Suppose the Sea Rises Five Feet

A recent report from the International Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme predicts a global sea level rise of up to five feet by 2100... much higher than levels anticipated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change four years ago.

What would five feet mean around the world? *Trouble on the beach. *The Center for American Progress has a great piece by Kiley Kroh describing the dangers facing the world’s shores:

Climate change is melting polar ice, which adds to the volume of the oceans and raises the temperature of the water, causing it to expand. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, rising sea levels inundate wetlands and other low-lying areas, erode beaches, intensify flooding, and increase the salinity of rivers, bays, and groundwater tables, choking freshwater plants and wildlife and threatening drinking water supplies. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that sea level rise could convert as much as 33 percent of the world’s coastal wetlands to open water by 2080. And this appears to be a dramatic understatement based on the IAMAP report. In other words, entire ecosystems will literally disappear.

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A three-foot rise in sea level—barely half of the IAMAP’s latest prediction—would push back East Coast shorelines an average of 300 to 600 feet in the next 90 years, “threatening to submerge densely developed areas inhabited by some 3 million people, including large parts of New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC.”

A terrifying prediction, but fortunately, the article isn't all doom and gloom. Kiley describes the way that Maine and Rhode Island have limited development near tidal waters, while the Maryland Department of Natural Resources already has a law requiring waterfront areas to have living shorelines to prevent erosion. Even my own state, Texas, has unintentionally passed legislation that ensures beaches can migrate inland.

In other words, there has been progress, but we need to do more to prepare for sea level rise. Will it be expensive? Of course. But if we fail, the cost will be magnitudes higher--and potentially deadlier.