Lester Brown founded the Earth Policy Institute in 2001.
(Photo courtesy of the Earth Policy Institute)
One environmental leader says if
we keep doing what we’re doing,
the world will continue on a path
toward economic decline and eventual
collapse. Lester Brown heads up the
Earth Policy Institute. He’s written
a series of books on changes that need
to be made. The most recent book is
‘Plan B 4.0.’ Lester Graham
talked with him about the complexities
involved in a few commodities we take
for granted:
Transcript
One environmental leader says if
we keep doing what we’re doing,
the world will continue on a path
toward economic decline and eventual
collapse. Lester Brown heads up the
Earth Policy Institute. He’s written
a series of books on changes that need
to be made. The most recent book is
‘Plan B 4.0.’ Lester Graham
talked with him about the complexities
involved in a few commodities we take
for granted:
The boardwalk in Ocean City, Maryland. Before beach replenishment, you could get your feet wet standing underneath the boardwalk. Now, as you can see, the water is 200 feet away. (Photo by Tamara Keith)
A dune piled high with sand helps protect Ocean City from the sea. (Photo by Tamara Keith)
A wide stretch of beach separates homes and hotels in Ocean City from the water. (Photo by Tamara Keith)
Condos in Ocean City once had water washing into their ground level parking lots. Not anymore. (Photo by Tamara Keith)
It’s beach weather – and along the mid-Atlantic one of the most popular beaches is Ocean
City, Maryland. For years, engineers have been battling back the ocean to save the beach
and the town. And as Tamara Keith reports, that fight is only going to get tougher and
more expensive if predictions of sea level rise from climate change become a reality:
Transcript
It’s beach weather – and along the mid-Atlantic one of the most popular beaches is Ocean
City, Maryland. For years, engineers have been battling back the ocean to save the beach
and the town. And as Tamara Keith reports, that fight is only going to get tougher and
more expensive if predictions of sea level rise from climate change become a reality:
When the sea level rises, Ocean City feels it. It’s on the front lines – a barrier island on
the edge of the Atlantic.
(sounds of water)
Terry McGean is the city engineer for a town he describes as a working class resort.
“Our industry is tourism, and the real reason people come here is the beach.”
But in the 1980s, that beach was reduced to a narrow strip. Not so today, all thanks to a
massive, and expensive, beach replenishment project. In 1991 countless tons of sand
were brought in, dunes were built. But that wasn’t the end of it.
To keep up with erosion, McGean says the beach here at Ocean City has already been re-
nourished 4 times.
“Approximately every 4 years we’re doing a re-nourishment project. To give you an idea
of the scale, that’s 100,000 truck loads of material that we’ll put on here. Though it
doesn’t actually come on a truck? No. It’s pumped in a dredge from out in the ocean.”
It is a constant fight, because the waves keep coming, keep pulling the sand back out to
sea. Scientists say this is partially just normal erosion. But some of it at least can be
blamed on global climate change and sea level rise. Over time, they say, the share of the
problem caused by climate change will grow.
“If you hadn’t done the beach replenishment do you have any sense of what this would
look like right now. There probably would have been no public beach left in many of
these areas.”
So far fending off the sea has cost $90-million, split amongst local, state and federal tax
dollars. But engineers estimate some $240-million in storm damage has been prevented.
“Holding back the sea is an economic proposition. If you’re willing to spend the money,
the sand exists to elevate any given barrier island.”
Jim Titus is the project manager for sea level rise at the Environmental Protection
Agency. And he’s been sounding the alarm about climate change for years. And he says
policy makers and the public will eventually have to decide which beaches, which
communities are worth saving.
“The challenge for communities like Ocean City is to persuade everyone else that they
are one of those cities that are too important to give up. And then to get their residents to
cooperate in doing what it takes to do to gradually elevate the entire community with a
rising sea.”
But if you think in geologic time, like University of Maryland professor Michael Kearney
does, there isn’t a whole lot of hope for barrier islands like Ocean City.
“It’s essentially a pile of sand. There’s really nothing permanent about it.”
Kearney studies coastal processes.
“The long term prospect of any barrier surviving the projected rates of sea level rise, even
at the moderate rates – the so-called moderate rates, that the IPCC predicted is pretty
slim.”
Ocean City engineer Terry McGean just isn’t buying it. He thinks Ocean City can survive
sea level rise.
“I think that we can design towards it and we can probably build towards it and with
responsible actions we can live with it.”
As long as there’s enough sand and money to keep it going.
A living shoreline near the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. The native grasses and sandy shore provide habitat for terrapins, the University of Maryland mascot. (Photo by Tamara Keith)
A bulkhead near Kent Island in Maryland. Bulkheads are popular with property owners, but bad for habitat. (Photo by Tamara Keith)
Stephen Hult, who coordinated the planting of native grasses at this living shoreline project in Woodland Beach (Photo by Jana Davis, of the Chesapeake Bay Trust)
The community is trying to restore the beach with rock and dirt and sand and
grasses to hold it all together. This is what's called a living shoreline. (Photo by Jana Davis, of the Chesapeake Bay Trust)
Scientists are pretty certain climate change is going to cause the sea level to rise. It’s
happening already, actually. In communities around the Chesapeake Bay, people are
getting a sneak preview. Tamara Keith reports some people there are trying to work with
nature rather than resist it:
Transcript
Scientists are pretty certain climate change is going to cause the sea level to rise. It’s
happening already, actually. In communities around the Chesapeake Bay, people are
getting a sneak preview. Tamara Keith reports some people there are trying to work with
nature rather than resist it:
(sound of kids planting)
It’s been raining in Woodland Beach. The community is just off of the Chesapeake Bay
in Maryland. The ground here is so soft you sink into it. Mud is everywhere. And that’s
just fine with the volunteers planting native grasses on a sloping hillside.
Stephen Hult is trying to keep things in order.
“And when we plant them we want them all the way down. I’m telling everyone twice.”
Hult heads up shoreline restoration projects for the local property owners association.
And there’s a lot of shoreline to restore.
“The shoreline, in parts of the community since the 1930s, have eroded 20 feet. Year to
year, one barely notices, but if you look at aerial maps of what it used to be like
compared to what it is, it really is quite dramatic.”
There’s been tons of erosion here. The land all along the mid-Atlantic coast is also
slowly sinking. Combine that with global sea level rise and you get erosion in overdrive.
Hult says the community is trying to restore the beach with rock and dirt and sand and
grasses to hold it all together. This is what’s called a living shoreline.
“We have now, with this project it will be well over half a mile of living shorelines that
we’ve installed.”
It’s a relatively new concept, a more natural approach to the gnawing problem of
shoreline erosion. Living shorelines create buffer between the water and homes. They are
kinda like the tidal wetlands that used to be here – before property owners started building
sea walls, also called bulkheads.
Jana Davis is associate director of the Chesapeake Bay Trust. It’s one of the organizations
funding this shoreline restoration. And Davis also happens to live here.
“It’s a wonderful alternative that provides just as good shoreline protection while also
providing a lot of really important habitat benefits that a bulkhead or rock sea wall does
not provide.”
Good for wildlife, and she says, it’s adaptive in the face of sea level rise.
“If sea level were to rise another foot, for example. The marsh could kind of migrate
inland, whereas if you had a bulkhead obviously there’s no migration because it can’t
move.”
But most of the people with bulkheads are NOT buying it. They want to protect their
property from the sinking land and rising water, and a lot of them don’t think a bunch of
rocks and grass are going to cut it.
Kevin Smith is chief of restoration services for the Maryland Department of Natural
Resources.
“There’s many places you can go and look at miles of shoreline and not see any natural
shoreline at all. It’s all armored off.”
Smith met me at a nature center along the bay. A few years ago, a stretch of bulkhead
here was replaced with a living shoreline. The natural ebb and flow of these shorelines
has made some property owners skeptical. They want the shoreline to stay put.
“If these types of projects don’t protect that shoreline from erosion, then homeowners are
not going to want to do it.”
But Smith insists these projects do work, and long term they’re going to be more
sustainable and more flexible than bulkheads – which over time will lose the battle
against the constant pounding of the rising sea.
Scientists have created a species index that tracks populations much like the Dow Jones (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
Biologists have created a way to
track endangered species that they say is
similar to the way we track financial markets.
Rebecca Williams has more:
Transcript
Biologists have created a way to
track endangered species that they say is
similar to the way we track financial markets.
Rebecca Williams has more:
The new system is nicknamed the Dow Jones Index of Biodiversity.
It’s put together by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the
London Zoo.
Jonathan Baillie is with the zoo. He says the system helps keep track of which
species are doing well and which ones are close to extinction.
“So if you thought of a group of species like a company you can track what’s
happening to birds through time, what’s happening to mammals through time
what’s happening to amphibians through time – and we’re seeing amphibians
are crashing quite quickly, birds are going down but not as rapidly.”
Of course species can’t be tracked exactly like financial markets. The species
index gets updated every few years instead of every day.
Soon they’re hoping to track things like beetles, mushrooms, and lichens on the
index.
Due to the price of natural gas and crude oil, it is predicted that it will cost you much more to heat your home this winter
(Photo by John Ferguson, courtesy of FEMA)
As summer winds down, you’re
probably not thinking about your
heating bill. But that’s something
market analysts are thinking about
right now. And reporter Kyle Norris
finds the predictions of what it will
cost to heat your home are going up
in a big way:
Transcript
As summer winds down, you’re
probably not thinking about your
heating bill. But that’s something
market analysts are thinking about
right now. And reporter Kyle Norris
finds the predictions of what it will
cost to heat your home are going up
in a big way:
This year the average cost of heating your home is going to cost a good
chunk more than what it did last year.
Doug MacIntyre is an analyst with the US Energy Information
Administration.
“We’re estimating that, on average, the household using natural gas to
heat their home will be spending 24% more than last year. For heating
oil we think the increase will be even higher with house holds spending
about 36% more than they did last year.”
Those predications are made by looking at the cost of things like natural
gas and crude oil. And by analyzing the weather forecast for the up-
coming winter.
MacIntyre says he does not expect these expensive heating costs to go
away anytime in the next few years.
Melting glaciers as seen from aboard the Fairweather Express II in Glacier Bay, Alaska (Photo by John Ryan)
Glacier Bay, Alaska (Photo by John Ryan)
Steller’s sea lions on a rock in Glacier Bay (Photo by John Ryan)
A National Park might not be the first place
you’d expect to turn into a crime scene. But John Ryan
found one – of sorts – on a boat touring Alaska’s Glacier
Bay National Park:
Transcript
A National Park might not be the first place
you’d expect to turn into a crime scene. But John Ryan
found one – of sorts – on a boat touring Alaska’s Glacier
Bay National Park:
(music)
Scene of the crime. Glacier Bay National Park. 9 o’clock on a sunny Saturday morning.
The crime: Global warming. You know: ice caps melting. Sea level rising. Deserts and
disease spreading. Scientists say it’s big, very big.
(music)
Intergovernmental investigators have ID’d the perpetrator: it’s us. Emissions from fossil
fuels like coal and oil have started heating the earth.
But here on the Fairweather Express II, you’d never know it. Park ranger Kevin Richards
is at the mic, entertaining passengers as we cruise past mile-wide glaciers
in the sun.
“That snow fell when Thomas Jefferson was signing the Declaration of
Independence.”
Richards tells the crowd how the glaciers have retreated 60 miles in the past 200 years.
But he hasn’t once mentioned global warming.
In the audience, Anchorage pathologist James Tiesinga smells a rat.
“The rangers seem very reluctant to say the words ‘global warming’, they skirt
the issue of why the glaciers are receding. I can’t help but wonder if the Park Service
has communicated the message to its employees, ‘don’t bring this up, it’s a hot topic’.”
And I notice the visitors’ newsletter put out by the park talks in depth about the changing
glaciers, but fails to mention that the climate is being changed by humans.
During a break in the naturalist’s stand-up routine, Tiesinga asks why there has been no
mention of global warming? Are we witnessing a coverup?
(music)
As huge chunks of ancient ice tumble into the bay, the Park Ranger, Kevin Richards, says, no,
there’s no censorship of climate science.
“Until very recently, yeah, if you’re working for the government, you
probably didn’t talk a lot about it. But now it’s okay, it’s an open forum right now.”
He says he’ll get to the connection
between melting glaciers and a warming earth near the end of his talk, but it’s a lot more
complicated than you might think.
“We just can’t talk about tidewater glaciers the same way we do about
terrestrial glaciers. It’s not the same process.”
Here’s why it’s not the same: tidewater glaciers have snouts that stick out into the ocean. Terrestrial glaciers are
land-locked. Richards goes on to say that land-locked glaciers in the mountains above
Glacier Bay are shrinking under a warming climate. But he says the dramatic loss of 60
miles of ice from Glacier Bay itself is not a sign of global warming.
(music)
To fact-check the on-board nature talk, I called up Roman Motycka.
He studies glaciers at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks’ Geophysical
Institute. He confirmed that global warming is hitting most Alaskan
glaciers hard.
“90% of the glaciers in South-Eastern Alaska are wasting away, and that’s
complicated, but primarily due to global warming.”
So why aren’t tourists in Glacier Bay hearing that when they witness fall
ice chunks fall into the ocean?
“It’s really complex there. Here’s what happened when all
that ice got lost.”
Motycka explains that tidewater glaciers have their own cycles of
advance and retreat. In a nutshell, when the snout of a glacier ends up floating in deep water, it becomes inherently prone to calving – that is, dropping icebergs – independent of the climate. And that’s what’s happened in Glacier Bay. So, in other words…
“Your naturalist was right, the terrestrial glaciers are the
ones that are more important to look at in terms of straight climate
change.”
(music)
Back on the Fairweather Express II, Park Ranger Kevin Richards
finishes his day at the mic talking about global energy consumption and
making a plea for people to protect the environment back home,
wherever they come from.
So in the end, park rangers are still the nature lovers in funny green outfits you might
remember from your childhood. And as this episode of Thaw and Glacier comes to a
close, all is well in Glacier Bay. Except for a little thing called…
Lester Brown founded the Earth Policy Institute in 2001. (Photo courtesy of the Earth Policy Institute)
