Surge

No, it’s neither a military rank nor a Russian first name. For many coastal communities, it is their first and very unpleasant introduction to some of the most expensive aspects of global climate change, an alternation in our environment where the sea intends to reclaim vast tracts of our littoral communities. And where nature had once placed natural marshlands as breaking barriers to encroaching oceans, sequential storms have slowly eroded such coastal protective blocks. Now it’s time to accept the progression of global warming, increasingly more frequent violent storms generating increasingly more devastating storm surges followed eventually by permanent loss of low-lying coastal lands. As Superstorm Sandy has shown, it’s no longer what could happen, it’s no longer a New Orleans/Gulf Hurricane thang… it’s what has happened and will continue to happen for the foreseeable future in places where such activities just “don’t happen.” But they do!

Based on Superstorm Sandy’s devastation, New York’s Governor Maria Cuomo ordered a preliminary assessment of what the state and local communities will face from such environmental challenges and what needs to be done about it. The first such study, a 175 page report from the NYS 2100 commission, came out in early January. This was one of several commissions charged with addressing different aspect of expected climate change issues and solutions.

According to the governor’s mandate, “The NYS 2100 Commission is tasked with finding ways to improve the resilience and strength of the state’s infrastructure in the face of natural disasters and other emergencies. The Commission [is] co-chaired by Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation, and Felix G. Rohatyn, former Chairman of the Municipal Assistance Corporation… Specific areas the Commission has been charged to review and make recommendations on include:

· Strategies to protect existing transportation, energy, environmental, and other infrastructure systems to withstand natural disasters and other emergencies;

· Priority projects to replace damaged infrastructure or to diversify or make more resilient our infrastructure;

· Long-term options for the use of physical storm barriers and natural protective systems;

· Opportunities to integrate infrastructure planning, protection and development into New York’s economic development strategies; and

· Reforms in the area of insurance and risk management related to natural disasters and other emergencies.”

Already, the scope and underlying potential cost (no clear budget numbers were presented) of dealing with climate change is staggering. The map of parts of New York City above will help understand the approach (the red section is the “Narrows” mentioned below). “[The commission’s] study says the state should consider storm barriers with movable gates that would span the Narrows, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, and endorses a variety of ‘soft infrastructure’ investments like building dunes and wetlands and oyster reefs, which were more prevalent along New York’s coastline in the 1800s.

“The commission also recommends some major actions that, conveniently, are already in the works, like a rail connection between the Metro-North commuter lines and Pennsylvania Station, and some ideas that have been around for years, like a new rail connection under the Hudson River. Though extensive, it is short on details, particularly on cost estimates and how the state might pay for new mitigation programs.” New York Times, January 6^th.

We’ve ignored reports of what we should do for way too long, but the cost of continuing this head-in-the-sand practice ignores the fact that the sand will soon be underwater. Although we live in financially impaired times with strong pressures to stop spending money, the resulting costs from ignoring such issues will generating much, much more expensive disaster costs later. Prevention is the only viable answer.

“Richard L. Brodsky, a former [NY] assemblyman who led the commission that produced the post-Katrina study, said of the 2100 report: ‘This is a useful if somewhat vague set of long-term goals that are already ensconced in state law. What I was hoping to see in this whole worthy effort is someone saying that they have to get the existing planning, financing and disaster prevention section of the state government finally working.’

‘Goldman Sachs knew enough to sandbag their building on West Street and escape unscathed,’ he added. ‘At the same time, a block away, water was pouring into the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, severely damaging key infrastructure because the state and the M.T.A. didn’t have the legally required prevention plan.’ …

When asked last week why the redundant work of all these panels was often ignored, the governor said: ‘Many of these types of initiatives are very, very expensive. You can be prepared for a lot of things, but the question is how much do you want to pay and what is the probability that those things are going to occur. Money is important and money is a factor in all of these decisions.’” NY Times. The probabilities are now 100%. Pay a lot now… or pay multiples of a lot later. If you do not believe that a defense budget that accommodated 41% of worldwide military spending cannot be cut to cover such costs, exactly what will we be defending if the entire system collapses from the economic strains of being unprepared for the future?

Want some more, less subtle hints. Try this: “The ‘Heat and Drought of 2012’ caused crops to wither and Mississippi River levels to plunge while yielding the warmest year on record for the U.S… The year's average temperature in the United States has been measured at 54.5 degrees, breaking the previous 1921 record of 54.4 degrees. Across the country, 22 sites tied or broke their all-time high temperature records, while astonishingly, zero sites in the U.S. reported a record low temperature. It was, above all, a year of weather extremes.” Weather.AOL.com, January 7^th. When will the “next” slam into us?

I’m Peter Dekom, and once again it’s doctrinaire sloganeering versus common sense that could stop such efforts dead in their tracks.