We Must Rise with the Tide
In thousands of coastal communities all over the world – large and small – the water is creeping higher and higher. It is most noticeable during routine king tides and stormy weather. We need to have an entirely different perspective so that communities plan for the new reality. “We must rise with the tide.”
With the new year, I have decided it is time to change the focus of my public talks. It is time to shift from just explaining the science behind rising sea level and worse flooding to putting the focus on a broad new attitude. It is an aspirational, forward looking view, that I simply describe as: “We must rise with the tide.”
The point is to shift our attitude, to start to get over the paralysis. To accomplish great things we must set goals and most important, have a positive attitude.
For the last five years or so, in nearly three hundred presentations, I have been explaining the science, essentially: The planet is already warmer over the last century and headed to get even warmer. The glaciers and ice sheets primarily in Alaska, Greenland, and Antarctica are melting faster and faster and will continue for a very long time. Sea level is rising and will continue at levels that seem unbelievable, making all the conventional flood events worse. This problem is not limited to the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean, nor to Miami and Fort Lauderdale and the Florida Keys. From Annapolis to Vancouver and from Calcutta to Copenhagen, each decade the flooding is getting worse. Flooding results from the melting ice, the expansion of seawater as it warms, and the unusual weather patterns, also triggered by the warming ocean and destabilizing climate.
We can and must work to slow the warming as best we can, which puts the focus on carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) the greenhouse gas over which we have the greatest control. However, we have passed a tipping point. Even if we could stop all fossil fuel emissions immediately, sea level will rise for centuries. It is no longer a choice of slowing the warming (sometimes called mitigation), or adapting. We must do both, simultaneously, with all possible urgency. Tempting as it may be to ignore or procrastinate, dealing with rising sea level is not optional. (As I wrote a few months ago, The Sea Cares Not What We Believe.)
The reality is that in the coming decades, the oceans will continue to rise regardless of our best efforts to slow the warming, and slow the rate of rise. Sea level rise is currently fractions of an inch a year in most places. Like a drip filling a bucket however, it is a steady accumulation. Like compounding interest, it is an accelerating phenomenon that is deceptive. Simple physics almost ensures that the rate by mid century will become substantially faster. (For more, see my blog post, Beware The Doubling Time.)
The effects of the rising sea are most noticeable in coastal areas, when there is no stormy weather or rainfall. Just the extreme monthly high tides, often called “king tides” are reaching higher, spreading farther, and happening more days than they did just a decade ago. Sometimes called “nuisance flooding” or “sunny day flood events” this creeping march of the oceans extends far beyond the coastline where the storm waves hit. Rising sea level shows up miles inland, moving through canals, marshlands, up rivers, and even through porous rock. In South Florida for example, rising sea level appears as ponding water in low areas miles from the shoreline. The same happens in coral based islands from the Caribbean to the South Pacific.
This is the fight of the century. We have had big challenges before, but nothing quite like this. Some estimates are that over two hundred million people will need to relocate even with just one meter – about three feet – of higher sea level. With the latest estimates, that might happen as early as the 2060’s. Even if we cannot know the precise timing, we must start planning.
In the planning profession, rising sea level is considered a “wicked problem”:
A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. The use of the term “wicked” here has come to denote resistance to resolution, rather than evil.
Another definition is “a problem whose social complexity means that it has no determinable stopping point”. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems. [source Wikipedia]
There will not be an easy, painless answer to the wicked problem of rising sea level. When sea level is just two meters higher (7 feet), vast areas of land will be underwater. It is easy to understand why we have not tackled it yet, let alone solved it. This will take generations. Like any intractable problem it will comprise different steps or phases.
Better planning will yield better returns on investment (“ROI”), reducing the possibility that assets will have to be written off as they go underwater. Like any investment we can make better short-term decisions if we know where things are headed in the longer term. In fact, while trillions of dollars of coastal assets will be lost to the sea this century, an equal value of new assets will be created as people and communities either adapt in place or move to higher ground.
Starting with the long term can be very helpful. In his famous book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” Stephen Covey advised,
“Begin with the end in mind.”
The point is that if we know where would like to get to in the longer term, the merits and durability of short-term and mid-term adaptations, can become clearer. Some things may work for the next foot of rise, and will be a good foundation to raise things higher later. Others may reach a limit with one foot and then have to be abandoned and written off. In other words, better short term planning, starts with better long term planning. In this case, we need to ask. what will this area look like when sea level is one or two meters higher? (roughly 3 feet or 7 feet) With that perspective or vision, we can find “stepping stones” or create the roadmap to get there.
Adapting to rising sea level and increased flooding will not be easy, but is not optional. The sooner we start focusing on the need to rise with the tide, the better. This is something we need to instill in ourselves, our colleagues, our children, in fact, everyone. More than anything it is a change of mindset.
All great efforts start with identifying the goal, and telling ourselves and others that we can achieve it. Some would say, the important thing is our attitude; our intention. Telling ourselves and those around us that we must rise with the tide is a pre-requisite to actually tackling the wicked problem that lies directly in front of us.
Onward and upward.
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it;
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe