Below excerpts are from a November 22nd article published by the East Hampton Star. The full article is available here.
Change is hard but essential if East Hampton Town and the wider world are going to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change, officials of the Nature Conservancy said this week in the wake of the United States government’s Fifth National Climate Assessment, issued last week.
Coastal retreat is inevitable, said Alison Branco, the Nature Conservancy’s director of climate adaptation…
“The fact is we’re looking at up to six feet of sea level rise by century’s end,” Ms. Branco continued. “We really need to take seriously those projections, and in the way we live with our shoreline. On the East End in particular, where it’s very narrow, we need to remember, it’s not just rising water that’s a problem; of course it is, but as sea level is rising, it’s manifesting in erosion of our beaches.” In the natural world, she said, the beach would naturally migrate inland, “but it can’t because we’ve put houses and roads in its way. If we want a beach long into the future, we need to make some room for those natural processes to happen. Or else, we’ll have a bunch of hotels — or stores or restaurants — with no customers because there’s no beach.”
Click here to read the full article.
Concerned Citizens of Quogue 