"There's a whole lot of research out there that indicates the market value of coastal property just really doesn't account for sea level rise in a meaningful way right now, and in the ways that it maybe should," Stein says. "But at some point, the market is going to realize the problem. And at that point, it may be too late."
The major currents in the Atlantic Ocean help control the climate by moving warm surface waters north and south from the equator, with colder deep water pushing back toward the equator from the poles. The presence of that warm surface water plays a key role in moderating the climate in the North Atlantic, giving places like the UK a far more moderate climate than its location—the equivalent of northern Ontario—would otherwise dictate.
But the temperature differences that drive that flow are expected to fade as our climate continues to warm. A bit over a decade ago, measurements of the currents seemed to be indicating that temperatures were dropping, suggesting that we might be seeing these predictions come to pass. But a few years later, it became clear that there was just too much year-to-year variation for us to tell.
Pastor Aaron Trigg was at home when the water arrived in Rainelle. It had been raining hard all day, filling the creeks and rivers that run through southern West Virginia. In the past, such intense downpours would last only a few hours, but this storm brought wave after wave of torrential rain. "You could hear the water up in the mountains just crashing trees," Trigg remembers. Rainelle is a small town in a steep valley. When the creek near downtown jumped its banks on the evening of June 23, 2016, the water immediately flooded into every home on Trigg's block. Trigg's house was one-story tall, so there was nowhere to escape. He took shelter on the second floor of his neighbor's house and waited as the water kept rising. As it got dark, he could hear people screaming for help. He wondered if he would survive the night. "I did a lot of praying that night," he says. "Not so much for myself, but for the people I could hear."
Failing to address climate change is “marching forward to what is almost tantamount to a mutual suicide pact”, said Kerry. “We bury our heads in the sand at our own peril. It’s urgent to treat the climate crisis as the urgent security threat that it is.”
The city will officially ban fossil fuel connections in new construction by 2030, a major step toward phasing out a reliance on gas and oil that other liberal cities have pursued across the nation.
Mayor Bill de Blasio will announce the new policy, reviewed in advance by POLITICO, during his State of the City address on Thursday. The city will first establish intermediate goals for the policy in the short term and work to ensure the ban doesn’t negatively impact renters and low-income homeowners.
De Blasio last year pledged to ban natural gas and other fossil fuels in large building systems by 2040 and to block any new fossil infrastructure, like pipelines, in the city. But it was unclear at the time how he would achieve those lofty goals as cities are mostly beholden to the state or federal government when it comes to new energy infrastructure — from siting new power plants to building offshore wind farms.
But banning gas hookups in new or renovated buildings is one of the few ways cities can exert local authority to cut greenhouse gas emissions — and New York will now pursue the measure.
His pain was transfixing, a case study in a fundamental climate riddle: How do you confront the truth of climate change when the very act of letting it in risked toppling your sanity? There is too much grief, too much suffering to bear. So we intellectualize. We rationalize. And too often, without even allowing ourselves to know we’re doing it, we turn away. At virtually every level — personal, political, policy, corporate — we repeat this pattern. We fail, or don’t even try, to rise to the challenge. Yes, there are the behemoth forces of power and money reinforcing the status quo. But even those of us who firmly believe we care very often fail to translate that caring into much action. We make polite, perhaps even impassioned conversation. We say smart climate things in the boardroom or classroom or kitchen or on the campaign trail. And then … there’s a gap, a great nothingness and inertia. What happens if a human — or to be precise, a climate scientist, both privileged and cursed to understand the depth of the problem — lets the full catastrophe in?
Why worry about the smell of the burning brakes on the steep hill as the truck only speeds up, when you got Sam Cooke's Twisting the Night Away, on the radio. Everybody, let's singing along ...
They're twistin', twistin' Everybody's feelin' great They're twistin', twistin' They're twistin' the night away
In an effort to slow the nation's contribution to climate change, President Biden is expected to begin halting oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters.
The much-anticipated move is one of several executive actions the president is scheduled to make Wednesday to address the worsening climate crisis and the broader decline of the natural world, but it won't come without pushback.