The images coming from the Florida Gulf Coast and the states
to our north in the wake of Hurricane Helene are horrifying. As of this
writing, the death toll stands at over 170. There are many still missing. The
property damage is being estimated in the billions.
But at some level those are just numbers. The real losses
are in the dreams which died amidst record storm surge, category four winds and
unprecedented rainfall and flooding. For many of us, this is personal. And
today I find myself in mourning for childhood dreams.
Wandering in a Sleepy Town After Dark
Our family spent a vacation in Cedar Key when I was just out
of high school in 1971. I still have the charcoal sketch postcards to show for
it, seen above. This was long before the condos came to this sleepy island (and
would remain the only structures that seem to have survived without much damage
from Helene). Cedar Key was quiet, safe. We children wandered the streets into
the night, standing among fishermen on the pier, watching drunken patrons
reeling out of bars on the waterfront from which country music blared, the smell
of seafood restaurants from tonight’s the suppers lingering in the air. At the
end of the evening we would traipse back to our rustic motel down the historic Main
Street in semi-darkness, its few tourists long since headed back down the long
road to the mainland.
My extended family had been in and out of Cedar Key for at
least three generations. My Uncle Jack recalled being in town for the 1950
Hurricane Easy which brought category 3 winds and 5 foot storm surge to town.
He told the story of a hurricane which passed over the island, stalled, moved
back across the island, stalling once again and only then passing over the
island a third time enroute to the Florida peninsula beyond. He recalled “There
wasn’t a dry house in Cedar Key” even as people huddled in second story
rooms to escape the storm surge. I’ve often wondered if that meant there was
roof damage that allowed water to enter into the structures there or if, like
Helene, it was the result of a tidal surge that swept across the low lying
island mowing down everything in its path.
Portents in the Palm Trees
A few years ago, Carole and her older boy, Scott, went with me out to Seahorse Key to visit the historic lighthouse and the marine biology station run by the University of Florida. I was amazed at the size and intricacy of the horseshoe crabs they studied there. But I learned something unexpected that day that troubles me to the present.
In looking across the station’s back patio to the swampy shores of the island, we noticed that a long line of Sable Palms, our state tree, had died and others nearby looked to be ailing. When I asked the manager of the station what had happened to them, she said, “Oh, that’s from sea level rise. These trees are dying of salt water intrusion.”
Anthropogenic climate change causing sea level rise was just
beginning to be talked about in the news in 1995. Many still wanted to debate
whether the global warming that prompted this rising sea level was real. Their
doubts were fed by corporate propaganda campaigns similar to those conducted by
tobacco companies who were well aware of the carcinogenic effects of smoking in
the early 1970s but chose to obfuscate its reality and mislead the public through
publicity initiatives spreading deadly lies.
But unpleasant realities can’t be simply wished or spun
away. Cedar Key is not alone in the rise of ghost forests, acres and acres of
trees that are no longer viable as sea levels rise. And this is just the first
wave of changes we can anticipate.
Savannah River ghost forest, Port Wentworth, GA.
Abnormal, Unprecedented, Irreversible
A Washington Post analysis of satellite data recently
showed that the Gulf of Mexico has experienced twice the global average rate of
sea level rise since 2010. While sea level is rising elsewhere, the Gulf is
seeing a faster rise than virtually any other place on the planet, more than
foot in the last decade.
Jianjun Yin, a climate scientist at the University of
Arizona who has studied such changes observed of the rising tide in the Gulf “[I]t’s
very abnormal and unprecedented,” And while it is possible the swift rate
of sea level rise could eventually taper, the higher water that has already
arrived in recent years is here to stay. “It’s irreversible,” Yin said.
That’s bad news for a coastline along a particularly shallow
continental shelf which in itself assures some level of tidal surge in times of
hurricanes. But it’s doubly bad news given this body of water has evidenced some
of the more extreme cases of oceanic heating as a result of climate change.
Beside the loss of coral reefs and the tendency to produce rounds of deadly red
tide, the heating of the ordinarily bath water temperature Gulf is the engine
for the rapid intensification in hurricanes we have now seen in killer storms
with names like Michael, Ian and Helene.
Florida has long been famed for its hurricanes and its
ability to bounce back afterward. Climate change does not necessarily produce
more hurricanes (though I do not remember running out of named storms
exhausting the alphabet until the awful season of 2020), but it does cause bigger
and stronger storms, many of them rapidly intensifying and changing course at
the last minute like Charley in 2004 which took out our house here in the
middle of Orlando.
It also was a rapidly intensifying storm. On Tuesday 11 AM,
it had just gained tropical storm force at 45 mph. By Wednesday, 11 AM it had grown
by 35 mph to a Category 1 storm at 80 mph. Within 24 hours, it was on the verge
of becoming a major Category 3 storm at 105 mph and within 12 hours, by 11 PM
Thursday, had ballooned up to a Category 4 storm with 140 mph sustained winds with
Category 5 gusts. In the 24 hours leading up to landfall, Helene’s winds increased 55
mph.
Not Can We Rebuild But Should We
Like most Floridians, I want to believe this is an anomaly, perhaps assigning it to a time frame in which we can reassure ourselves this won’t happen again. A 100 year storm, perhaps. But the reality is, this era of unpredictable storms that balloon up in hours, change directions without warning and wreck our coastlines and now well into our interior is increasingly appearing to be the new normal in the age of anthropogenic climate change. And, with the increasing likelihood that these storms will generate storm surges from 5 to 15 feet all the way up our coastline, it begins to raise troubling questions for those of us in the Sunshine State.
We Floridians pride ourselves on being resilient. We want to
play the macho card with slogans like “Cedar Key Strong” et al. But
strength alone cannot prevent recurrences of these devastating, unpredictable
storms. There are only so many times you can wash the mud and seaweed out of
your store or house, assuming it’s still where you left it when you had to
evacuate, and plod on bravely toward rebuilding. And increasingly the
possibilities of finding an insurer to cover you in Florida are measured in the
imaginary numbers. Currently more than 80% of all Floridians have no flood
insurance.
The elephant in the room has a much darker tone. The
question is not “How do we rebuild?” or even “Can we rebuild?”, the question
now is whether we should. And at what cost to whom if we do?
The footage from Cedar Key is heart breaking. I know those
streets only too well. And I remember the houses which stood where now only the
foundations on which they were built remain. I don’t know if this town will
ever be what it once was.
Climactic Apocalypse: Coming to a Town Near You
Cedar Key is not my only lost childhood dream. I have often
visited Pass-a-Grille Beach in Pinellas County, one of the most beautiful
beaches in Florida. It is one of the jewels of Old Florida still in existence.
But it endured a wall of water passing completely over the barrier island there
ruining homes and furnishings as well as quaint hotels and businesses. Again,
the question is not how to rebuild but whether it’s reasonable in this new
normal to do so.
Finally, my family had a rustic cabin on the mountainside near Franklin, NC. We children grew up hiking the hillsides and panning for rubies in the local rivers. This is the region that received up to three feet of rain in a couple of days causing landslides and torrents of flooded rivers washing away entire towns and some of their inhabitants. Our cabin has long since collapsed and the property was sold years ago. But I can only imagine how difficult it must be for people unaccustomed to these terrors from the tropics visiting their destructive power on the mountainous terrain.
And that is the point, after all, isn’t it? Those who have
blown off concerns for climate change have often reassured themselves that they
were safe, that this was Florida’s problem, or Texas or the Carolinas. But the
truth is, nowhere is safe from the angry retribution of a Mother Nature who is
tired of being abused. Ask the people of New York in the wake of Sandy. Ask the
people of California and Hawaii in the wake of deadly fires. Ask the people in
large cities across America unable to cool their homes enough in deadly heat waves
to keep the vulnerable alive.
Today I mourn the loss of childhood dreams and the places that gave rise to them. And I hold my breath knowing that with two months still remaining in hurricane season, we have already seen the 11 storms of an average year. What this means for our future in this state and those impacted to our north is unclear. But it seems reasonable to assume that our days of naivete in the face of the increasing impacts from a climate change we have chosen not to address is a luxury we can no longer afford.
For those who have lost loved ones, my heart aches with
yours. For those who have lost homes and businesses, I know your pain only too
well. You are not alone. And for all of us who would opt to amuse ourselves to
death, ignoring the danger we face, we might ask ourselves how that strategy is
working out for us. For now we still have some choices we can make, much as we
may not want to make them. But we don’t have much longer to decide. Undoubtedly,
sooner than later, those choices will be out of our hands.
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Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an
unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.
Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected
don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi
For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and
to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? - Micah
6:8, Hebrew Scriptures
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.
Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to
complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami
Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)
© Harry Coverston, 2024
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