RISING TIDES, RISING TOXINS

Unchecked heat-trapping pollution is no longer just a distant environmental concern; it is rapidly becoming a public-health emergency.

- 

A new body of research shows that thousands of hazardous sites across the United States ~ places that store sewage, chemicals, fossil fuels, industrial waste and other dangerous materials ~ could be inundated by rising seas well within this century. What makes the findings particularly troubling is that much of the risk is already locked in. Past emissions have committed the oceans to a trajectory of rise that even today’s mitigation efforts cannot fully reverse. Yet the timeline of exposure is not some far-off abstraction. More than half of the 5,500 identified sites face the threat of coastal flooding as early as 2050, and the brunt of that danger will fall on low-income communities, communities of colour and other marginalised groups who already shoulder an outsized burden of environmental risk. The study's authors gathered and analysed tens of thousands of sites along the American coastline, including Puerto Rico and 23 states that border the sea. ‘They examined the likelihood of inundation by mapping historic sea-level data against the projected rise in 2050 and 2100 under both low and high emissions scenarios. The picture that emerged was stark. Facilities such as fossil-fuel terminals, refineries, power plants and sewage treatment centres — the core infrastructure that modern life depends on ~ are among the most vulnerable. Louisiana, Florida, New Jersey, Texas, California, New York and Massachusetts account for nearly 80 per cent of the threatened sites. The implications are national, but the impacts will be local and visceral.