Mitigation and Adaptation: Human Stories of Hope | Explorers In The Field
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Climate change is a human story. The causes of climate change are man-made, and the solutions must be man-made. How much of the landscape— In order to reduce climate change, in order to adapt to these changes and to mitigate our impact on the planet, we have to start with human stories. I love listening to people's stories.
I'm Victoria Herrmann. I'm a geographer and a National Geographic explorer. When people read stories about climate change, it's often in far-off places like the Arctic or small islands, but climate change affects everyone. By the end of this century, at least 420 towns, cities, and villages across the United States will be partially underwater no matter how much we reduce our greenhouse gases today. But there's never a narrative that should be hopeless. There is hope in every climate change story. It's just about finding the right solutions.
Over the course of 2016 and 2017, I traveled across the United States and U.S. Territories and conducted over 350 interviews with local leaders from the Chesapeake Bay to American Samoa, from Alabama to Alaska. At first, I thought the biggest challenges were going to be the loss of property, the loss of houses, of critical infrastructure, but what people really wanted to talk to me about was losing histories—the traditions that they can pass down to the next generation.
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I think of myself as first a listener and then a connector.
Oh, yes, absolutely. Like people, a lot of people that have—
[Victoria] Most days for me are coming to places like here. We are on the Eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Geographically, we're in a place called Poverty Point but the great organization we're working with has renamed it Patriot Point to reflect the work they're doing with this. This is an incredible property where vets come to hunt, to fish, to seek the healing that they need.
These are the coats that we give out to one of the service members when they come in.
[Victoria] The owners of Patriot Point didn't realize that climate change would impact them so quickly and so intensely. I want to understand their history, their landscape, and their climate change challenges. So when you see shoreline erosion, is it usually with a big storm that's coming in or is it just a king tide?
We've had a lot this year. We're having two to three foot above normal tides.
[Victoria] When we think of sea level rise and extreme storms, we first go to our shorelines, to the Jersey shore with Hurricane Sandy, or to Louisiana with Hurricane Katrina, but climate change impacts all bodies of water, whether they're bays that can see sea level rise or rivers that can see flooding into the plains around them. The Chesapeake Bay is one of the fastest changing ecosystems in the United States related to climate change.
At Patriot Point, I walked along the eroding edges to see how the land has changed over the past year, decade, maybe 50 years. We're looking for trees falling over, for tides rising above the marshland, to understand the rate of erosion and how much sea levels are rising.
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To get a different perspective on that, we jumped onto a boat and saw it from the water side so we can see how those waves are cutting under the land and seeing how that is making this whole property more vulnerable to sea level rise.
[Older Man] Now that was the tidal pond right there.
[Victoria] Oh, wow, it's all filled in.
And we're losin' a little bit there.
[Victoria] All local people are valuable experts.
Here lately we've had these 65, 70-mile-an-hour Northwest winds, Northeast winds and there's nothin' here to stop it.
[Victoria] The best knowledge that we get from any place is the people who are living there 24/7, and the people who are living through those changes.
When you got two, almost two and a half miles of waterfront, it's hard.
Especially when that waterfront is changing.
Constantly.
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- [Victoria] I take everything that I've listened to and analyze it, think about what potential solutions, what other expertise we can bring in to make that place safe.
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Climate change adaptations along shorelines often take two different forms. Greener solutions, which use nature to make our landscapes more resilient, creating salt-resistant marshes, creating areas that can flood and bounce back, or more gray solutions, using concrete to build up a seawall. Patriot Point can benefit from both of these.
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If you've grown up working and living on the water, not being able to live on the Chesapeake Bay fundamentally changes who you are, and that's what people are afraid of. People are afraid of losing their identity.
I love this area. Born and raised here, and like I say, this is what I truly love.
[Victoria] How can you leave this place?
[Older Man] That's it.
[Victoria] Each of us has expertise that we need to share so we can make better solutions. We have skills-based volunteers working all across the country, whether it's rebuilding a seawall in Alaska, helping to move a building in Louisiana; we are helping preserve local histories in the face of sea level rise. The more people we have working on a climate change solution, the better it will be.
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My grandparents were Holocaust survivors. They were survivors of Auschwitz concentration camp, and they came to this country with nothing but themselves and the memories of those who were lost and built an incredible life and gave back to their community. If they could find hope and resilience in that story, there's no reason why I can't share that same hope and resilience in climate change stories today. The future can be hopeful if you can work together and you can identify what every person can contribute to a climate change solution.
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