Why Saving the Shore Starts Now
What’s your favorite place at the shore? When the seas rise and the tidal wetlands have to move further inland into all we have built there, it is terrible for both. How many of our favorite places we lose depends on what we do now.
All over the planet, humans are drawn to the ocean shores. 40% of the world’s population lives within 65 miles of an ocean. Everywhere, we have built human structures right at the edge of the oceans. Many of the biggest cities, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Tokyo, Shanghai, Mumbai, and others, are tidal. Many countries don’t have a choice, most notably the island countries of the Pacific and Bangladesh, which are at or very near present-day sea level. For those who are able to choose, shore communities, with homes, hotels, restaurants and recreation, are much desired to either live in or visit for vacations. For rich and poor, so much of our wealth is at the ocean's edge.
Also, right at that edge, facing all that human wealth, is wealth that can be argued to be even more valuable for us all: the tidal wetlands of the earth. Teeming with so much life, these are among the richest ecosystems we have. Salt marshes provide valuable habitat for migrating birds and other wildlife, including small mammals, reptiles, and fish. Highly valued food supplies, like clams and mussels, only exist in the tidal zone. Tidal wetlands also provide buffer zones to help protect us from storm surges.
The problem is this: when the seas rise, and the tidal wetlands push into the human habitats, it is terrible for both. We lose tidal wetlands, almost certainly, more than half. The loss of all the human habitation at the edge means millions of climate refugees who have to move further inland. That will highly stress even the communities that don’t directly flood.
These are irrefutable, well-documented facts about sea level rise:
The hotter the Earth becomes, the more ice melts, raising the sea level.
In detail, throughout geological history, the oceans have gone up and down. During the peak of the last ice age, 21,000 years ago, the evidence is that, with so much water locked up as ice, the oceans were about 400 feet lower than their present levels. When the ocean’s level is down the tidal wetlands are further out. But with oceans rising now, the only place tidal wetlands can go is into all the wonderful human habitation. This is a terrible loss for both. Pressed against all the human construction, tidal wetlands can no longer be the rich ecosystems they are now. Those places become wet, but they stop being rich ecosystem wetlands.
Our buildings, even the big ones, become useless when their feet are in the water. Humans will have to either move out or build dikes. And when dikes are built to keep human habitats from flooding, the tidal wetlands disappear.
Because of this, estimates are, with just a 1-meter sea level rise, we will lose over 70% of global tidal wetlands. Higher sea level rise is even more catastrophic.
However high we let the sea level rise now, it is not coming back down to the present levels until the next ice age. Based on previous cycles of ice ages, that is not going to happen for 50,000 years. With a human generation being 20 years, these five generations are now well on their way to being badly remembered for not doing all they could have done to minimize global heating and the consequential sea level rise. That’s 2500 human generations who will suffer the catastrophic damage caused by us. Putting that into perspective, Galileo lived just 20 generations ago. Jesus lived 100 generations ago. 2500 generations will be rightfully cursing us for what we didn’t do now.
What can we do? We are causing the heating that melts the ice and raises the seas mostly by the burning of fossil fuels: gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and coal. Here is the science of how. The liquid fuels are pretty much the same as each other. They weigh around 6.3 pounds per gallon. They are all hydrocarbons- about 10% hydrogen and 90% carbon. When you burn them, the hydrogen combines with oxygen from the atmosphere, making water- no problem. But the 5-1/2 pounds of carbon atoms each combine with two heavier oxygen atoms from the atmosphere, making around 20 pounds of carbon dioxide from just one gallon burned.
What does this mean for cars? If your car gets 40 miles per gallon and you drive it 120,000 miles, you have burned 3000 gallons. That means you have produced 60,000 pounds of CO2 from just one theoretically efficient car! It is vital that we stop making and buying fossil fuel-powered vehicles. If you know of someone in the market for a new car, please ask them to buy an all-electric vehicle.
What does this mean for flying? We love to fly. Many consider it a necessity. But one of the most important things you can do is to minimize how much you fly. Want to find out how much jet fuel was burned on the flight you were on? Exiting the plane, ask the pilots how many pounds of jet fuel were burned on your flight. Don't ask them how many gallons. They know it by weight. Ask too, how many passengers were there. Take the weight, divide by 6.3 pounds, and you will know how many gallons the airplane burned. Then divide by the number of passengers, and you get what your share is. Now multiply those gallons by 20 pounds and you have how much CO2 you have personally added by your flight.
What else burns fossil fuels? Growing food. Whether it's fertilizing and plowing crops or getting the food from the farm to the market, there is a lot of fuel burned in the process. We all need to eat, but minimizing food waste is important. It is estimated that wasting food in this country burns as much as all the flying.
Voting against the planet -climate denial- comes mostly from those countries, corporations, and individuals that derive their personal wealth from the selling of fossil fuels. At the COP 30 climate conference that just ended, it is estimated that 1500 of the representatives there were from the fossil fuel sellers. They successfully blocked the mention of fossil fuels in the final document. With the known consequences of continued burning of fossil fuels, this is a crime against all life on planet earth, against us now, but especially against all the generations of life that will come after us. Global heating changes the parameters of every ecosystem there is, almost always to the detriment of the quality of life. The greed behind the denial of global heating by fossil fuel sellers is criminal. We all must fight this.
How Much sea level rise? Cutting our fossil fuel use is absolutely vital to keep sea level rise to a minimum. By our actions - or non-actions, we are choosing the amount of rise. With the amount of global heating gases we have already added and continue to add to the atmosphere, at least 2 feet of sea level rise is very probable by 2100. That’s within the lifetimes of many alive now. Far worse, our doing nothing to cut way back on fossil fuels makes 7 feet the probable amount of rise by 2100. That’s catastrophic. Worse, the seas can rise a whole lot more than that. Just Greenland, our most vulnerable ice sheet, because it is the lowest latitude, will add 23 feet of rise.
The science is clear. We must act now, to the best of our knowledge and our abilities. Do all you can personally and, even more important, talk about this with everyone you know and get them to vote. Our present climate denier-in-chief is horribly accelerating the damage we will cause Earth for all the generations to come. For all of us now and for all those in the future: Vote for the Planet. Do all you can to stop Global Heating.