Don’t Say Anything, But We’re Losing This War

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A house teeters on the edge of an eroding cliff in San Clemente, California. The sea will take this house, and thousands more, but we can’t talk about it.

The summer of 1942 was a special time in the modern history of the United States because for several months both coasts were under armed attack by hostile powers. German U-Boats were sinking Allied ships within sight of the Florida and Carolina coasts, wreckage and the bodies of dead sailors were constantly washing ashore. In June, Japanese forces invaded two islands in the Aleutian chain off the coast of Alaska, which they occupied for almost a year.

In the summer of 2019, both coasts of the United States are under attack by a hostile force far more formidable than Japan and Germany in the 1940s, one that is winning every pitched battle, while the leaders of the Federal government and of many states insist that the enemy does not exist.

The enemy is the steady, inexorable rise of the world’s oceans, one of many increasingly deadly consequences of global climate change. A list of the victories won by this enemy is hard to compile given the official insistence that it does not exist. But the word is getting out for those who have eyes to read:

• The small city of Pacifica, California has had to spend millions of dollars – in the past year, an amount almost half its annual operating budget — to buy imperiled homes, move public facilities inland and build desperate defenses against the intruding sea. Beleaguered city officials are trying to plan a retreat by condemning endangered seaside properties and encouraging building farther inland, but they are encountering fierce resistance from property owners.  
• Among the 30 or so cities along the Pacific Coast fighting similar battles — with each other and with the sea — is Imperial Beach, California, the southernmost city in the state. High tides come over its seawall so frequently now the city doesn’t even count them, just plows the sand off the streets and pumps out the basements. The city struggles to pay for the damage done by the recurrent floods, and can’t afford to commission a study of the problem, let alone more seawalls.   
• The city of Norfolk, Virginia, like many other cities along the Atlantic coast, is now prey not only to frequent hurricanes and nor’easters, but to so-called “sunny day flooding,” when the rising seawater bubbles up through the storm drains and  the ground to flood streets and houses without benefit of rain. The city is buying up frequently flooded houses, razing them, and returning their lots to marshland to try to buffer the remaining city. A Unitarian Church in the low-lying Hague section of Norfolk has been abandoned by a congregation tired of trying to navigate flooded streets to get to worship. The prestigious Chrysler Museum nearby is actively considering moving to higher ground. 
• South Miami Beach, Florida, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on massive pumps to remove sunny-day floodwater (and dump it back in the ocean), on raising and relocating streets, on putting homes on stilts, and still the water comes. One man, part of an increasing trend, sold his south Florida beachfront home and moved to a condo building inland. The last hurricane leaned a large sailboat against his condo building. He wants to sell and move to the mountains somewhere, but says it’s hard to close a sale with the sailboat stranded there.

On and on the war goes, in Boston and Washington D.C. and San Francisco and Alaska and Louisiana, a nasty and implacable enemy moving slowly, mercilessly, against panicked people whose government will not allow the use of the name of the invader. Those courageous few who are studying this war say it may soon lead to a displacement of people that will dwarf those of the Dust Bowl, or of the Great Migration of African-Americans from the rural South to the northern cities.

But we musn’t talk about it. I’m reminded of another story from the summer of 1942. The War Department begged the businesses along the Florida and Carolina coasts to turn off their lights earlier in the evening, because German U-Boats were using the backlighting provided by the billboards and signs and street lights to silhouette the ships in their periscope sights. The Chambers of Commerce said no.      

“San Clemente 4197a” by DB’s travels is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0