NARRAGANSETT, R.I. — Sun, surf and
scenic views have long attracted crowds. But this decades-long march of people
and accompanying infrastructure to the coast has come at a cost. A changing
climate and rising seas are now charging interest.
 |
| EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm sure they'll figure out some way to pass the costs on to the rest of us (Google Earth image) |
Scott was one of five guest
speakers who participated in the Metcalf Institute’s Annual Public Lecture Series,
held the week of June 8 at the University of Rhode Island. He began his lecture
by noting that 55 percent of the planet’s population lives in a coastal zone
and 33 of the world’s 50 largest cities can be found on the coast.
That’s a lot of building pressure
on fragile coastal areas.
In the United States, the impact is even more profound: 50 percent of the population lives on 11 percent of the land.
Fellow guest lecturer Benjamin
Preston, deputy director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Climate Change Science Institute, said
addressing this complex issue — economic development and population growth
mixed with warming temperatures and more extreme weather — is difficult, and
even more so in coastal communities, which are some of the
most vulnerable to climate-change impacts.
“This concentration of population
and wealth in hazardous landscapes is a significant driver of exposure and
losses,” Preston said. “This isn’t about preventing the climate-change problem.
This is about learning to live with it.”
That means learning to cope with
some $10 billion, on average, lost annually to natural disasters in the United
States. That amount will only continue grow, especially if humans continue to
flood the coast with their presence and development. Those annual losses could
amount to as much as $250 billion by 2100, according to Preston.
It also means dealing with roughly
35,000 beach advisories annually across the United States. Earlier this month
in Rhode Island, the state Department of Health recommended the closure of
Easton’s Beach in Newport, Peabody’s Beach in Middletown and Scarborough State
Beach in Narragansett to swimming because of high bacteria counts.
Among the impacts being
experienced in coastal areas are an increase in oxygen-depleting algae blooms,
coral degradation and accelerated erosion.
“Protect tidal areas and you
protect the rest of the estuary,” said Scott, noting that these vital areas are
some of the most fragile and most polluted on the planet. “Tourism is a type of
development. Our urban footprint is changing the landscape dramatically. Estuarine
systems are being impacted by urbanization.”
Scott noted that a 1 percent
increase in population generates a 5 percent increase in development — a
footprint that increases the amount of impervious surfaces, exasperates
problems such as stormwater runoff and impacts water quality.
“Population growth and increased
impervious cover are changing ecosystem function and services,” he said.
During his talk a day later,
Preston spoke about adapting to climate change in terms of risk management.
Extreme weather will certainly occur, he said, but the extent of the effects
will be determined by exposure and vulnerability.
Preston used a pair of recent
earthquakes to make his point. In April, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake killed
nearly 9,000 people in Nepal, a country with an old building stock. A month
later, an earthquake of the same magnitude hit Japan, which has strict building
codes. Twelve people suffered minor injuries and businesses returned to normal
a day later.
In the United States, he said,
many states and municipalities, mostly those on either coast, are planning to
deal with climate change, but just as many aren’t. He noted that dumping sand
on a beach after a hurricane is not adaptation planning.
“Manipulating the environment to
sustain the status quo is not adaptation planning,” Preston said, noting that
the middle of the country, with the exception of Colorado, isn’t doing much
with respect to climate-change planning. “Texas has no plan for the future or the
present.”
But even in the places that have
plans — Preston noted that Boston and New York City have done plenty of
adaptation planning — the real challenge will come in trying to implement those
“thousands upon thousands of pages of paper,” he said.
Implementation is hindered by an
addiction to economic growth, corruption and special interests. This adherence
to the status quo is expensive, but the cost is subjective.
“Continued development along the
coast exposes more people and more development to extreme weather,” Preston
said. “We keep getting whacked. Some say that is a function of economic growth
and rebuild. Others say we need to get a handle on this problem. Different
places care about different things and have different values. There’s a lot at
play when it comes to coastal protections.”
Coastal adaptation options include
retreat, increasing setbacks, hardened structures such as seawalls and riprap, rolling easements and buying vulnerable properties. Some
of these options take more political will than others.
However, even when an adaptation
practice is implemented, there is little to no followup, according to Preston.
“There’s not much watching of
adaptation measures in play now,” he said. “We don’t do a good job of following
the investments and measures implemented. How do we know if these investments
are worth it?”
We don’t, really, and the reasons
for that are pretty straightforward.
“Tougher decisions are much more
challenging,” Preston said. “We like things the way they are. We don’t like to
make sweeping changes. Until we shift where we can build or who bears the risk,
the status quo will remain strong.”