New York Adapting to Climate Change

So many regions will be adversely affected by the rising sea levels. The best solution would be to stop messing up the environment and polluting the air we breathe. New York aims to adapt to the changing climate instead of convincing politicians to push for renewable energy and shutdown our coal power plants. New York faces frequent flooding of the properties near Jamaica Bay and two ideas have been tossed around. 1) a sea gate which will span the length of the Rockaway inlet and can be raised in case of a weather event. Or 2) narrowing the inlet which will restrict water flow. Each project is estimated to cost $3 billion. This sounds like a lot of money, but if this reduces the amount of overall damage from flooding, then money will be saved in the long run. Climate change is causing severe weather events to happen more frequently. It is also important to note that the article talking about tipping points. “Scientists say thresholds like that are tipping points. Once such points are reached, things change in ways that may become permanent. A system would eventually have a “new normal” — and may no longer function quite the way it did before” (Kowalski 2019). New York’s Jamaican Bay is facing this very issue. Even if they spend billions, it’ll only buy them time and it won’t fix the problem. Again, to fix the problem you must nip it in the bud. Coal fired power plants and countries who burn oil for power put a ridiculous amount of CO2 into the air, causing the oceans to absorb it and warm. Glaciers on land are melting and the runoff is causing for a rising sea level. I may have oversimplified the hell out of that, but my point is you can adapt all you want but you don’t fix the problem it’ll just get worse. By mitigating, one takes step to reduce the impact.

David Pate

https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/building-resilience-climates-emerging-impacts