Wright, Ph.D. She’s chief scientist of Esri, in Redlands, California, that analyzes geographic system relationships, patterns and trends. The higher


acidity levels are “taking a toll on shellfish such as oysters, clams and sea urchins, as well as coral reefs, where much aquatic life is spawned,” Wright explains. Climate change may have other devastating impacts on the ocean food chain—and eventually us—that scientists are only beginning to discern. As just one of myriad impacts: Ocean acidification threatens the country’s $3.7 billion annual wild fish and shellfish industry and the $9.6 billion slice of the global tourism business that caters to scuba divers and snorkelers, according to a recent NAS study.


Dawn Wright


development impacts oceans’ natural systems.


Municipalities are also taking


The Way Forward We can be grateful for some hopeful developments in the call to act. Wright, who has advised President


Obama’s National Ocean Council, is overseeing her company’s ocean initiative, which includes building an ocean basemap of unparalleled detail. While less than 10 percent of the world’s oceans’ underwater realms are mapped today, Esri is compiling authoritative bathymetric data to build a comprehensive map of the ocean floor. Public and private sector planners, researchers, businesses and nonprofits are already using this map and analysis tools to, among other things, conduct risk assessments and provide greater understanding of how onshore


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action. New York City plans to restore natural buffers to future hurricanes, while Philadelphia and other cities are restoring watersheds, replanting trees in riparian areas, adding rain gardens, laying permeable pavement and revamping roofs and parking lots to reduce stormwater runoff. Investing in such “green infrastructure” is less costly than expanding “grey infrastructure” such as underground sewer systems and water purification plants. Increasingly, local authorities are relocating communities out of flood zones to allow rivers to reclaim wetlands, an effort which also creates new recreation and tourism spots. Floodplains buffer against extreme flooding and drought, plus filter stormwater runoff, removing farm and lawn fertilizers and other chemicals that otherwise enter waterways, creating deoxygenated “dead zones” where aquatic life can’t survive, as exemplified by parts of Lake Erie, Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. “These solutions are unfolding


here and there,” Postel notes, while also remarking that too many locales are rebuilding levees at their peril and allowing people to return to areas that flood repeatedly. “An amount of


“Tell politicians that


you care about this. We’ve got to get countering climate change high on the priority list.” ~ Richard Somerville


climate change is already locked in. We will have to adapt, as well as mitigate, simultaneously.” Somerville, who helped write the 2007 assessment by the Nobel Prize-winning International Panel on Climate Change, labels it “baloney” when politicians say there’s not enough time or it’s too expensive to address the problem. “It’s very doable,” he maintains. “First, inform yourself. Second, tell politicians that you care about this. Then raise hell with those who don’t agree. We’ve got to get countering climate change high on the priority list.”


McKibben recommends that the country gets serious about putting a price on carbon emissions. Meanwhile, he’s encouraged by the people-powered regional successes in blocking fracking, a controversial method of extracting natural gas, and credits grassroots groups for holding the Keystone pipeline project at bay. “We’re cutting it super-close”


and need to change the trajectory of climate change, according to McKibben, who says we can still have good lives powered by wind and solar, but will have to learn to live more simply. “I don’t know where it will all end and won’t see it in my lifetime. But if we can stop the combustion of fossil fuels and endless consumption, then there’s some chance for the next generation to figure out what the landing is going to be.”


Christine MacDonald is a freelance journalist in Washington, D.C., who specializes in health, science and environmental issues. Learn more at ChristineMacDonald.info.


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