Whether Seacoast homes or seaside cities are to be or not to be, that is the question. Sea levels are rising, storms and storm surges are growing more powerful, deluges are descending with greater frequency. In some places the land itself is sinking.
Globally, the news from the climate change front is mostly bad, though there is one bright spot. Most people now accept that climate change is a deadly threat caused chiefly by the burning of fossil fuels. Led by the world’s youth, as symbolized by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, the public appears ready to act. But will action come in time?
Last month the Boston Globe ran a stunning story documenting the damage already done to Cape Cod. Shrunken beaches, homes and businesses lost, marine life vanishing, the cape itself shrinking. Those who can afford to do so are paying to have their homes moved back from beaches and seaside cliffs. But for some, retreat is not an option.
Later this month, residents in communities like Hampton and Seabrook will get a better idea of what the sea might claim when a “king tide” produced by the aligned gravitational pull of the sun and moon occurs.
The state’s Department of Environmental Services and UNH’s Sea Grant program are seeking help from citizen scientists willing to download software that will allow them to photograph the king tide’s impact.
Tides will be unusually high between Sunday, Oct. 27, and Wednesday, Oct. 30, and peak on the night of Oct. 29.
Coastal sea levels have risen roughly eight inches over the past century. The 2019 report on the flood risk facing New Hampshire warns that they will continue rising for centuries. Melting ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic are speeding the increase.
“Coastal New Hampshire is likely to experience a relative sea level rise of 1.5 to 3.8 feet by 2100. There is a 1-in-100 chance that (the increase) will exceed 5.3 feet by 2100 if greenhouse gas concentrations stabilize, or 6.5 feet by 2100 if greenhouse gas concentrations continue to grow,” the report said.
In the worst-case scenario, sea level rise along New Hampshire’s coast could top 10 feet by the century’s end. Meanwhile the risk of flooding from extreme rains continues to grow.
It’s time, one of the report’s authors said, for Seacoast communities to decide, given limited resources, what to save, what to move and what to let rising waters claim.
Taking arms against the rising sea is an option, but one that, if carbon emissions aren’t quickly and drastically reduced, is almost certain to fail. Seawalls and jetties may buy property owners some time, but at vast expense. And who will pay?
Nationally, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of real estate are likely to be lost to flooding over coming decades. Mortgage failure rates, as people walk away from homes that are literally underwater, economists warn, could easily exceed those of the Great Recession.
So as if climate change and its accompanying tragedies aren’t problems enough, New York Times reporter Christopher Flavelle, in a Sept. 30 story, warns that banks have begun to shift the risk of their investments in coastal real estate to taxpayers by offloading mortgages to government-backed lenders like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
We’ve seen this play before. It ends badly for taxpayers. It’s time for Congress and regulators to bring the curtain down on a practice that leaves taxpayers drowning in debts they didn’t sign up for.