This is 18 inches of seawater in West Avenue on South Beach during the King Tides of 2013. The last rain had been several days previous. The seawater was running in from the sea and bubbling up through the storm sewers because the sea level that night was higher than the street level. Here's a video I shot that night.
When we first moved to South Beach in 2003, "sunny day flooding" wasn't even a term. But it began in a few years and by 2013 it was a serious thing because of sea level rise. The city installed huge pumps, and for awhile they worked. Except when the power failed, of course. The city began raising streets on the low-lying side of the island, but lost their nerve for reasons they never made public. There was one champion of street-raising on the commission, but the others prevailed. We could see the handwriting on the wall, so by 2018 we were looking for somewhere else to live. An excellent opportunity arose, and we moved to much higher ground hundreds of miles inland.
To Wanda and I, climate refugees aren't hypothetical because we are two of them. Sea level rise is only one of the threats. Wildfires are destroying western towns, and the Colorado River is running dry, threatening the drinking water of an entire region. Drought is also destroying food-producing capabilities of large regions. Hurricanes are increasing in power; when Katrina devastated the US Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama they said it was a thousand year storm. Rita, just as strong, showed up two weeks later just down the coast. And then the monster that was Dorian sat on top of Marsh Harbour in The Bahamas for two days with the force of an F4 tornado. I can't think of another time in human history when a place was devastated by a storm so strong for so long. There is no doubt that there will be major migrations away from the worst of the climate change impacts, and it's already happening, as Wanda and I can personally attest. There are several ways this can play out. This post is based on sea level rise, but the adaptation measures that are the body of the post apply to all of the climate change impacts. The items below are the three most important strategies for successful adaptation by moving away from threats.
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