“So God said to Noah, ‘I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.’” And then the rain began. The dizzying supply chains, cheap labor and indestructible plastic. “The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become.” I think about the exponential increase in M&M’s, Chobani yogurt cups and grande lattes consumed over that same span of time. It begins: “When human beings began to increase in number on the earth.” I read this line and think about the 6,000 inhabitants of south Florida turning into 6 million in 120 short years. When I look it up again, however, I am surprised to find that it does not start with a rainstorm or an ark, but earlier, with unprecedented population growth and God’s scorn. It is the apocalyptic narrative par excellence – Noah’s flood. One of the few stories I remember from the Bible vividly depicts the natural and social world in crisis. If Hal Wanless is right, every single object I have seen over the past 72 hours – the periodic table of elements hanging above his left shoulder, the buffet currently loaded with refreshments, the smoothie stand at my seaside hotel, the beach umbrellas and oxygen bars, the Johnny Rockets and seashell shop, the lecture hall with its hundreds of mostly empty teal swivel chairs – will all be underwater in the not-so-distant future.Įlizabeth Rush. Hal’s sons stop sipping their lattes and the oceanographic scientist behind me puts down his handful of M&M’s. “And while I don’t think we are going to get that much water by the end of the century, I do think we have to take seriously the possibility that we could have something like 15 feet by then.” “The rate of sea level rise is currently doubling every seven years, and if it were to continue in this manner, Ponzi scheme style, we would have 205 feet of sea level rise by 2095,” he says. If you live here, all you can do is hope that when you put down roots your choice was somehow prophetic.īut Hal says it doesn’t matter whether you live six feet above sea level or sixty-five, because he, like James Hansen, believes that all of these predictions are, to put it mildly, very, very low. Take the 6 million people who live in south Florida today and divide them into two groups: those who live less than six and a half feet above the current high tide line, and everybody else. And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates an upper limit of six and a half feet. And yet the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expects roughly two feet of rise by century’s end. ‘Dig into geologic history and you discover this: when sea levels have risen in the past, they have usually not done so gradually, but rather in rapid surges.’ Photograph: Milkweed EditionsĪccording to Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida, rising sea levels are uncertain, their connection to human activity tenuous. “The big story in Greenland and Antarctica is that the warming ocean is working its way in, deep under the ice sheets, causing the ice to collapse faster than anyone predicted, which in turn will cause sea levels to rise faster than anyone predicted.” On the screen above his head clips from a documentary on climate change show glacial tongues of ice the size of Manhattan tumbling into the sea. “Besides,” Hal adds, “I say the same damn thing at least five times a week.” Hal, who is in his early seventies and has been studying sea level rise for over 40 years, pulls at his Burt Reynolds moustache, readjusts his taupe corduroy suit, and continues. And behind the rows and rows of sparsely occupied seats, at the very back of the amphitheater, an older woman with a gold brocade bear on her top paces back and forth.Ī real estate developer interrupts Hal to ask: “Is someone recording this?” The one with the ponytail brought a water bottle the other two sip Starbucks. One has a ponytail, one is in a suit, and the third crosses and uncrosses his gray street sneakers. Hal’s three sons are perched in the next row back. The guy behind her shovels spoonfuls of passionfruit–flavored Chobani yogurt into his tiny mouth. “That heat is expanding the ocean, which is contributing to sea level rise, and it is also, more importantly, creating the setting for something we really don’t want to have happen: rapid melt of ice.”Ī woman wearing a sequined teal top opens her Five Star notebook and starts writing things down. The man seated behind me roots around in his briefcase for a breakfast bar. Returns her head to its resting position in her palm. Sea level rise: Miami and Atlantic City fight to stay above water GuardianĪ teenager, wrists lined in aquamarine beaded bracelets, rubs sleep from her eyes.
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