Driving up the Pacific coast over the Christmas holidays, I was struck by the vast numbers of “Entering Tsunami Area” signs. Hundreds of them. I am reminded of a Pulitzer-winning and exceptionally well-documented article, written by Kathryn Schultz for the July 13, 2015 New Yorker magazine noting that sooner or later an earthquake at or around 9.0 on the Richter Scale will inevitably slam into the coastal Pacific Northwest, literally sinking vast tracts of ocean-front land into the ocean, potentially killing millions. A massive tsunami will follow, sending crashing waves across the Pacific.
Just look at the above Caltech map of the Oregon and Washington coastline, reflecting a quake of that severity. You can see where the tectonic plate separates from the North American continent, creating a rugged seashore, magnificent islands and the ocean split we call Puget Sound. When the shaking stops, even inland, water, electricity, food supplies, and simple accessibility will be decimated… way past the I-5. All that without global climate change adding to that threat. Add climate change: our future is even bleaker. Earthquakes change it all in seconds. Climate change is vastly worse, more slowly, but it is creaping up on us with greater potential loss.
Nature has a way with the earth, and mankind has an uncanny ability to make things so much worse. Pushing the earth past points of no return, tipping points from which there is no going back. I’ve written about melting tundra (permafrost) releasing masses of very heavy green-house methane into the atmosphere in an unstoppable heat-melt-heat-melt cycle. Worse than carbon dioxide (CO2). We pretend it does not matter. We look the other way.
We do need living plants to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen more than ever. But we’ve all been counting on those massive rain forests and jungles to do that job, particularly in the Amazon where agricultural, mining and lumber needs are absorbing millions of square miles of CO2 eating foliage. Reclaimed land, cleared by intentional burning, adds even more CO2 in the process. Bad news CO2 haters, it looks as if the Amazonia is slowly transitioning from being a net CO2 absorber into being a net CO2 contributor.
The February 11th BBC.com supplies the hard facts from recent long-term surveys: “Results from a decade-long study of greenhouse gasses over the Amazon basin appear to show around 20% of the total area has become a net source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere… One of the main causes is deforestation… While trees are growing, they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; dead trees release it again… Millions of trees have been lost to logging and fires in recent years.
“The results of the study, which have not yet been published, have implications for the effort to combat climate change… They suggest that the Amazon rainforest - a vital carbon store, or ‘sink,’ that slows the pace of global warming - may be turning into a carbon source faster than previously thought… Every two weeks for the past 10 years, a team of scientists led by Professor Luciana Gatti, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has been measuring greenhouse gasses by flying aircraft fitted with sensors over different parts of the Amazon basin.”
And while the Gulf Coast and Atlantic sections of the United States seem to show the greatest coastal erosion from rising seas and warming waters, the signs on the West Coast are not particularly good either. We read about the San Andreas and other faults in the San Francisco Bay Area, but collapsing shoreline from climate change seldom captures local headlines. It should.
Rosanna Xia, writing for the February 11th Los Angeles Times presents this frightening view: “When Jeff Moneda first started working for Foster City, where trails wind along the town’s scenic lagoons and the nicest homes perch along its picturesque canals, he received an email from federal emergency officials that jolted him into action… ‘The first thing in my inbox was a letter from FEMA that said: ‘ ‘You need to raise your levee or we’re going to place the entire city in a flood zone,’ ’ said Moneda, the city manager. ‘Talk about stress.’
“For a city of 34,000 that was built on filled-in marshland along San Francisco Bay, the future hinges on the strength of an eight-mile-long levee that for decades has held back the rising sea. But with every tide and storm, the water keeps trying to move back and reclaim the town. Flood maps, even in more moderate scenarios, show much of the city inundated if nothing is done.
“The fate of Foster City and the rest of the Bay Area was front and center last week as state lawmakers grappled with the many threats California must confront as the ocean pushes farther inland. A special committee of state lawmakers gathered — for the second time in two months after years without meeting — to reignite a much-needed discussion on how to better prepare communities up and down the coast from devastating loss.
“Homes are flooding and crucial roads and infrastructure are already mere feet from toppling into the sea, they said, but cities up and down the coast have been paralyzed by the difficult choices ahead. More than $150 billion in property could be at risk of flooding by 2100 — the economic damage far more destructive than from the state’s worst [recent] earthquakes and wildfires.
“Failure to act will result in lost opportunities to be proactive — and much higher costs, according to scientists, local officials and legislative analysts who spoke before the state Assembly’s Select Committee on Sea Level Rise and the California Economy.” While too many red state Americans chortle at the threats to wealthy coastal communities, as they writhe through their tornados, fires, floods, hurricanes, fracking-induced quakes and droughts, the cost in lost food production, new job creation and cutting edge technology will cost every American a bundle… way beyond the direct cost of the devastation itself. We need new flood controls, levees and sea walls, perhaps even relocation. Retrofitting too. Not then. Not after it is too late. Now. And please, stop the fossil fuels and building near vulnerable shores.
What we see is a President/climate-change denier/marginalizer focused on cutting taxes, constructing a 15th century castle wall and building up a military at the expense of everything else. But if nature comes to collect, to confiscate and reclaim, what exactly will that wall, that military be protecting? And exactly how does cutting taxes make our land safer and more productive for us all?
I’m Peter Dekom, and we are suffering from a massive unwillingness to confront reality, to prioritize our very survival.
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