Pilkey: We’ve accepted climate change. Now for the crucial next steps | Opinion

Orrin Pilkey has long urged beach communities to stop fighting the sea and instead adapt to the inevitability of coastal erosion, a natural process now being accelerated by rising sea levels.

Many communities have bristled at Pilkey’s warnings as a threat to development and local commerce. One South Carolina beach town passed a resolution declaring the Duke scientist was no longer welcome on its barrier island.

But the Duke University professor of earth and ocean sciences has persisted. At 89, he is the author of 45 books and hundreds of articles about the sea and the land. His latest book strikes a familiar theme of adaptation, but in response to a much broader type of sea change – the rising threat of a warming planet.

The book, published by Duke University Press, is “Escaping Nature: How to Survive Global Climate Change.”

“I am so proud of this book. It’s very complete,” he told me, although he concedes that it’s hard to keep up as heat and rainfall records fall.

This time, Pilkey is not a lone voice. Among the book’s co-authors are three of his children, two of them geologists and the third an attorney concerned with legal issues of coastal development.

The book explores the causes and manifestations of climate change, but also argues for ways to mitigate it and, in the meantime, adapt to it.

“We are running out of time,” the book’s introduction concludes. “While we wait for technological breakthroughs in climate mitigation and for the slow-turning wheels of bureaucratic governance to lumber toward some kind of clarity, we must fend for ourselves, we must rethink how and where to live. To survive global climate change, we must find ways to escape Nature.”

Pilkey said that the debate over climate change has shifted in the right direction. What was once widespread skepticism has faded in the face of torrential rains, record heat, melting glaciers, sunny-day coastal flooding and the shifting migration of wildlife.

The problem is that while more people acknowledge climate change, they do not grasp how much will change. “I don’t see many opponents to climate change, but I see a lot of resistance to the magnitude and to the frequency of what’s going to happen,” he said.

The book gives a forbidding forecast:

“Humanity has entered a nasty, brutish Hobbesian world where rising seas will drain the world’s coast communities, parts of the Earth will become too hot for humans to live , and millions of climate refugees will pour into the United States, Canada and Europe, straining food, water and energy supplies as well as human compassion.”

The response to such a future should not be despair, Pilkey and his co-authors argue. Rather it should be a combination of ingenuity and resilience. Find ways to rapidly reduce emissions and adjust to the changes that are already inevitable.

The book describes a range of adaptations. They include changes in construction codes and development patterns, restoration of wetlands, urban tree planting, increased forestation, expansion of renewable energy, moving to safer areas, adjusting laws to assimilate climate refugees and preparing shelters and response plans for extreme weather events.

Pilkey’s son Charles, a former geologist turned sculptor and writer living in Mint Hill, was the book’s chief writer, in consultation with his father, his two siblings, Linda Pilkey-Jarvis and Keith Pilkey, and Fred Dodson, Norma Longo and Hannah Hayes.

Charles said the book continues his father’s lifelong commitment to urging both acceptance and preparation for what the forces of nature will bring. Although he admits those warnings have mostly gone unheeded.

“His was the lone voice in the wilderness, now he’s vindicated,” Charles said. “But at the same time, coastal development continues and people are flocking there like there’s no tomorrow. Of course, the sea will have the last laugh.”

Still, in the manner of all prophets, the Pilkeys keep sounding a warning and offering the hope of taking a better path. Now, after 2023 brought the hottest summer since global records began in 1880, the sun has joined their chorus. It’s not too late to listen.

This story was originally published August 4, 2024 at 4:30 AM with the headline "Pilkey: We’ve accepted climate change. Now for the crucial next steps | Opinion."