We Are All from New Orleans Now: Climate Change, Hurricanes And The Fate Of America’s Coastal Cities
By Climate Guest Blogger on Nov 2, 2012 at 10:00 am
by Mike Tidwell, via The Nation
The presidential candidates decided not to speak about climate change, but climate change has decided to speak to them. And what is a thousand-mile-wide storm pushing eleven feet of water toward our countrys biggest population center saying just days before the election? It is this: We are all from New Orleans now. Climate changethrough the measurable rise of sea levels and a documented increase in the intensity of Atlantic stormshas made 100 million Americans virtually as vulnerable to catastrophe as the victims of Hurricane Katrina were seven years ago.
Arriving atop fantastically warm water and aided by a full foot of sea-level rise during the last century, Hurricane Sandy is just the latest example of climate changes impact on human society. Unless we rapidly phase out our use of fossil fuels, most Americans within shouting distance of an ocean willin coming yearslive behind the sort of massive levees and floodgates that mark Louisiana today.
The New York Academy Sciences has already begun examining the viability of three massive floodgates near the mouth of New York Harbor, not unlike the Thames River floodgate that protects London today. Another floodgate has been proposed for the Potomac River just south of Washington, fending against tsunami-like surge tides from future mega storms. Plus there will be leveeseverywhere. Imagine the National Mall, Reagan National Airport and the Virginia suburbsall well below sea levelat the mercy of trust-us-theyll-hold levees maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Oceans worldwide are projected to rise as much as three more feet this centurymuch higher if the Greenland ice sheet melts away. Intense storms are already becoming much more common. These two factors together will in essence export the plight of New Orleans, bringing the Big Easy bowl effect here to New York City and Washington, as well as to Charleston, Miami, New York and other coastal cities. Assuming we want to keep living in these cities, well have to build dikes and learn to exist beneath the surface of surrounding tidal bays, rivers and open seasjust like New Orleans.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/11/02/1127261/we-are-all-from-new-orleans-now-climate-change-hurricanes-and-the-fate-of-americas-coastal-cities/