Are the Providence Hurricane Barriers enough?
PROVIDENCE JOURNAL PHOTO/ MARY MURPHY

Recent storm events and days worth of heavy rain have made it abundantly clear that there are many areas throughout New England that are susceptible to flooding, erosion, and damage to important infrastructure (like power lines, roads, bridges, drinking water and sewer treatment) and personal property. The State of Rhode Island has a number of ongoing efforts designed to learn more about what people think about increased storm frequency and severity and whether and how to prepare for climate change in Rhode Island. Understanding the many points of view is a really important first step to finding lasting and meaningful solutions. I will be providing updates as the planning and surveying efforts in Rhode Island move forward and I am hopeful that we can have a virtual conversation about how our states should be preparing communities for the realities of climate change. For now, find out how you and your family can be more prepared.  Pass this on to your friends, colleagues and family, who may not be aware that Hurricane season is active through November. You can fill out the survey or go to the Rhode Island Sea Grant page for the survey and other information.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has made a number of passionate speeches throughout the week regarding climate change impacts and the dire need to address climate change. He is establishing himself as a courageous leader on the single most important issue facing this country – the reality of a changing climate and our moral, economic, and human obligation to respond to the threat we continue to blindly build. He will not let his colleagues (or the country) forget the seriousness of this issue and the need to respond to it.

Interestingly and importantly, this past week, Senator Whitehouse spoke with strong references to Pope Francis and his call to Catholics to care for Creation – a connection we rarely hear in the Senate. In fact, a more common theme these days, among congressmen and clergymen alike, has been to invoke the Bible to justify a do-nothing approach to climate change, arguing that the idea that we can irreparably harm our environment runs contrary to scripture.

As a Roman Catholic myself, I can confidently say that the Church’s call to advance social justice on the one hand (i.e., protecting the poor, caring for the Earth and its creatures) and protect human life (i.e., opposing abortion, birth control, etc..) on the other hand, creates a conflict for voters that has often been exploited and manipulated by the dominant political parties in the United States. Indeed, there even have been a number of masses I have attended during election years past when I have been made to feel that a candidate’s position on abortion is the only deciding factor when voting. This isn’t because the Church asked me to vote one way or the other, but it was because “life” was only viewed through the single issue of abortion, and not the global lense that would allow one to consider the disproportionate impact that our continued reliance on fossil fuels, and our steadfast refusal to respond to climate change is already having on the poorest of the poor and on Earth’s natural systems.

I hope that by choosing the name Francis, our new Pope has done more than signal a concern for the poor and the environment. I hope that by choosing this name, and by being a former student and teacher of chemistry, Pope Francis’ mission will be to remind Catholics everywhere that they can believe in the science of climate change, advocate for the protection of all creation, and for social justice and the poor, and still be a good Catholic. Indeed, without such advocacy “justice will be unachievable.” http://conservation.catholic.org/u_s_bishops.htm

St. Francis of Assisi preached the duty of men to protect and enjoy nature as both the stewards of God’s creation and as creatures ourselves. On November 29, 1979, Pope John Paul II declared St. Francis to be the Patron of Ecology. During the World Environment Day 1982, Pope John Paul II said that St. Francis’ love and care for creation was a challenge for contemporary Catholics and a reminder “not to behave like dissident predators where nature is concerned, but to assume responsibility for it, taking all care so that everything stays healthy and integrated, so as to offer a welcoming and friendly environment even to those who succeed us.”

It would be truly inspirational if the Church would begin to pray during its Prayers of the Faithful that our political leaders make the right choices when it comes to caring for our natural world; and then, perhaps, Catholics would learn as much about the ministry of our new Pope during mass as they might from the Senate floor.

Yesterday, the North Atlantic right whale was only an historical symbol of one consequence associated with the relentless and unsustainable pursuit of energy.  Today, it is also a new symbol of renewable energy done the right way.  The agreement CLF is announcing today reflects support for the pursuit of renewable energy and also demonstrates that real leadership to change how we pursue energy can come from industry itself.

The pursuit of cheap energy from the 17th century forward hasn’t exactly been what one would call sustainable. From the time the first right whale was killed for its oil to today’s efforts to take and refine oil from the Canadian tar sands, our industries have drawn down limited resources with little regard for the environmental consequences. In fact, the right whale stands as a particularly distressing symbol of our history of exploitation.

The North Atlantic right whale was so-named because it was considered by whalers to be the “right” whale to kill. It was slow, swam close to shore, and was easy to harvest – accommodatingly floating to the surface with a head full of oil after it has been killed. Between the 17th and 19th centuries, the North Atlantic right whale, an animal that according to Herman Melville’s 1851 reflections in Moby Dick “would yield you some 500 gallons of oil or more” in just its lip and tongue, was hunted to the brink of extinction. The relentless pursuit of this limited resource in such an unsustainable way is the reason that today the North Atlantic right whale is considered critically endangered, with fewer than 500 animals remaining.

Despite the right whale’s lesson, our reliance on oil continues. According to the United States Energy Information Administration, the United States consumed a total of 6.87 billion barrels (18.83 million barrels per day) in 2011. Our reliance on exhaustible, limited fossil-fuel resources is causing climate change and setting into motion a series of unavoidable consequences, but still we drill for oil – albeit no longer in the head of a whale.

So while today’s landmark North Atlantic right whale agreement is a collection of voluntary measures designed to provide further protections for the North Atlantic right whale, primarily by reducing or avoiding sound impacts from exploratory activities that developers use to determine where to build wind farms, it is also so much more than that.

The offshore wind developers party to this agreement – Deepwater Wind, NRG Bluewater, and Energy Management, Inc. (owner of Cape Wind) – are willing to go above and beyond because they recognized that more could be done to protect North Atlantic right whales in the pursuit of energy. These developers’ willingness, and indeed enthusiasm, for protecting the whales reflects a new way of thinking – a 180-degree turnaround from the way other companies viewed energy generation over the last century and a half.  Instead of treating the natural world as an adversary to be exploited and consumed, these companies recognize that we can accommodate natural systems (like the whales’ migratory patterns and feeding grounds), that we can avoid extracting limited resources, that we don’t have to burn fuels that exacerbate climate change, and that we can still produce the energy to fuel modern society. Now that’s the right way.

On September 26, 2012 I posted a blog called Thune For Thought, in which I wrote:

“At 2 a.m. on September 22, 2012, the United States Senate voted by unanimous consent that   U.S. airlines could choose to ignore the European Union’s requirement that all airplanes landing in the EU reduce their carbon pollution that is causing global warming. Either climate change is happening or it isn’t. But, once you look at the data, once you subscribe to the opinion that it is happening, you have an affirmative obligation to take all reasonable steps to responsibly address the problem. I understand that this is election season, and some of the Senate races are tight, and airlines can be powerful lobbyists, but, it is 2012 and an anti-climate emissions control bill is passing via unanimous consent in the United States Senate? Either climate change is really happening or it isn’t.”

Our climate champions across the nation abandoned their science-based advocacy about the reality of climate change and the extreme price tag that comes with our collective failure to act. They abandoned that advocacy immediately prior to the election, and disappointingly, during the election. They abandoned that advocacy even in the aftermath of the one-two punch of Super Storm Sandy and Nor’easter Athena.

Not a single elected official in Rhode Island, from the Governor to the delegation, has uttered the words climate change in any of these contexts.

After the November 6, 2012 election, nothing much has changed in Rhode Island or for the country in terms of political representation. Our delegation in Rhode Island remained the same: Reed, Whitehouse, Langevin, and Cicciline; our Governor remained the same: Chafee; our President: the same; and, the balance of power in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives remained the same: blue majority in the Senate, red majority in the House.

The take home message is simple: Averting the climate disaster can’t be about party politics. We all lose if that is where the battle lines are drawn on the single most important issue facing our country. Averting the climate disaster requires science and the courage to act on it.

Dear President Obama, start acting on climate change.
Dear Senator Reed, start acting on climate change.
Dear Senator Whitehouse, start acting on climate change.
Dear Representative Langevin, start acting on climate change.
Dear Representative Cicciline, start acting on climate change.
Dear Governor Chafee, start acting on climate change.
Dear Rhode Island House and Senate Leaders, start acting on climate change.

We need science and courage, not politics.

A cottage teeters on the shore at Roy Carpenter's Beach in South Kingstown, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012. Credit: NBC News 10

What do the 2010 March Floods, Hurricane Irene, and Tropical Storm Sandy all have in common? These three 100-year events (meaning there is a 1% chance of this type of storm happening once a year) have all occurred within the past two and half years.

Failing to change how we view significant storm events (e.g., it’s just a fluke), affects how well and whether we plan for future storm events. Viewing these storms as “just a bad run,” or “ a freak storm” denies the reality of a changing climate and its effect on weather, precipitation and the severity of storms. In this way, our point of view can threaten our ability to change our approach to development and planning in a way that preserves our assets for future generations. Ultimately this short-sighted point of view is used to justify an unwillingness to move away from static planning concepts, like planning for a 100-year flood, which, to be sure, allows for more development short-term, but, is of little use when planning the life expectancy of coastal development or construction already along our river banks and in our flood plains.

After the March 2010 floods submerged and disabled three major municipal sewer treatment facilities for more than a week, wiped out dams and bridges, destroyed homes and business built along the banks of the Pawtuxet River, and pushed massive areas of pavement up with surges of water from swollen rivers, and, after incurring hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, what did we do? We left our sewer treatment facilities where they were; continued to plan for and permit development for 100-year storms; rebuilt the bridges; repaved the parking lots that were built within the flood plains of major rivers; talked about how we could get environmental regulations out of the way of job creation and economic development, and; tried to get back to normal.

We did the same after Hurricane Irene (a category 1 storm that left half of state’s residents without power, many for more than a week, and which resulted mandatory evacuations for low-lying communities including Charlestown, Narragansett, South Kingstown, and Westerly over storm-surge related concerns. We fixed the roofs, removed the trees, restored power, and petitioned the coastal management agency for the construction of 202 foot seawall (price tag, about a million dollars) in Matunuck to guard against storm surge and erosion.

The goal always the same:  just try to get back to normal as quickly as possible.

Piles of sand plowed from Matunuck Beach Road, South Kingstown, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012. Credit: NBC News 10

In the immediate aftermath of Tropical Storm Sandy, our third major storm event in less than three years, and a storm that resulted in more serious damage in some of our coastal communities than was experienced during the Hurricane of 1938 (portions of the seawall in Narragansett dislodged; homes and businesses shattered all along the coast; infrastructure, like the bath house and boardwalk in Galilee, washed away; mounds of sand covering roads throughout South County, and breakers compromised) – maybe we should start asking ourselves, “What is normal?”

Because to “get back to normal” under a planning regime and system-wide frame of mind that does not understand, appropriately consider, or strategically plan for the effects of climate change on our coastline, our natural resources, our communities and our economy; well, that is not  “normal” at all. If all we’ve learned as a result of these past three storms is to get milk and water, buy a generator, install a sump pump, get flood insurance, trim down branches and trees that might fall on power lines; and bring in more line and more contractors to assist with power outages, then we haven’t really learned anything at all.

Does it makes sense to rebuild infrastructure, at a significant cost to the taxpayers, in areas that we know will continue to be vulnerable? Should we seize the opportunity to undo a past planning decision that undermined the ability of a natural system to absorb flooding or protect against storm surge and erosion, like removing parking lots that were paved over marshes, and wetlands, or removing hard shoreline structures that accelerate erosion along the beaches? Should we be planning for 500-year or 1,000 floods (the Netherlands and Japan protect their residents against a 10,000-year flood)?

We cannot continue to plan and build according to standards that don’t contemplate climate change and its effects on our built and natural environment. Ignoring the policy and economic conversations that need to happen about the costs of coastal protection versus costs of land-use relocation as well as the potential for movement of populations and infrastructure is irresponsible and will come at a great price.

According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), if airlines were a country, they would be the world’s seventh biggest polluter. Aviation carbon emissions are expected to rise to 3.5 billion tons by 2050. The European Union’s requirement that all airplanes landing in the EU reduce the carbon pollution that is causing global warming, would lower carbon dioxide emissions by 70 million tons per year – equivalent to taking 30 million cars off the road.

On Saturday, September 22, 2012, a bill to prohibit operators of civil aircraft of the United States from participating in the European Union’s emissions trading scheme to reduce carbon pollution from airplanes passed in the United States Senate by unanimous consent. The Senate bill, S. 1956, co-sponsored by Senator John Thune (R-SD) and Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), will allow U.S. airlines to ignore the European Union’s requirement that they reduce their carbon pollution that is causing global warming. If the U.S.-based airlines choose to ignore the E.U. law, they could be on the hook to pay huge penalties, which undoubtedly and inevitably will be a cost passed on to consumers.

I am less concerned about the price of my airline ticket than I am about the significant costs that come with our federal government’ and our Congress’ inability to get out of its own way when it comes to responsibly acting to reduce the threat of climate change. I understand that this is election season, and some of the Senate races are tight, and airlines can be powerful lobbyists, but, it is 2012 and an anti-climate emissions control bill is passing via unanimous consent in the United States Senate? Either climate change is really happening or it isn’t.

I expect Fox News, the Tea Party, and even the Wall Street Journal to get its facts wrong about climate change. They have attempted to undermine climate science conclusions by cherry-picking data and attacking individual scientists every chance they get. And, I am not so naïve to think that control of emissions responsible for climate change will ever happen with a Republican majority in Congress (even though the United States Supreme Court said carbon dioxide could be regulated by the federal government nearly 6 years ago). But, I am completely flabbergasted by the fact that the United States Senate unanimously acted to defeat the effectiveness of a good climate reduction law. Not a single Senator stood up in opposition. Not a single Senator even used this as an opportunity to speak publicly about climate change and the implications that passing an anti-emissions control bill via unanimous consent would have on our collective campaign to stop climate change.

For 650,000 years atmospheric carbon dioxide has never been above 300 parts per million. Today, it is screaming toward 400 parts per million. The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 1,300 independent scientific experts from countries all over the world, under the auspices of the United Nations, concluded there’s a more than 90 percent probability that human activities over the past 250 years have warmed our planet.

And, the rocket scientists agree. That’s right. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s or NASA’s website states that “the current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years.” The scientific evidence for the warming of our climate is unequivocal and the cause of it, which should be obvious at this point, is the uncontrolled global burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas). The effects of a warming climate are only slightly more obvious than the fact that the climate is warming and humans are causing it.

For example, this is the second time in less than two years that the Petermann Glacier in Greenland has calved icebergs double and quadruple the size of Manhattan. Global sea level rose almost 7 inches in the last century, but the rate in the last decade is nearly double that of the last century. Arctic sea ice is retreating and thinning at unprecedented rates, West Nile Virus is now something for which people cancel summer events and New Englanders are still recovering from significant storm events that have wiped out whole communities.

At 2 a.m. on September 22, 2012, the United States Senate voted by unanimous consent that U.S. airlines could choose to ignore the European Union’s requirement that all airplanes landing in the EU reduce their carbon pollution that is causing global warming. Either climate change is happening or it isn’t. But, once you look at the data, once you subscribe to the opinion that it is happening, you have an affirmative obligation to take all reasonable steps to responsibly address the problem. If the Senate believes the evidence of 1300 scientists, NASA, and their own eyes, they should vote accordingly.

Last night, in the Town of South Kingstown, Rhode Island, the State’s coastal management agency met to hear the Town’s plea to reclassify Matunuck Beach –a natural headland bluff and coastal beach – as a manmade beach. This reclassification, the Town argued, would allow the business and home owners in the village of Matunuck to defend themselves against the rising sea and the erosion that is eating away feet of beach weekly by allowing them to build a sea wall along the beach. With less than three feet between the ocean and the state road, the Town argued that without the reclassification, the peril to its citizens and to the road, which has been there since the late 1800s, was imminent.

Many supported the reclassification and some opposed it. Legal arguments, policy arguments, and economic arguments were all advanced over the course of four hours. But, shortly before 10 p.m., the second to last public witness, advanced an argument that brought a hush to the room of hundreds.

A young woman from Matunuck approached the podium from the back of the auditorium in her jeans and flip-flops. When she began to speak she was visibly nervous and apologetic for not being as comfortable as others who preceded her. Her hands were shaky, her voice unsteady, but her point was resoundingly clear. She had lived in Matunuck for twenty-five years. She loved the village and the people in it. She had grown up playing on the south coast’s barrier beaches. I waited for her to express her support for the reclassification of the beach and the construction of a sea wall to save the town, but she expressed something else.

She thought the Town’s approach and the whole conversation we were having reflected an incredible short-sightedness and that the solutions proposed were short-spanned. She found it hard to believe that people were actually talking about trying to save a house or a road or a business on the grounds that it had been in Matunuck for 50 or 100 years. “The beach and these bluffs and this ecosystem have been here for millions of years,” she said. She expressed her genuine concern that if we allowed for the construction of a wall on this beach that we would destroy the entire barrier beach system and the hope that these beaches would be here for our children.

Here this woman stood, courageously arguing against her neighbors, and perhaps even her own self-interest to save the beach for the future. I remember thinking to myself, “so this is what climate change and sea level rise looks like when we add people to the equation.” It is people, not policies, that will have to make the hard choices between the long-term interests of a community and their own private interests. Neighbors from close-knit communities will disagree on both solutions and outcomes. Governments will have to balance long-term economic sustainability with immediate financial crises.

If we wait to respond to the inevitable, these scenes will begin to play out more often throughout our New England communities. But, if we’ve grown tired of waiting for the choices to be thrust upon us, there is something we can do about it.

We can begin to identify the strategic solutions that allow for bearable economic costs, minimal and organized relocation, and sustainable resource protection measures. We can protect our own interests and the longer-term interests of a broader community.

Image courtesy girl_named_fred @ flickr. Creative Commons.

One of the most cherished natural resources Rhode Islanders have is miles and miles of coastline. Rhode Islanders take significant pride in the fact that while the State is small, people travel from all over the world to walk along our beaches. But, the beaches are in trouble.

One serious coastal erosion issue in Matunuck village in South Kingstown is leading the State’s coastal resources management agency down a slippery policy slope and it doesn’t bode well for the state’s coastline. Matunuck is essentially falling into the ocean, or the ocean is coming to take Matunuck. However you look at it, the rates of coastal erosion are accelerating.

The state road that provides the only evacuation route to our fellow Rhode Islanders that live in Matunuck is being undermined and will be lost to the sea without action from the coastal agency. Homes and businesses are also in jeopardy. The challenge, however, isn’t in identifying the problem. The challenge is in identifying a solution.

Climate change is causing more significant storm events and increasing wave energy along certain segments of our coastline. Irresponsible and short-sighted permitting decisions have allowed hardened structures to be placed on Matunuck’s coastal features, structures that only increase and accelerate erosion. The past five decades of science has allowed coastal managers to evolve in their thinking about the best beach management practices, and time and again, experienced coastal managers tell us that allowing hardended shoreline protection (like sheet pile walls) to be built on coastal features seriously undermines the ability of the beach to re-nourish and restore the sand, and exacerbates erosion. Indeed, the State of Rhode Island’s coastal plan strictly prohibits hardened structures or other shoreline protection devices to be used for the purpose of regaining what has been lost to historical erosion.

Despite this prohibition in the state’s plan, and despite what the science tells us, the state’s coastal agency is considering changes to the coastal program that will allow the long-term continued maintenance of hardened structures without a public dialogue about whether those structures should be removed. And, on April 24th the coastal agency will consider a petition to allow Matunuck and several private property owners to build a seawall around the village, wiping out what little there is left of the beach and the public’s right to access it.

This issue isn’t just about Matunuck. It’s about how we will manage our environment in the face of climate change. And, it’s about the coastline and the need to protect the policies that were established to protect it – for today and the future.

As climate change continues to advance, these are the kinds of issues that we will continue to be faced with, both in our coastal and river communities. We will have an opportunity to make the right policy choices, but they won’t be easy choices to make. Will we have the courage to base our choices on science?

On November 15, 2011, CLF led a coalition of 14 other environmental groups in sending a letter to the United States Environmental Protection Agency that called for swift implementation of permit controls at a Massachusetts facility that is discharging directly into the Blackstone River.

The coalition letter was written in response to a July 20, 2011 letter sent by the Massachusetts’s Department of Environmental Protection in which the MADEP asked EPA to consider delaying the installation of new permit controls at the Upper Blackstone Water Pollution Abatement District (UBWPAD). MADEP argued that the delay would allow for further study of the river before we ask the UBWPAD to install costly new controls. CLF and the other signatories to the letter argued that any additional delay will further degrade the water quality of the Blackstone, and will also be  contrary to the permit requirements established by the Clean Water Act. A copy of the letter can be found here.

Every day, the UBWPAD discharges as much as 56 million gallons of wastewater into the Blackstone River. This is not the time, or the place, for delay. We’ve studied the river to death.  Now we have to begin protecting it.

The litigation deciding where the permit limits for nitrogen and phosphorous discharges at the UPWPAD should be set will be decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit before the summer of 2012.  Oral argument is set for this coming January. Stay tuned for an update – we’ll provide you one here on CLF Scoop.