Take small steps to combat change

By Steve Estes

Community members, local representatives of affected agencies and District Two County Commissioners George Neugent got together for a little summit on global climate change Tuesday night, with an emphasis on what is, and might be done, toward planning for the eventuality of rising sea levels.

Rising sea levels are a particularly worrisome issue for Monroe County. The highest point in the entire 106-mile length of the county is 13 feet above sea level, and that’s an old landfill. A lot of the county is less than three feet above sea level today, with some projections showing a worst-case scenario of almost that much sea level rise in the next 90 years.

Yep, we said 90 years.

So this is not a discussion that had to happen yesterday, although it would have been nice, but it’s a conversation that has to start sooner rather than later, thus the meeting Tuesday night.

Even the most conservative of forecast place sea level rise at nine inches over the course of the next 90 years, mirroring the nine inch rise Key West has seen in the last 90 years, for a total of 18 inches in sea level rise in two centuries.

Most places, 18 inches in sea level rise isn’t any concern. Here, a rise that slight could put millions of dollars in property underwater, millions in infrastructure underwater, and block access to personal property on a massive scale.

So we need to understand that this is an issue for us to deal with.

Of course, the numbers of disbelievers have clarified themselves. About five years ago, the number of people who won’t believe sea level is rising, or that the global climate is changing, would have been about 50 percent.

At Tuesday night’s meeting, the number was closer to 25 percent. That’s the same percentage of Americans who confess to listening to Rush Limbaugh, believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, would elect Sarah Palin President, and still believed George W. Bush was doing a good job as President the day he left office.

And most of the rest of the United States continues to discount those folks, and the rest of the world has discounted them for years. That number will slowly diminish.

We know there will always be naysayers. But we also know, as does the rest of the world, that climate change and sea level rise are real and are going to force some habit and attitude changes on all of us.

We can’t do as some areas of the United States and the world do to prevent water encroachment. We can’t just build dikes and levies. Our porous foundation rock allows water off the islands and it will also allow water onto the islands.

One of the first issues we will face, indeed are already facing, is the perception of insurance companies and corporations that we are imperiled by the same phenomenon many of them refuse to acknowledge exists.

Some car manufacturers have begun not honoring warranties for parts destroyed by constant exposure to salt water. How long is it before, downstairs enclosures or not, the Federal Emergency Management Agency begins to eradicate flood insurance subsidies, or auto insurers begin not covering salt-water incursion during major or minor storm events because our roads and driveways are sure to be inundated?

How long is it before mangroves take over salt marshes, salt marshes take over rocklands, rocklands take over hammocks, and so on and so on and so on?

What is as much an issue for us here as sea level rise is horizontal land coverage associated with that rise.

Once the level has topped the six-inch seawall, or breached the eight-inch-above-sea-level beach front, it is fairly wide open to cover 20 or 30 feet of lot.

Our leaders need to begin now to put some simple practices into place that change our basic mind set.

Every road that is repaved should be elevated. Every waterfront property should be graded up from the water’s edge. Every parking pad under a house should be elevated.

Those are small steps that might pay big dividends later.