Breach of Faith?

The story from AP is sympromatic of what is happening in the coastal zones of the the United States>

Cape Cod town says no to filling barrier

August 1, 2007

"CHATHAM, Mass. --Opting to let nature take its course, residents overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to borrow $4.1 million to plug a widening breach on Nauset Beach that could threaten oceanfront homes.

The breach has grown to nearly 1,000 feet wide since it was blasted open by a fierce April [2007] storm. The beach forms a natural barrier that prevents the ocean from encroaching on the Chatham mainland."

The story goes on to explain that "About 600 residents attended a special Town Meeting Tuesday on the issue, which was seen as pitting wealthier owners of seaside homes -- many of them seasonal residents -- against permanent residents who faced higher property taxes to fill the breach. Voters rejected a plan that called for pouring hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of sand into the inlet created by the breach."

This is one of the first concrete cases where a voter's rebellion against beach renourishment and other artificial and costly human "interventions" on the beach/Coastal zone has ben reported.

Surprisingly the voters also rejected a proposal to spend $150,000 on a study of the long-term impact the breach will have on the coastline.

Ted Keon, the town's coastal resources director, the AP reported, " ... was surprised voters rejected the study, which he said would create a "road map" for local officials in the future.

Officials and scientists will continue to monitor the breach and do the best they can to protect public and private interests, Keon said."

The news story was accompanied by paid advertisements on Boston.com in a typical Internet/Google disconnect that read: "Cape Cod Waterfront, View 700+ Waterfront Properties From $24,900 to $15.5 million www.PropertyCapeCod.com"

Well Now We Are in a Pickle!

The latest finding on the melting of ice caps is not encouraging.

Today as I write this here is the gist of the matter

"Climate scientists may have significantly underestimated the power of global warming from human-generated heat-trapping gases to shrink the cap of sea ice floating on the Arctic Ocean, according to a new study of polar trends." New York Times , May 1, 2007.

The article continues by going beyond the last (and scary enough!) report on the effects of climate change on the planet.

"The study, published online today in Geophysical Research Letters, concluded that an open-water Arctic in summers could be more likely in this century than had been estimated in the latest international review of climate research released in February by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

Well if we screw it all up there is some interesting news about a new planet. The San Fran chronicle reports it thus:

"A rocky planet not much larger than Earth has been detected orbiting a star close to our own neighborhood in the Milky Way, and the European astronomers who found it say it lies within the star's "habitable zone," where life could exist - possibly in oceans of water.
The object is the smallest of all the 200 or more so-called "exoplanets" whose discovery around far-off stars in the past dozen years has sparked a burst of excitement worldwide among astronomers and astrobiologists." San Francisco Chronicle, April 24, 2007.

So maybe there is a polace for us to ship some of our species and some of ourselves to start over again.

Stabilize or Nationalize Senator?

In an article written 08 March 2007 titled “S.C. senator will file bill to stabilize insurance: Policies of 3 years would be protected from cancellation” the author, Zane Wilson writes, “A key senator said Wednesday he will file legislation based on Louisiana law that forbids insurers from canceling policyholders who have been customers for at least three years.”

The “key” senator in the article refers to Senator Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston who states that such legislation is in “a response to the continuing outcry concerning policy cancellations in the coastal areas.”

Senator McConnell, are you trying to tell us that if there is a hurricane that hits South Carolina you and or the Senate will pay for loses incurred by the insurance companies paying out millions of dollars in claims? Is there not any responsibility that lies squarely on the shoulders of the person building in an area KNOWN to be prone to such weather patterns?

Companies are not stupid, they have done their research and understand their level of risk tolerance, and like in many cases these tolerance level’s may change over time. It is not and should never be the government’s job to force a corporation to endure more risk then it feels comfortable with.

Common sense must return to the people of the United States, there are places in the country that one is not suppose to farm, live or build. It is ok to try but by attempting to one must take the responsibility for the possible outcomes: drought, erosion, hurricanes, wild fires, etc. Of course another entity may wish to take this risk on (i.e. insurance companies) partially or fully and that is their decision, but it must be by choice not by force.

If Senator McConnell would like to spend more tax payers dollars on rebuilding the structures being built in a hurricane, erosion, etc prone area then the state can insure the policy holders of these canceled policies through a state funded insurance program. Unless of course you are completely set on nationalizing the insurance industry and in that case maybe you should first gather some advice from Hugo Chavez on nationalizing industries.


This blog entry is in response to the following article.

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/local/16858118.htm

Dubai is a coastal small state in the Persian Gulf. As we look at coastal development, conservation, and sustainability we need to realize that in most places around the world the opposite is happening!

Dubai is home to the three largest man-made islands in the world, visible from outer space. (Picture of "Palm Island").

Dubailand, the world's largest theme park, will house 45 megaprojects such as the Snowdome, an indoor ski resort boasting a five-star hotel shaped like an icicle.

• "Tiny Dubai has big plans. Armed with riches seemingly as endless as its ambition, Dubai aims to exploit its Persian Gulf perch to become an aviation superpower. Leaders of this booming Middle Eastern financial center have budgeted $82 billion to construct the world's largest airport on barren desert 30 miles from its downtown and make its home-town carrier, Emirates Airline, one of the biggest on the planet. Dubai wants to make the most of its setting, a crossroads between Europe, Asia, and Africa and a natural link between new economic powers like China and India. Blessed with year-round sunshine, stunning beaches and azure gulf waters, Dubai also is pumping billions of dollars into turning itself into a layover playland."

So what does this mean for the waters and coastal ecosystems in the Gulf?

Development!

Raw Sewage Threatens the Coasts and Oceans.

Fill in the correct answers in the blanks below. (See end of blog for answers).

1. Destruction and changes to marine habitats are the direct result of increasing coastal population - some ___ percent of the world's population lives on the costal zone, which is just over ___ percent of the Earth's land mass.

2. The average population density in the coastal zone rose is set to rise from ____ people per square kilometer in 1990 to ____ in 2025.

-------------------------

The latest United Nations report on the condition of the coastal areas and oceans of the world is discouraging at best. It reports that:

• "Untreated sewage pouring into the world's seas and oceans is polluting their water and coastlines and endangering the health and welfare of the people and animals that inhabit them, according to a bleak new U.N. report released Wednesday on the threats to the world's marine environments."
  
  "As well as the growing problem of sewage, oceans also are suffering from rising levels of nutrients such as run-off from agricultural land triggering toxic algal blooms that deprive the water of oxygen, destruction of coastal ecosystems such as mangroves and a rising tide of ocean litter, says the State of the Marine Environment report drawn up by the U.N. Environment Program." AP story, Oct 2006
  

The Environmental News Service summarized some of the key pieces of information from this report:

• "The study reports that sewage may be "the most serious problem" facing the marine environment, in part because it is the area where the least progress has been made. Over half of the wastewater entering the Mediterranean Sea is untreated. In many developing countries more than 80 percent of sewage entering the coastal zones is estimated to be raw and untreated, the report said."
• "Increasing coastal populations, inadequate treatment infrastructure and waste handling facilities are all contributing to the sewage problem, the report said. Fixing the global sewage problem could cost at least $56 billion..."
  

Of course, this is a problem that directly affects the coastal areas as well as the wider and larger ocean environment. People swim, recreate, fish, and otherwise have intimate contact with the coastal zone where the sewage is being dumped. Moreover, the sewage affects the marshlands and wetlands along the shore where much of the marine life begins sicen these are the nurseries for marine critters.

One of the problems is that there are som many other high priorities (HIV Aids, war and genocide, hunder, very, VERY poor fresh drinking water, underdevelopment and poverty, depleation of energy resources, lack offood and huger, human rights, etc.) that sewage treatment marely makes the list of international priorities. Thus, if there were an extra $56 billion laying around to spend where do you think it would be allocated? Moreover, even more developed countries around the Mediterranean for example, are still dumping most of their sewage raw into the sea.

This issue poses the typical set of policy challenges that make efefctive coastal policy so very difficult to achieve. First, it is not one of the hot priority issues on which politicians run for office. Secon, it is an "invisible" problem so there is less urgency. Third, sewage treatment is a very expensive process (unless traditional method of disposal and processing are used such as putting sewage on fields as fertilizer and using natural mangrove and grass filters to allow nature to cleanse the sewage).

U.N. Environment Program chief Achim Steiner is quoted by AP as saying

• "In many countries we are losing nature's capacity to actually deal with some of the sewage and effluents because we are destroying the wetlands that could provide us — particularly coastal wetlands — with filtration capacity to avoid the kind of runoff into the sea," he said. "We also need to rediscover or demonstrate how maintaining wetlands ... can avoid heavy infrastructure investments because nature can cope with a certain degree of pollution, particularly if you use its natural mechanisms."

This issue has been pushed to the coastal backburner for many decades and may now be building into a major crisis especailly if epidemics of disease such as e. coli erupt in coastal areas around the world.

Answers:

1. 40 percent of the world's population lives on the costal fringe, which is just over 7 percent of the land.

2. from 77 people per square kilometer in 1990 to 115 in 2025.