The only thing that will save the hobby is for the ossified atmosphere about it to be stripped away. The word "ham" itself needs to go, because regardless of the fact that oldsters still dispute the origin, it's a stupid sounding word that makes people snort and move on. "Amateur radio" while correct and meaningful also sucks. Don't preserve the grand old hobby of years gone by; burn it down including the jargon. If Raspberry Pi builders and developers can be allowed to peek behind the bullshit, they might find a new comm channel worth breaking conventional thinking with.
Then again, at least 30% of traffic in the Eastern half of the USA is old white guys speaking blisteringly obscene Trumpian thought, no exaggeration. That also kills it for many who hear that stuff. Weather, equipment, and hatred, that's HF.

And I suspect he has indeed read Culture novels... and that you yourself don't know a lot about Banks' real-life beliefs.

You may not be aware that the greatest threat to FL is the destruction of the freshwater aquifers by encroaching salt water. The state relies almost entirely on those aquifers, and the coastal communities are the first to be affected. You should have a look at what the City of Ft. Lauderdale itself has to say about their situation. Their website is admirable for not sugarcoating the problem, and unfortunately they offer few solutions more effective than using less water and placing planted dunes to reduce oceanic wave action. These are not real solutions to the problem. My point is that a real-estate-based discussion about the region is not useful, as the entire area will be unable to support significant populations without fresh water. Whether some sort of desalination plan can be engineered is a good question, but the massive population of the area would certainly have to treat fresh water as a commodity.

https://gyr.fortlauderdale.gov...
https://gyr.fortlauderdale.gov...
https://gyr.fortlauderdale.gov...
https://gyr.fortlauderdale.gov...

Good point, libertarian-man. We'll need some kind of cop to protect those existing broadcasters though. How about the FCC?

Yup. If the water can't come up from the ground, it has to be drawn from a river or a lake. It's quite an experience to visit Santa Fe and be shown the mighty Rio Grande branch there. There's a nice wide deep ditch where a river used to be, with a trickle of water moistening the bottom. Old graceful bridges cross the "river", or you can just walk across if you don't mid the mosquitoes and mud. The whole river is sucked out by upstream folks. I've seen dry creek beds before but this was a sight.
The Aral sea in Russia- we're talking a freaking huge lake- has shrunk by 75% in this century, mostly as the water was piped out to cities and farms. There are not-so-old fishing villages miles from the latest shore, and dry cracked plains of mud with boat hulls embedded in them.
This stuff is real, but impacts so few Americans that it's still off the radar to most. Good times ahead!