. Agregue los camotes, el pimiento morrón, el caldo, el ajo, el pimentón, el comino, el tomillo, la pimienta y la sal. Cierre la tapa. Cocine a alta presión durante 3 minutos. Libere rápidamente la presión. Apague la olla a presión.
3. Retire la tapa de la olla a presión. Rompa un huevo en un tazón pequeño. Con el dorso de una cuchara, haga pequeños huecos en los camotes. Deslice el huevo en el hueco. Repita la acción con los huevos restantes, haciendo un hueco para cada huevo. Cierre la tapa con la ventilación de presión abierta. Saltee 2 minutos. Deje reposar en “mantener caliente” durante 2 minutos, o hasta que los huevos estén cocidos con la consistencia deseada.
4. Si lo desea, puede servir el hash rociado con un chorrito de salsa picante.

Información nutricional por porción: 258 calorías; 7.5 g de grasa total; 2 g de grasa saturada; 1.5 g de grasa poliinsaturada; 3 g de grasa monoinsaturada; 186 mg de colesterol; 244 mg de sodio; 39 g de carbohidratos; 6 g de fibra; 9 g de azúcares totales; 10 g de proteína.

SOURCE:
American Heart Association

US national parks are crowded – and so are many national forests, wildlife refuges, battlefields and seashores

Visitors at Sliding Rock, a popular cascade in North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest. Cecilio Ricardo, USFS/Flickr

Emily Wakild, Boise State University

Outdoor recreation is on track for another record-setting year. In 2022, U.S. national parks logged more than 300 million visits – and that means a lot more people on roads and trails.

While research shows that spending time outside is good for physical and mental health, long lines and gridlocked roads can make the experience a lot less fun. Crowding also makes it harder for park staff to protect wildlife and fragile lands and respond to emergencies. To manage the crowds, some parks are experimenting with timed-entry vehicle reservation systems and permits for popular trails.

For all of their popularity, national parks are just one subset of U.S. public lands. Across the nation, the federal government owns more than 640 million acres (2.6 million square kilometers) of land. Depending on each site’s mission, its uses may include logging, livestock grazing, mining, oil and gas production, wildlife habitat or recreation – often, several of these at once. In contrast, national parks exist solely to protect some of the most important places for public enjoyment.

In my work as a historian and researcher, I’ve explored the history of public land management and the role of national parks in shaping landscapes across the Americas. Many public lands are prime recreational territory and are also becoming increasingly crowded. Finding solutions requires visitors, gateway communities, state agencies and the outdoor industry to collaborate.

U.S. public lands are managed for many different purposes by an alphabet soup of federal agencies.

Alternatives to national parks

The U.S. government is our nation’s largest land manager by far. Federal property makes up 28% of surface land area across the 50 states. In Western states like Nevada, the federal footprint can be as large as 80% of the land. That’s largely because much of this land is arid, and lack of water makes farming difficult. Other areas that are mountainous or forested were not initially viewed as valuable when they came under U.S. ownership – but values have changed.

Public lands are more diverse than national parks. Some are scenic; others are just open space. They include all kinds of ecosystems, from forests to grasslands, coastlines, red rock canyons, deserts and ranges covered with sagebrush. They also include battlefields, rivers, trails and monuments. Many are remote, but others are near or within major metropolitan areas.

Birdwatchers at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Many people who love hiking, fishing, backpacking or other outdoor activities know that national parks are crowded, and they often seek other places to enjoy nature, including public lands. That trend intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, when lockdowns and social distancing protocols motivated people to get outside wherever they could.

The rise of remote work has also fueled a population shift toward smaller Western towns with access to open space and good internet access for videoconferencing. Popular remote work bases like Durango, Colorado, and Bend, Oregon, have become known as “Zoom towns” – a fresh take on the old boomtowns that brought people west in the 19th century.

With these new populations, gateway communities close to popular public lands face critical decisions. Outdoor recreation is a powerful economic engine: In 2021, it contributed an estimated US$454 billion to the nation’s economy – more than auto manufacturing and air transport combined.

But embracing recreational tourism can lead local communities into the amenity trap – the paradox of loving a place to death. Recreation economies that fail to manage growth, or that neglect investments in areas like housing and infrastructure, risk compromising the sense of place that draws visitors. But planning can proactively shape growth to maintain community character and quality of life.

Broadening recreation

People use public lands for many activities beyond a quiet hike in the woods. For instance, the Phoenix District of the federal Bureau of Land Management operates more than 3 million acres across central Arizona for at least 14 different recreational uses, including hiking, fishing, boating, target shooting, rock collecting and riding off-road vehicles.

Not all of these activities are compatible, and many have not traditionally been rigorously managed. For example, target shooters sometimes bring objects like old appliances or furniture to use as improvised targets, then leave behind an unsightly mess. In response, the Phoenix District has designated recreational shooting sites where it provides targets and warns against shooting at objects containing glass or hazardous materials, as well as cactuses.

Shooting at targets that contain glass or hazardous materials can contaminate nearby land. BLM

Skiing also can pose crowding challenges. Many downhill skiing facilities in the West operate on public land with permits from the managing agency – typically, the U.S. Forest Service.

One example, Bogus Basin Mountain Recreation Area is a nonprofit ski slope 16 miles from Boise, Idaho. Demand surges on winter weekends with fresh powder, creating long lift lines and crowded slopes.

The mountain is open for 12 hours a day, and Bogus Basin uses creative pricing structures for lift tickets to spread crowds out. For example, it draws younger skiers with discounted night skiing and retired skiers during the week. As a result, the parking lot only filled up once in the 2022-2023 season.

Local governments can help find ways to balance access with creative crowd management. In Seattle, King County launched Trailhead Direct to provide transit-to-trails services from Seattle to the Cascade Mountains. This approach expands access to the outdoors for city residents and reduces traffic on busy Interstate 90 and crowding in trailhead parking lots.

Other towns have partnered with federal land agencies to maintain trail systems, like the Ridge to Rivers network outside Boise and the River Reach trails near Farmington, New Mexico. This helps the towns provide better nearby outdoor opportunities for residents and attract new businesses whose employees value quality of life. Creating corridors from the “backyard to the backcountry,” as the Bureau of Land Management puts it, can help create vibrant communities.

A less-extractive view of public lands

For many years, Western communities have viewed public lands as places to mine, log and graze sheep and cattle. Tensions between states and the federal government over federal land policy often reflect state resentment over decisions made in Washington, D.C. about local resources.

Now, land managers are seeing a pivot. While federal control will never be welcome in some areas, Western communities increasingly view federal lands as amenities and anchors for immense opportunities, including recreation and economic growth. For example, Idaho is investing $100 million for maintenance and expanded access on state lands, mirroring federal efforts.

As environmental law scholar Robert Keiter has pointed out, the U.S. has a lot of laws governing activities like logging, mining and energy development on public lands, but there’s little legal guidance for recreation. Instead, agencies, courts and presidents are developing what Keiter calls “a common law of outdoor recreation,” bit by bit. By addressing crowding and the environmental impacts of recreation, I believe local communities can help the U.S. move toward better stewardship of our nation’s awe-inspiring public lands.

Emily Wakild, Cecil D. Andrus Endowed Professor for the Environment and Public Lands, Boise State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Preparing Your Children for Kindergarten

Being ready for kindergarten is about far more than writing names and reciting the ABCs. It is also about building a foundation for deeper conceptual thinking, curiosity, creativity and social and emotional skills that can help children during their early school days and also in life.

For parents, this transition can be nerve-wracking and raise questions about how to best prepare their children for the next step in their educational journeys.

Dr. Lauren Starnes, senior vice president and chief academic officer at The Goddard School, and Lee Scott, chairperson of The Goddard School’s Educational Advisory Board, recommend helping children prepare for kindergarten through:

Building Strong Routines and Foundations for Learning:

• Language and literacy: Practice writing by making place cards for the dinner table. For younger children, it can be the first letter of each person’s name or fun scribbles on the card. Early scribbles are part of developing writing skills.
• Mathematics: Count while you work. Ask your children to put away toys. As they work, you can count the toys together.
• Science: Make yard cleanup fun. As you clean the yard, talk about the leaves and why they turn colors and fall to the ground. Pile them up and jump in.
• Executive function: Incorporate your children in planning for the family. Help your children stay organized with a daily or weekly chart. Have your children make the chart with you. For younger children, you can use drawings or pictures instead of words.
• Creative expression: Sing and dance while you work. Make up songs or repeat favorites as your children go through a few basic chores such as putting clothes away.
• Social-emotional development: Build a sense of responsibility and caring for others with real or pretend pets. Take the dog for a walk, feed the cat or water the pet rock. Taking care of a pet can help children develop a sense of responsibility and empathy for others.
• Healthy development and well-being: Daily routines help your children practice fine motor skills while doing a few chores, such as setting a table, helping you cook by mixing or stirring, putting their clothes on or brushing their teeth.

Incorporating Playful Experiences:

• Puzzles: Solving puzzles supports the development of skills such as concentration, self-regulation, critical thinking and spatial recognition.
• Board games: Playing games provides a number of benefits for children, including supporting memory and critical thinking, helping them learn to take turns and count, and developing early language skills.
• Blocks: Block building supports creativity, cognitive flexibility, planning and organization. Take some time to build with blocks using different shapes and colors.
• Clay: Children need to develop fine motor skills beyond using devices. Few things are better for developing fine motor skills than modeling clay. Learning to sculpt with clay also builds creativity, artistic expression and strategic thinking.

• Recycled materials: Inspire creativity by finding things around the house to build with, such as cardboard, paper, paper towel rolls and plastic bottles.

For more actionable parenting insights, guidance and resources – including a webinar with Scott focused on kindergarten readiness – visit GoddardSchool.com.

SOURCE:
The Goddard School

Demystifying Insurance to Ensure Proper Coverage

Home and auto insurance are among the things many people buy but hope to never use. Proper coverage provides peace of mind that an accident, weather event, natural disaster or unexpected injury or illness won’t cause financial ruin. However, many Americans are uninsured, underinsured or paying too much for coverage.

Data from the Insurance Research Council cited by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners shows 12.6% of U.S. motorists are uninsured – approximately 1 in 8 cars on the road. For uninsured drivers, plus those involved in accidents with them, fender benders or worse can result in out-of-pocket costs.

Homeowners need to be properly insured, as well. According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, the U.S. has experienced more than 350 weather events or natural disasters since 1980 that have caused more than $1 billion in damage. Even small thunderstorms can send tree branches into homes, causing thousands of dollars in damage. For home and auto insurance, consumers should be sure their policies cover replacement and repair costs at today’s market rates in addition to liability coverage for personal injury and other damages.

Insurance helps bridge these gaps, but it’s common for people to renew policies without checking them. Because insurance policies are often seen as complex and confusing, that may prevent people from purchasing proper coverage.

A 2022 survey from realtor.com found only 56% of homeowners knew what to look for in their homeowners insurance policy when they bought their homes, and 15% didn’t have any idea what to check. In addition, Forbes Advisor reported 40% of drivers believe they had coverage that doesn’t even exist.

Consider these challenges consumers face when shopping for and comparing insurance policies and providers:

1. Industry Jargon and Lingo – When you visit a website or talk to an insurance agent, you may feel like you’re speaking a different language with terms like “deductible,” “premium,” “co-pay,” “additional insured,” “aggregate limit” and “co-insurance.”
2. Bait and Switch – Insurance carriers sometimes advertise low rates, but your rate may be higher than expected when you apply, often with no explanation.
3. Fine Print – “Sorry, that’s not covered.” These can be chilling words to hear when you’re hoping your insurance policy comes through for you in a time of need. An explanation may be deep within the policy, but you may need a magnifying glass to find it.
4. Transparency – Many decisions that affect rates and coverage may seem to be done behind a curtain, such as rates in comparison to neighbors, remodeling impacts on rates, rate changes based on age and more.
5. Apples to Oranges – With many moving parts within the average policy, it can be difficult to compare rates and coverage.

Improved technology is helping solve some of these issues and deliver an improved experience. A decade ago, the only way to compare insurance rates was to make phone calls, meet with agents and read brochures. Even with the internet, you still need to visit multiple websites and take notes, often entering the same personal information time and time again.

Today, insurance marketplaces, like the flagship platform from Guaranteed Rate Insurance, make it easy to compare multiple carriers, all at once, with a single application. Customers enter basic information to receive quotes for home and auto insurance coverage from more than 50 top-rated carriers, allowing for a quick, side-by-side comparison of coverage options.

“The primary benefit insurance delivers is peace of mind,” said Jeff Wingate, executive vice president and head of insurance for Guaranteed Rate. “If the relationship between an insurance provider and customer begins with stress, confusion and frustration, the provider isn’t delivering the desired service. That’s why we made it easy for consumers to make informed decisions about rates and coverage from trusted and reliable providers.”

Life insurance, umbrella, jewelry, flood, pet, landlord and earthquake policies are among the other coverage options available for comparison. Coverage benefits are easy to read with clearly explained terminology and experienced agents standing by to answer questions or assist with purchasing a policy.

To find more information and explore the insurance marketplace, visit rate.com/insurance.

SOURCE:
Guaranteed Rate

Danger, prestige and authenticity draw thrill-seekers to adventure tourism

The Titan submersible imploded on a dive to visit the wreck of the Titanic in June 2023. Ocean Gate / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Scott Smith, University of South Carolina

The tragic news of the destruction of the Titan submersible has brought attention to the thrilling, dangerous and expensive world of extreme tourism.

As a researcher who studies hospitality and tourism management, I pay attention to the trends in tourism and study ways in which organizations like theme parks and resorts operate and change over time.

Tourists are generally seeking more authentic experiences that occur without prescribed paths or known endpoints. Technology can often make the extreme environments of adventure tourism more safe, but at the bottom of the ocean, the vacuum of space or the cold of a mountain summit the consequences of failure can be high.

Safaris allow tourists to see animals in their natural habitats and offer much more authentic experiences than a trip to the zoo. Martin Harvey/Image Bank via Getty Images

Adventure tourism as authentic tourism

In recent years, there has been a trend in the tourism industry toward authentic experiences. More and more, people want to experience something unique and not in a preprogrammed or controlled setting.

An example of the difference between authentic and inauthentic tourism is the difference between a zoo and a safari. Zoos are built to allow large crowds of people to easily view unique and often dangerous animals. Zoos are typically a spectator experience and are very safe, but they offer little opportunity for visitors to interact with the animals.

A safari in Africa, by comparison, provides a much more authentic experience by removing a lot of the safety barriers between you and the animals. Most safaris bring a limited number of tourists, with guides who can provide closer interaction with the animals in their real environment. This, of course, also increases the risk for tourists, as the barriers and safety features found in a zoo don’t exist in the wild. The sense of danger that comes from authentic tourism often adds to the adventurous traveler’s experience.

The final appeal of adventure tourism is the status or prestige of a dangerous, expensive trip. Almost everyone can afford to visit a local zoo, whereas an African safari requires a level of spending that is a display of your status and income.

The same authenticity, danger and prestige apply to many types of adventure tourism, whether it is mountaineering, space tourism or trips to the bottom of the ocean.

The Titan submersible utilized new materials and designs not common in other submarines. Ocean Gate/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Technology doesn’t always mean safety

As technologies have improved, companies and tourists have been able to push the limits of safety for many activities. For example, over the past 30 years, roller coasters have gotten progressively taller, faster and more extreme to capture the attention of thrill-seekers. These rides are able to maintain high levels of safety thanks to better engineering and technology.

The narrative that advanced technology provides safety in extreme situations typically helps to reassure tourists the activity they choose to engage in is safe. The reality is that any activity – whether it’s crossing the street or visiting the wreck of the Titanic – will always carry some level of risk. The problem is that many of these extreme activities take place in very dangerous environments and have incredibly small margins for error. When something does go wrong, the consequences can be catastrophic or, as with the case of the Titan submarine, fatal.

Space companies like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been taking tourists to the edge of space. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

Prevalence and legal limits

It is hard to get exact numbers on extreme tourism deaths per year, but when these sad events do occur, they typically receive a lot of attention from the press. As a tourism researcher, I follow these types of stories and feel comfortable saying that very few occur in the U.S.

In the U.S., there are federal, state and local tourism boards and agencies. More often than not, specialized agencies regulate activities most relevant to their areas of expertise – for example, the Federal Aviation Administration regulates space tourism, and national park and state park agencies permit mountaineering in many places. These organizations generally promote tourism and safe practices, but no amount of regulation and oversight can absolutely guarantee anyone’s safety. And for many activities, like deep-water tours, there is no mandatory certification process.

Perhaps the best advice for people seeking authentic, thrilling experiences would be to use the idea of “buyer beware.” If you are choosing to engage in extreme tourism, ask questions about what safety procedures are in place for whatever activity you are choosing to do. And if you are not comfortable with the answers you get, move on to another company or activity.

Scott Smith, Associate Professor of Hospitality and Tourism Management, University of South Carolina

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

3 myths about immigration in America

A family of Syrian refugees arrive at their new home in Bloomfield, Mich., in 2015. Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images

April Nisan Ilkmen, Adler University

The U.S. is – and long has been – a pluralistic society that contains large immigrant communities.

Yet migration is an actively debated but poorly understood topic, and much of the conventional thinking and political rhetoric about migration are based on myths, rather than facts.

For these reasons, migration policies and strategies for easing acculturation – which refers to the psychological process of assimilating to a new culture – usually end up being ineffective.

I often work with immigrant populations in my job as a family therapist and as an acculturation scholar.

Here are a few of the most common misconceptions I come across in my work.

1. Immigrants don’t want to learn English

The U.S. is home to more international migrants than any other country, and more than the next four countries – Germany, Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United Kingdom – combined, according to 2020 data from the U.N. Population Division. While the U.S. population represents about 5% of the total world population, close to 20% of all global migrants reside there.

An overwhelming number of these immigrants are learning English, despite public perception to the contrary.

Immigrants and their children learn English today at the same rate as Italians, Germans and Eastern Europeans who emigrated in the early 19th century.

According to U.S. Census data, immigrant adults report having better English skills the longer they’ve lived in the U.S. And from 2009 to 2019, the percentage who could speak English “very well” increased from 57% to 62% among first-generation immigrants.

2. Immigrants are uneducated

Contrary to popular belief that immigrants moving to the U.S. have minimal education, many of them are well educated.

Over the past five years, 48% of arriving immigrants have been classified as highly skilled – that is, they have a bachelor’s degree or graduate degree. By comparison, only 33% of those born in the U.S. hold a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Moreover, the pursuit of higher education is valued and encouraged in immigrant communities, particularly those that arrived from collectivist societies, which are commonplace in the countries of South Asia. Immigrants from these places tend to prioritize the virtue of the learning process and the joy that comes from attaining an educational milestone.

That doesn’t mean highly educated immigrants can easily slide into high-paying jobs. Many of them find themselves working in menial jobs that don’t require a degree, and underemployment among highly educated immigrants remains a key issue in the U.S. today.

A crowd celebrates after being sworn in as U.S. citizens at a naturalization ceremony in 2007 in California. David McNew/Getty Images

3. The best way to adapt is to embrace US culture

For decades, acculturation studies have highlighted the importance of immigrants’ embracing American culture. Policymakers, therapists and educators who offered services to immigrants adhered to a narrow understanding of acculturation, which encouraged immigrants to adapt to their host country by severing themselves from the culture of their homelands.

Then, in 1987, psychologist John Berry proposed an acculturation model outlining new strategies.

According to Berry, immigrants should strive to retain elements of their original cultural identity while also adopting a new cultural identity that folds in American culture and values.

Today, Berry’s model is the most commonly used to understand acculturation.

However, although the model acknowledges that acculturation strategies may evolve over time, it doesn’t take into account the emerging forms of transnational immigration, which refers to immigrants who live in another country but also maintain strong ties to their home country.

Technological advances have made it far easier for immigrants to maintain ties with their original culture. There are also U.S. cities, neighborhoods and towns where immigrant communities are the demographic majority – places like Hialeah, Florida, where Cubans and Cuban Americans make up 73% of the population, and parts of the Detroit metro area, which has growing numbers of Indian immigrants.

For immigrants living in these “immigrant islands,” there’s less of an obligation to undergo a transformative process of acculturation, whether it’s by Americanizing foreign names or not teaching children their home country’s language.

Still, many immigrants nonetheless feel pressured to downplay their backgrounds. While conducting interviews with members of the Turkish community in Chicago, I spoke with many people who admitted that they weren’t comfortable flaunting their Turkish culture. This didn’t surprise me. Immigrants are often exposed to new sets of prejudices and biases, and they fear not being able to access services such as medical care and education.

This fear reinforces the urge to assimilate into the dominant culture’s values – which, in America, includes individualist principles like independence – and suppress their own cultural values, such as being family-oriented. It’s essentially a strategy of self-protection.

In my work, I found that immigrants who engaged in what’s called “cultural innocuousness” – behaving in ways that may soften their ethnic and cultural expression – had the hardest time adapting to their new home.

For those reasons, it is crucial for social workers, therapists, teachers and policymakers who work with immigrant families to focus on the tensions among acculturation, ethnic identity and well-being.

April Nisan Ilkmen, PhD Candidate in Couple and Family Therapy, Adler University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

As Ukraine takes the fight to Russians, signs of unease in Moscow over war’s progress

Facing harder questions at home. Contributor/Getty Images

Peter Rutland, Wesleyan University

Editor’s note: This article was written before the events of June 24, 2023, during which Wagner Group paramilitaries seized a town in southern Russia and headed towards Moscow before standing down. On June 25, The Conversation published this article – Wagner’s mutiny punctured Putin’s ‘strongman’ image and exposed cracks in his rule – analyzing how the short-lived mutiny will impact Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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Whether or not the Ukraine counteroffensive that began in early June 2023 succeeds in dislodging Russian troops from occupied territory, there are growing signs that the push has prompted anxiety back in Moscow.

Such unease was, I believe, detectable in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting on June 13 with a group of influential military bloggers – people who support the war but have at times been critical of the way it is being fought. The meeting was unusual: In recent months, Putin has avoided public statements about the war and postponed his annual Russia Day phone-in show scheduled for June. He similarly canceled both the June call-in in 2022 as well as his annual news conference in December.

And the set-piece events he has attended have been less than convincing. At the June 13 meeting with military bloggers and war correspondents, Putin faced some pointed questions. In answering, he used the term “war” a number of times – deviating from his line that what is happening in Ukraine is a “special operation” – and conceded that Ukrainian attacks across the border into Russia had been damaging.

On the defensive?

The meeting was Putin’s first public assessment of the conflict since Ukrainian forces took the war into Russian territory, with drone strikes on Moscow on May 1 and again on May 30 and shelling and forays across the border in the Belgorod region on May 22. The latter led to the evacuation of tens of thousands of Russian civilians.

These developments further undermine Putin’s argument that this is a “special military operation” and not a war, and that life can continue as normal for ordinary Russians.

At the same time, Putin is facing a political challenge from Yevgeny Prigozhin, the erstwhile chef-turned-mercenary leader. Prigozhin heads the Wagner Group, a private company that has recruited some 50,000 fighters for the Ukraine war on behalf of Moscow. They played a key role in the capture of the Ukrainian city Bakhmut, which fell on May 20 after a 224-day siege. After the fall of Bakhmut, polling indicated that Prigozhin broke into the list of top 10 trusted officials as seen by ordinary Russians for the first time.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Wagner Group. AP Photo

Prigozhin has been openly critical of the way Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and head of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov are conducting the war. In May 2023, Prigozhin organized a series of town meetings across Russia laying out his demands. In an attempt to rein in Prigozhin, Shoigu ordered that all volunteer fighters must sign a contract with the defense ministry by July 1 – something Prigozhin refuses to do.

Prigozhin’s business empire includes media outlets, the Internet Research Agency that the U.S. asserts interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, a movie series and social media channels that enable him to reach tens of millions of Russians. It forms what reporter Scott Johnson has dubbed the “Wagnerverse.”

Facing questions

With the background of more open criticism of a war that has now blown back across the Russian border, Putin faced some tough questions at the meeting with war correspondents.

One asked why is it that private military companies are not legal in Russia. Putin merely said that it is time to change the law.

Another asked why different regions are allowed to pay different bonuses to contract soldiers from their area. In response, Putin could only offer that Russia is a federal system, and regions spend what they can afford. One blogger pointed out that the border districts inside Russia are not considered part of the “special military operation,” which means that soldiers fighting there do not get combat pay. Another asked about troop rotation and when Russians will know that the war has been won. Putin’s answers were equivocal on both points.

One participant asked Putin about the problem of “parquet generals,” a term used by Prigozhin that refers to people sitting in comfortable offices far from the front line. Putin agreed that some generals are not up to the job, but he supported Shoigu’s order that all volunteers should register with the defense ministry.

It wasn’t a full-on grilling, but neither was it a cozy chat.

Desperate measures

Judging by opinion surveys, there are few signs as yet that the military setbacks have caused any decrease in popular support for the war in Russia. Many Russians seem to believe that even if it was wrong to start the war, it would be a mistake to allow Russia to be defeated.

However, members of the Russian elite seem to share the growing unease aired among the bloggers. On May 20-21, Russian officials and policy experts attended a meeting of the influential Council on Foreign and Security Policy think tank. Judging by reports from people who attended, such as State Duma Deputy Konstantin Zatulin, there was a clear sense that the war is going badly.

In a June 1 speech, Zatulin, a prominent nationalist lawmaker, noted that none of the initial goals of the “special operation” have been realized and admitted that “Ukrainians hate us because we are killing them.”

Zatulin said that at the Council on Foreign and Security Policy meeting, one attendee suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Rzeszow – the transport hub in southeastern Poland through which most of the West’s weapons flow into Ukraine. Indeed, Sergei Karaganov, the head of the council, published an article on June 14 in which he argued for the demonstrative use of a nuclear weapon to force the West to stop supplying arms to Ukraine.

In the 1990s, Karaganov was seen as a liberal who supported Russia’s integration with Europe. Now, he apparently believes that Russia’s inability to defeat Ukraine poses a serious threat to its security. Moreover, his talk of deploying nuclear weapons hints at an increasing view among Russian elites that the country cannot win by conventional means alone. Indeed, on June 16, Putin announced that Russia has already started transferring some tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus.

In the meantime, mercenary leader Prigozhin remains a wild card. Rarely in history have mercenary generals been able to seize political power. Perhaps the most famous mercenary of all time, Albrecht Von Wallenstein, successfully commanded an army of 50,000 during the Thirty Years’ War. He became so powerful that his Hapsburg paymasters had him assassinated.

In Russia’s tightly controlled political landscape, there are no precedents for a figure such as Prigozhin. He seems to have few allies among the military establishment or regional governors. As such, it is hard to imagine a scenario where he would be allowed, for example, to create his own political party, still less run for the presidency in 2024.

Yet he is clearly proving to be a thorn in Putin’s side. And the lack of progress toward victory over Ukraine is seemingly making the Russian elite increasingly nervous about how to maintain social stability and stave off political challenges from nationalists who are arguing for more aggressive prosecution of the war.

Peter Rutland, Professor of Government, Wesleyan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Is this ‘age of the delta’ coming to an end?

The wet landmasses, though inherently impermanent, have been essential to both people and wildlife for thousands of years. But recent shifts have brought on some rapid losses that worry scientists.

By Boyce Upholt

The land near the mouth of the Mississippi River is barely land at all. Muddy water forks into a labyrinth of pathways through a seemingly endless expanse of electric-green marsh grass, below skies thick with birds. Shrimp and crabs wriggle in the water below, and oak and cypress sprout from wet soils on higher grounds. Stretching for more than a hundred miles along the coast of Louisiana, this is one of the world’s largest, and most famous, river deltas.

Similar landforms — flat and wet and rich with wildlife — have built up wherever rivers dump their mud and sand into shallow oceans. There are thousands of such deltas across the world, ranging in size from just a few acres to, in the case of the Mississippi River’s, thousands of square miles. Many of these places, including the marshes in Louisiana, are now disappearing, often quite rapidly.

The soils are sinking, for varied and complex reasons. Worse, as the climate warms, the seas are rising. In Louisiana, a football field’s worth of land is gone every hundred minutes, a fact that is devastating for the hundred-million birds that stop here on their migrations — and for the people whose families have lived amid these wetlands for generations, and sometimes millennia. Hundreds of millions of people that live on other deltas, too, could lose their homes and their livelihoods.

Later this year, a state agency in Louisiana will begin construction on what has been called the largest ecosystem restoration project in US history. A set of gates in the levee will allow water to once more carry mud into the marshes, an effort to rebuild tens of thousands of acres of land. The project has been controversial, particularly because it’s likely to affect fisheries, a major local industry.

Deltas are inherently impermanent: As climate changes through the epochs, as the seas rise and fall, deltas are formed and then buried underwater. Still, these past few thousand years can be thought of as an “age of the delta,” says Utrecht University geomorphologist Jaap Nienhuis. Not coincidentally, it has also been an age of human flourishing. “Human civilization started when modern river deltas started to appear,” Nienhuis says. “It’s scary to think of what could happen if river deltas disappear.”

Nienhuis, lead author of a 2023 paper on river deltas for the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, spoke with Knowable Magazine about what deltas face in the coming centuries, and whether strategies like Louisiana’s “sediment diversion” can make the needed difference. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are river deltas, and why are they important?

River deltas are places where river sediments settle. Rivers slow down when they reach the sea, and then all the sediments that rivers carry are dropped out. That builds land over time.

A typical delta is a place that’s flooded, sometimes by tides every couple of hours, while some deltas flood only once a year, during a monsoon or a big hurricane. The ecology and biology have to be very well adapted to this periodic inundation.

So what we typically find are swamps: cypress wetlands or mangrove forests or salt marshes, which are well-adjusted to dealing with inundation by tides. These are great places for fish. The river-carried sediment is rich with organic material, which is good for agriculture. So it’s not a surprise that many population centers are on river deltas: New Orleans, Shanghai, Tokyo, Jakarta. Much of the Netherlands is a delta. In total, 500 million people live atop river deltas across the world.

How do deltas form?

Deltas exist on a balance. Some forces are constructive. Basically, you need the river to supply a lot of sediment. That can happen naturally, through mountain-building and then erosion — that’s why we have a lot of big deltas downstream of the Himalayas.

Then there are destructive forces. Sea level is a first-order control on the evolution of deltas. When the seas are rising, it’s hard for rivers to supply enough sediment to keep up.

To understand today’s deltas, we have to go back 20,000 years, to a time when most of the planet was covered by ice sheets. A change in the Earth’s orientation toward the sun kickstarted a melting of the ice and a rise in sea level. So from 20,000 years ago to 10,000 or 8,000 years ago, we had a long period of very quickly rising seas. There wasn’t a lot of delta-building happening, and older deltas were being smothered by the water.

Then, when most of these ice sheets were nearly melted, the rates of sea-level rise began to slow. That’s when all the sediments that came out of rivers were able to build the modern deltas. That happened for most river deltas roughly around the same time — 7,000 years ago. Of course, when they first appeared, these deltas were very small. They’ve built over time.

Interestingly, the start of several ancient civilizations and ancient cities coincides with that deceleration in sea-level rise. This is not a coincidence. Humans and deltas are very intertwined.

It sounds like our species has depended on deltas throughout our recent history. Have we also affected deltas?

We have. Humans can actually be a constructive force for deltas. What we’ve seen over the past few hundred years is that deforestation upstream in a river’s watershed can cause an increase in the amount of sediment that is brought down by a river. So in that sense, humans have greatly accelerated delta growth over the past centuries.

But humans can be a destructive force, too. There is subsidence, for example: land lowering, which happens a lot in deltas because they are built from young, soft soils.

Here in the Netherlands, we started to drain the delta because we wanted to use it for agriculture. And then subsidence accelerates and the land sinks beneath your feet, since the water in the soil dries out. So now you build levees to protect yourself from all the extra flooding.

But now, because of the levees, sediments are no longer supplied to your part of the delta, so you sink even further. So you build more levees. The reason why the Netherlands — and also parts of New Orleans — are below sea level is because of that cycle. You create a situation you cannot get out of. We call that a “lock-in.”

If the constructive and destructive forces are in balance, deltas will stay the same. But it’s a very, very, very thin balance. And humans, most of the time, we’re destructive.

Do we have a sense of how big of a problem subsidence is?

We have a very good overview of all the things that could cause subsidence. But it’s very hard to measure it.

Subsidence happens on many scales at once. If ice sheets melt in, to give just one example, Canada, that can take weight off the Earth’s mantle, causing it to tilt. That means that as the ice melts — and land lifts — in Canada, the land as far away as the Mississippi delta can wind up sinking. So there are changes happening on a scale of thousands of miles.

At the same time, if you build a house and add weight to the soil, you also sink the soil. Even just standing on it, jumping on the ground — you’re changing the pore structure in the grains of soil below.

Imagine trying to also integrate what vegetation does with its roots, plus worms that go through the ground. Then you have oil extraction or taking out groundwater — changes on a medium scale. So it’s hard to validate and test our models. It’s very much a limiting factor in our ability to say something about the future of deltas.

Really, though, given how big a control sea-level rise is on delta construction, the biggest problem now is climate change. As ice sheets begin to melt again, that’s causing seas to rise much more quickly than they have in thousands of years.

It sounds like we’ve been in an “age of the delta,” but that’s now coming to an end.

Definitely. If we zoom out and look at deltas as a whole, we could lose as much as 5 percent of the land by the end of this century, mostly because of sea-level rise. And as much as 50 percent of the land — 130,000 square miles — in only a few hundred years.

So it could go very, very fast. Since sea level is so important here, a lot of that depends on what we do in terms of CO₂ emissions and climate change.

We’re not going to lose every delta. When deltas are very small, and uninhabited by humans, it’s very easy for them to respond to sea level. Think of Arctic deltas, for example. Basically, when seas rise, these deltas walk with sea level up the river — the delta advances upstream, replacing what was once solid ground with wetlands.

But for many deltas, we’ve built levees, so they’re fixed — they’re not moving anywhere. And big deltas are hard to sustain. They need a lot of sediment. Those deltas are much more uncertain.

Eventually, sea-level rise will slow again, and then we’ll reenter an age of the delta, when rivers can build again. Ironically, if we continue emissions at a high rate that might happen sooner, because we will speed up the tipping point where the world’s ice sheets collapse. If we continue emissions at a high rate, then sea-level rise might slow again around the year 2400, and deltas may be able to grow again by the end of this millennium, once much of Greenland and Antarctica have melted.

Though with seas 20 meters higher, they’ll be in new places. The Mississippi delta will be built somewhere close to the border with Arkansas. The Dutch Rhine delta will be in today’s Germany.

Is there anything we can do to save today’s deltas?

There are adaptation methods that can work for individual deltas. One key idea is trying to use the sediments coming down from the river in a smarter way. That typically means breaking down levees and restoring the natural flow of the river into the delta’s wetlands. These projects are sometimes called “river diversions.” The biggest projects — both in terms of cost and in terms of how much sediment is delivered to the delta — are happening in the Mississippi River delta.

But even if you include all the projects that are still in the planning stage, these kinds of restoration strategies are being applied to save 0.1 percent of the world’s deltas. That’s very small compared to the potential loss of land.

I’m a little bit skeptical about our ability to scale these strategies up and solve the whole delta problem. River diversions lead to high sedimentation rates, but these rates decline over time. The sedimentation rate is dependent on the elevation difference, so as you build your land, it gets harder and harder to keep up. And diversions work on very small parts of a delta. If one sediment diversion works very well in the Mississippi, you can’t say, “I’m going to build another right next to it.” At some point, you’re going to run out of sediment.

Most river deltas will persist throughout my lifetime. But to think about my daughter’s lifetime, or my grandchildren’s — that’s going to be very, very different. It’s very strange to think about these places not existing.

That’s a dark future. Is there any reason to be optimistic?

If we really stick to the Paris Agreement, an international treaty that aims to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, then the picture is going to be much more nuanced. Then the optimism I have is that the age of the delta will last a long time still.

It’s not really a question of whether we’ll lose delta land, but more a question of when we’ll lose it. If we really limit our emissions, we might be able to postpone the major losses for 500 years, or a thousand years — and by then, who knows? We might all be living in floating cities!

The optimism has to be that it goes slow enough that we come up with new solutions. But in order to give ourselves the time we need, we have to start addressing climate change now.

Boyce Upholt is a writer and editor based in New Orleans. He’s currently working on his first book, which will explore how the Mississippi River has been altered and changed. Follow him  @BoyceUpholt.

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews.