To protect their properties from an ever-encroaching Atlantic Ocean, about 150 homeowners in Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts, funded a $600,000 sand dune project whose construction was completed last Thursday, March 7. Three days later, though, a storm washed away half of their 15,000 tons of sand.
Ad hoc efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change are poor substitutes for a more global approach.
That instantaneous erosion is a costly illustration that ad hoc efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change are poor substitutes for a more global approach. No matter how wealthy the individuals, no matter how wealthy the neighborhoods, they can’t by themselves effectively hold back a rising sea. Or chip in to create a dry spot for themselves.
“No man is an island,” English poet John Donne famously wrote. That’s especially true during this season of accelerated climate change. “If a clod be washed away by the sea” near your home, then chances diminish that I’ll be able to save all the clods near mine.
If any of that sounds like a criticism of the beachfront property owners, that’s not the intent. Having spent most of my life in Louisiana — which lost more than 2,000 square miles of land from 1932 to 2016 and could lose 75% of its wetlands within the next 50 years — I sympathize with the Massachusetts property owners. How many times have I seen homeowners hastily filling bags of sand to place around their doorways before an expected heavy rain event? Hanging over such preparations is the fear that it will never be enough.
The Salisbury Beach homeowners aren’t wrong for taking matters into their own hands. But their hands — our hands — are never going to be big enough to counteract the problem that confronts us. We can extrapolate even further, though. Slowing the rate of climate change and mitigating against its effects isn’t even something that individual states or countries can effectively tackle alone. At the same time, sitting…
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