A Rising Tide
Two long features this week looked at cities attempting to adapt to rising sea levels due to climate change. This one, from the New Republic, examines the increasingly urgent quest in Miami to stay afloat—mainly by building higher seawalls and raising streets. None of these solutions look to be capable of withstanding the looming surge, though. In fact, the main theme that emerges from interviews with locals seems to be “Enjoy Miami while you can.”
A Tale of Two Northern European Cities: Meeting the Challenges of Sea Level Rise
The second story focuses on two cities that have been keeping the sea at bay for centuries: Rotterdam and Hamburg. Pioneers in the civil engineering required to protect cities from floods and storm surges, these cities are moving away from brute-force, technological solutions (like the massive Maeslant Barrier that protects Rotterdam) to more adaptive approaches based on “building with nature”: i.e., the use of natural features like earthen dunes, marshes, and natural basins to absorb rising waters. Whether that will be sufficient to protect low-lying cities in the developing world, where governments can’t afford massive public works projects, is another question.
The Dark Lord of Coal Country
The prosecution rested in the trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, who is charged with conspiracy and lying to investors and regulators after the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine disaster that killed 29 miners. The case had twisted oddly this week when the defense moved to admit into evidence wiretapped recordings of Blankenship’s phone calls, gathered by the FBI as part of the case against him. The prosecution, for unexplained reasons, is attempting to disallow the recordings as evidence. It’s a good time to turn back to Jeff Goodell’s classic 2010 profile of Blankenship, which began with a great takedown: “Unless you live in West Virginia, you’ve probably never heard of Don Blankenship. You might not know that he grew up in the coal fields of West Virginia, received an accounting degree from a local college, and, through a combination of luck, hard work and coldblooded ruthlessness, transformed himself into the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with the business and politics of energy in America today — a man who pursues naked self-interest and calls it patriotism, who buys judges like cheap hookers, treats workers like dogs, blasts mountains to get at a few inches of coal and uses his money and influence to ensure that America remains enslaved to the 19th-century idea that burning coal equals progress.”
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