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A review by tanyarobinson
The Attacking Ocean: The Past, Present, and Future of Rising Sea Levels by Brian Fagan
4.0
This is a pretty sobering book about our susceptibility to environmental changes, both gradual and sudden. Many doomsayers warn about the rise of the oceans due to global warming and melting of the ice caps. That is a legitimate concern, but with the expected rise of only around 1 cm per year (estimates vary greatly), we have time to prepare. A more immediate problem is that with rising ocean temperatures, there will be more sudden destructive storm surges -- events like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy and the 2004 Tsunami -- that devastate coastal communities and give little time for preparation.
Fagan examines some of the world's most susceptible low-lying areas, including Bangladesh, the Maldives, Shanghai, Venice, the Nile Delta, the Low Countries, and the U.S. Gulf Coast. He traces changes to the landscape in each of these areas, showing that there have always been fluctuations in coastal water levels caused by climate change, land subsidence, river delta silting, and so on. In past millennia, rising sea levels were handled easily by people; they simply picked up and moved to higher ground. In today's heavily populated world, there is too much permanent infrastructure to move, and very little unoccupied area to which people can relocate. So what can be done? Many large cities (such as New Orleans, Shanghai, Venice, and much of the Netherlands) would already be underwater without seawalls, dikes, and other huge coastal defenses. In rich developed nations these are realistic, though enormously costly, solutions, at least for the upcoming century. But what about in countries where there is not enough money to work with, and not enough political stability for difficult future-focused solutions to be worked out? And will our materialistic society ever be forward-thinking enough to stop building in lucrative but doomed low-lying areas? Millions of people live less than a meter above sea level, and will be directly, and in some cases disastrously, affected by even a centimeter rise in ocean levels.
Here in my high Rocky Mountain home, I feel the urgency of this problem. When will the rest of the world?
Fagan examines some of the world's most susceptible low-lying areas, including Bangladesh, the Maldives, Shanghai, Venice, the Nile Delta, the Low Countries, and the U.S. Gulf Coast. He traces changes to the landscape in each of these areas, showing that there have always been fluctuations in coastal water levels caused by climate change, land subsidence, river delta silting, and so on. In past millennia, rising sea levels were handled easily by people; they simply picked up and moved to higher ground. In today's heavily populated world, there is too much permanent infrastructure to move, and very little unoccupied area to which people can relocate. So what can be done? Many large cities (such as New Orleans, Shanghai, Venice, and much of the Netherlands) would already be underwater without seawalls, dikes, and other huge coastal defenses. In rich developed nations these are realistic, though enormously costly, solutions, at least for the upcoming century. But what about in countries where there is not enough money to work with, and not enough political stability for difficult future-focused solutions to be worked out? And will our materialistic society ever be forward-thinking enough to stop building in lucrative but doomed low-lying areas? Millions of people live less than a meter above sea level, and will be directly, and in some cases disastrously, affected by even a centimeter rise in ocean levels.
Here in my high Rocky Mountain home, I feel the urgency of this problem. When will the rest of the world?