SeaLevel

Hell or High Water

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Flooding has always been a problem, but climate change means it will get worse. Since the Industrial Revolution, the oceans have risen at least a foot already and are on track for another three feet sometime this century. The atmospheric changes that we’re causing with our carbon pollution are unprecedented, making it difficult to predict. Heat makes water expand. Maybe the oceans will rise six feet, more or maybe less, maybe sooner or maybe later. Since the US has currently decided not to be part of the solution, then flooding will become worse than any human has ever experienced.

This means most of our current beaches will disappear in several decades, along with many lowland areas and even whole island countries. Oceanfront property—stable for centuries—will be inundated. Productive farms and ranches will be ruined by salt water intrusion. Some large populated areas, including several cities, will become uninhabitable. Bird habitats and coastal ecosystems will be devastated. Since the process has been slow and gradual so far, many folks assume that we will adapt easily. But since we’re not solving the problem, the flooding will continue to accelerate.

Even inland, flooding is becoming increasingly more deadly, a trend that will also accelerate. Our hotter atmosphere is evaporating more water more quickly, resulting in destructive downpours, flash floods and broken levees. Flooding events are increasing globally, killing people, making them homeless, and spreading diseases. Again, having put more carbon into the air than any other country, we’re the biggest part of the problem. We’re unwilling to try to fix it, and we are unprepared for how bad it will get.

March is American Red Cross month. Clara Barton, who founded the Red Cross after providing battlefield and prisoner aid during the Civil War, began their flood relief efforts at Johnstown. That terrible flood killed 2,200 people, and it was entirely preventable. Future floods will be even more deadly, and many of those deaths are also entirely preventable by reducing our carbon emissions today. We just need to make better choices.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore

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There are three main outer banks—‘OBX’—islands in the park: Bodie, Hatteras and Ocracoke, from north to south. Each has a lighthouse: Bodie is currently open for climbing, Hatteras is tallest and Ocracoke is oldest. I brought my kayak and stayed at Oregon Inlet campground across from the Bodie harbor which has a kayak launch, but there was some construction, commercial traffic, and strong, cold winds in May. Also, since the islands are so long and thin, it’s easiest to see the main sights by driving the 70 miles, including the free vehicle ferry to Ocracoke.

Hatteras island is the biggest, with several year round towns and thousands of residents outside summer, when hundreds of thousands visit the OBX. The road gets damaged in storms, and wind often blows huge drifts of sand onto the road. Many of the residents have anti-Biden signs, which is counter intuitive, since he is trying to defend them from the Climate Crisis, which will steal their land, take over their businesses and even invade their homes. But they ignore the science, the melting glaciers and ice caps, the strengthening storms, the sea level rise and the increasing erosion. The lighthouse has already been moved many times. The OBX is one of the fastest growing real estate markets on the NC coast, worth tens of billions of dollars, even as homes are falling into the sea. Money appears inversely related to intelligence.

The delightful nature walk above is Springer’s Point Trail at the southern tip of Ocracoke nearer Cape Lookout, the northern tip of which can be visited by passenger ferry leaving from Ocracoke’s picturesque Silver Lake Harbor. There are some ‘banker’ (OBX) horses on Ocracoke, but they’re penned, not really wild.

Fort Frederica National Monument

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Upon arrival, I remembered visiting by small boat as a teen many years ago. All along the southeast coast, displaced Native Americans and escaped slaves endeavored to remain free in these low-lying delta barrier islands. Although threatened, the evocative old oaks, the Spanish Moss and the shell-filled archaeological ruins are still hauntingly beautiful.

In the 1730’s the British built a pair of forts, both named after Frederick, Prince of Wales, to develop and defend their colonies against the Spanish. Fort Frederick’s ruins are 125 miles north, next the Reconstruction Era Camp Saxton in South Carolina. Fort Frederica here in Georgia, defined the southern boundary of their colonies, north of Spanish Florida.

The British commander Oglethorpe was considered enlightened (for the time) and enthusiastic. Rather than slavery, he proposed work be done by indentured servants mostly from debtors prisons in England, making Georgia a type of penal colony where workers could gain their freedom over time. The Methodist founder John Wesley and his brother Charles first attempted a church under one of the large, mossy oaks here, and the settlement had various tradespeople, including a Native American interpreter, a blacksmith and a doctor/barkeep.

In a remarkable historical echo of the French colonial experience at Fort Catherine, Oglethorpe also tried to seize St. Augustine in Florida, besieging the Castillo de San Marco and being stopped at Matanzas. Again, the Spanish counterattacked, but faring better than the French, Oglethorpe successfully defended this fort and cleverly routed the Spanish in Bloody Marsh, despite being outnumbered. After the Spanish retreated and conceded Georgia, the British cut their military presence here and the remote island village faded away in a decade or two.

Now, while driving through these remote islands, I can’t help but be amazed by the fancy houses. Not because they’re decadently ostentatious, but because they’re so close to sea level. It is astonishing to think that many of America’s most successful retirees choose to develop luxurious estates within the zone that is most certainly going to be erased by the climate crisis. The collapse of Thwaites ‘Doomsday’ Glacier is accelerating, and rising seas will take all the land here. They may have inherited much wealth, but they won’t be leaving these houses to future generations. Apparently, you don’t need much intelligence to be rich.