Florida Keys face climate change now as sea rises

(Photo of beach in Florida Keys from Flickr and photographer Vladeb/Brian Garrett)

The Florida Keys are already feeling the damage from rising seas and climate change. The low-lying island chain is being eroded, flooded and losing unique wildlife – and that’s not just from hurricanes. The seas have risen 9 inches in the past century.

I’ve seen the encroaching water close-up. We bought a condo on the ocean in Islamorada in the mid-1990s. And we sold it 10 years later, in large part because the water was lapping at our building, requiring a seawall to be built. Aside from several hurricanes in recent years that took out our dock, insurance costs had skyrocketed and we knew if our building ever was destroyed they’d have to rebuild further back and smaller, and some of us would be out of luck.

An article in the Christian Science Monitor last week talked about frequent flooding of streets, the death of foliage from salt water, and gradual disappearance of some animals needing fresh water – like the tiny Key deer. A study at the University of Miami said a best-case scenario would be the sea rising another 7 inches by 2100. Worst case was 55 inches.

That would just about wipe out everything. Most of the Keys are flat and little more than a block wide, with water on both sides.

Some efforts are underway to combat flooding streets – for example in Key West where they are putting in gravity wells at intersections. And there’s talk about raising some roads. But money is short and I can’t see that they’d ever be able to save this wonderful, beautiful spot if the water rose even 24 inches.

What’s happening in the Keys is starting to occur on other coastlines, where beach erosion is eating away at the shore.

Just a reminder that climate change legislation is about more than what the coal companies want and the politics of getting re-elected.

(Sources: Christian Science Monitor, ClimateWire)