Drowned Out
What to do in the wake of the Paris Accord exit
“Even in the absence of American leadership; even as this Administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future; I’m confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we’ve got.” — Barack Obama
In the time it takes me to grow old, much of my homeland will erode with the crashing of the waves.
Where I grew up is a crenelated warren of farmland and swamp, estuary and highway, suburbia and urban pockets in the Southeast corner of Virginia. Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Chesapeake, Newport News, Virginia Beach, Hampton — cities and counties and rivers and bay, all tied together by the concrete coils of Interstate 64 and three (all three) of America’s bridge-tunnel systems.
Viewed from the air, spits of land from the Seven Cities claw snake out into the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. The snakes are slowly wasting away, though, because with each passing year the waters eat away at more of the coastline.
Water is the lifeblood of our region, more than in most other places.
The Navy is a major presence. Between the shipyards, Norfolk Naval Station, Oceana Air Base, and the hospitals , it’s arguably the greatest concentration of American military might. Aircraft carriers or other ships line the horizon as you cross the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel. Sailors keep the bars and restaurants on Granby Street entirely in the black.
The brass know what’s coming. They’ve been battening down the hatches for some time, doing what it can to ward off the threat of rising sea levels. The head of Navy infrastructure for the region estimates a little over 15 years before things get dicey.
Commercial shipping is a major economic lifeline as well. The train line that snakes through the Western Branch region of Chesapeake carts shipping container after shipping container over to the port facilities of the Virginia International Gateway.
We also trade in carbon — heavily so. Lamberts Point and the Newport News piers process thousands of railcars’ worth of Appalachian coal each year, dumping coal ash into the air and water and feeding carbon consumption abroad. Any recent decline is due to weak demand abroad, not any greater effort at local regulation.
Look to your city councils, your mayors, your state legislatures and your governors to carry the torch for a while in America’s convoluted (but occasionally useful) federal structure. It’s not enough to remind ourselves that fossil fuels are on their way out and clean jobs are the thing of the future — this point needs to be hammered home in letters to the editor, town hall meetings, constituent calls, and primary and general election debates.
True, even in current worst-case projections, Hampton Roads won’t be fully drowned. Yet the whole place needn’t sink beneath the surf for things to get grim — storm surges will deal major damage and choke off business investments far before that.
Already, “recurrent flooding” in Norfolk can cut off parishioners from churches and students from schools. The slightest storm threatens to turn Olney and Boush into Lake Olney, while elsewhere we may have to resettle some of the mainland’s first climate change refugees.
Now, if you’re reading this, you probably view my hometown’s challenges as reflecting the broader sweep of climate change — the greatest challenge of our time. The important thing to ask ourselves, as we tweet and post and text and moan about Trump pulling the United States out of the Paris Accord this week, is whether we really care about stories like this, or whether this is just another opportunity for us to digitally stick it to Trump — voice exasperation, share articles from Slate and Vox, vent to friends, move on.
If the former, then remember: national action on climate change was going to be an uphill battle from the moment Donald J. Trump took office. Even if you didn’t think he would do what he said he would do, his March executive order reigning in the EPA already spelled out that he would put American jobs — very specific American jobs — over and above any effort at protecting the planet.
Withdrawing from the Paris Climate accord from Trump was a public “screw you” to the international community, calculated to ram home his America First message at all costs. Why else would he trumpet America’s departure — with a jazz band in tow — rather than joining a number of signatories in paying lip service to a deal he had no intention of honoring?
Yes, there are more clean jobs in the making than there are coal jobs to save. Yes, everything about the sound byte “I was elected to represent Pittsburgh, not Paris,” is absolutely, ludicrously wrong. Yes, this decision pisses off a pretty broad coalition, including Exxon Mobil.
But let’s face it. Waiting for purely top-down action on climate change has always been a crap shoot — especially when the folks at the top include Jim Inhofe (he of snowball fame). Little wonder the late Eleanor Ostrum, a social-science luminary on managing the global commons, argued for attacking the problem at every level of community imaginable. Getting meaningful action on the mother-of-all-problems can’t be a matter of racking up votes in Congress and getting a Democratic President in power — remember when cap-and-trade died in the Senate after clearing the house?
A lot of issues compete for our time at present in this unhinged merry-go-round of a news cycle. One of the reason climate change presents such a Gordian Knot of a problem is that its effects proceed at a glacial pace — there will always be something more pressing and immediate than tackling the greatest challenge of our generation (and the next).
Rather than throwing up your hands in despair (or sharing your posts and moving on), try figuring out how climate change — among other environmental concerns — is affecting your community. The problem is easy to dismiss because its effects are so abstract and so slow — I can wax poetic about my hometown slipping beneath the waves but there’s room for a hundred years of “Well . . .” before it does.
The challenge is thinking about people — maybe even ourselves — years down the line. Contrary to what Trump says, the environment really is about the American people. But getting fellow citizens to see they have a stake in this global effort means giving them a narrative about how it affects them, from rising seas swamping South Carolina to rising temperatures turning Midwest agriculture into a tinderbox.
Such is the silver lining of Trump’s action — we can no longer pretend that the United States will magically reduce emissions because the President is willing to leave John Kerry’s signature on a piece of paper. We have until the day after the 2020 election (conveniently enough) to make this part of a broader conversation — share your concerns with friends and family and figure out which level of government is willing to give you the time of day.
Look to your city councils, your mayors, your state legislatures and your governors to carry the torch for a while in America’s convoluted (but occasionally useful) federal structure. It’s not enough to remind ourselves that fossil fuels are on their way out and clean jobs are the thing of the future — this point needs to be hammered home in letters to the editor, town hall meetings, constituent calls, and primary and general election debates.
If you’re looking for company, there are plenty of organizations with branches across the country — 350.org, SustainUS, and Citizens’ Climate Lobby are a few that come to mind. Likewise, America is rife with outdoor groups — the Appalachian Trail Club comes to mind — with more than a few members who care about the environment.
Get organizing and get active! It’s all that will save us right now. Godspeed.
Andrew Leber is based in Boston.
