by Paul Briggs
* * *
Carrie couldn’t take all the credit for the Norfolk Conference. It had been her idea, but the Navy was doing most of the work involved in hosting it—and that was a lot of work, considering they were holding it in what was supposed to be a working facility that Congress would neither let them close nor give them the money to adequately fix. The money had come from several different foundations and rich donors.
The point of the conference was to develop a nationwide plan for dealing with sea level rise. To that end, she and the Navy had invited engineers, environmentalists, accountants, lawyers, and anybody else whose expertise might come in handy. More than half of them were participating remotely, which saved a lot of money and a certain amount of fossil fuels and eased the strain on the battered facilities. Now the second week of the Conference had begun, everyone was sorted into their respective committees, and things were going… well, they were going, but not very fast.
The trouble with committees wasn’t that they were all slow and inefficient by nature. The trouble was that no two committees ever worked at the same speed, which made them very hard to coordinate. The Committee on Ports and Shipping was a little ahead of schedule, with some fairly realistic-looking plans for rebuilding the nation’s port facilities to allow for future rises in sea level. The Committee on Seawalls wasn’t far behind. The Committee on Wildlife and Wild Lands Preservation, which Carrie had been counting on to help the Seawalls Committee by setting aside new areas for wetlands, had deadlocked over the question of how much to help animals and plants moving north. The Water and Sewer Committee was… experiencing some sort of blockage. The Committee on Taxation and Bond Sales Planning couldn’t even start work until the other committees started giving them estimates of how much all this was going to cost. And if the Property Law Committee didn’t get off its ass and do something, the rest of the conference was just going to turn pirate and start ravaging the coasts… on paper, at least.
And then there was the Environmental Justice Committee… emphasis on “was.” Their goal had been to make sure that whatever steps the Conference agreed on wouldn’t disadvantage those who were already disadvantaged enough. To that end, one of them produced a map of the U.S. coasts which showed, at the voting-precinct level, the percentages of people in each community living below the poverty line. Another one produced a similar map which showed the percentages of minorities living in those communities. Then they tried to decide which one to use. After about three hours of intense discussion, they all agreed to stomp out of the room in tears and vow never to speak to each other again.
Carrie was determined that in whatever solutions they came up with here, some thought would be given to those who most needed help or were most likely to be shortchanged. From the looks of things, she was going to have do that all by herself.
* * *
It was just the right time in the afternoon to make the evening news. The auditorium was one of the few parts of the base that had been fully refurbished, which was a good thing under the circumstances.
This wasn’t going to be the worst press conference Carrie had ever held. That honor still belonged to the one where she’d had to explain to a bewildered press corps that she and her racist sister-in-law were two different people. Once you’d been through something like that, nothing else was ever quite as bad.
This one was going to be pretty rough, though. Ports and Shipping and Seawalls had completed their work ahead of schedule, and, in the spirit of openness and transparency, put it online for public comment. Now Carrie was going to have to explain it to the reporters. Some of them hadn’t even looked at it, but wouldn’t let that stop them from asking what they thought were keen and penetrating questions. Others had already looked at it more carefully than she had.
“Before I start taking questions,” she said, “I’d like to start by showing you what we’ve come up with.” Carrie gestured toward the giant screen that took up a quarter of the stage. It was the most detailed topographic map she’d ever seen—if anybody ever tried to print it out, it would stretch for dozens of miles. From the mouth of the Rio Grande to the mouth of the St. Croix, every beach and marsh, every creek and culvert, every subtle rise and dip in the land was represented here somewhere. There were similar maps of the West Coast, Hawaii, and the more inhabited parts of Alaska.
Carrie adjusted a control, and the display zoomed in on the cluster of cities around the mouth of the Chesapeake. Parts of the cities, a little back from the shoreline and three to five feet above sea level, were protected by seawalls. “So this is what we have planned for Norfolk, Newport News, the beaches, the whole area,” she said. “The rebuilding of the ports should keep them operational through at least seven feet of sea level rise, which is more than we’re expecting for the next fifty years or so. That will give our grandchildren time to decide what to do next, based on—yes?” A woman in the front row had her hand up.
“Jane Fuentes, American News and Media Foundation,” she said. “What are the seawalls for?”
“For one thing, we have to worry about storm surges… like the one that pretty much flattened this city last fall. More importantly, we don’t know how accurate the IPCC estimates are going to turn out to be. We’ve already had one nasty surprise this year when the Totten Glacier started slipping. Think of these walls as an insurance policy.” What Carrie didn’t say was that their real purpose was to draw a line and send a message—that which is within these walls is worth protecting. If it is destroyed, we will rebuild it. We will not abandon it this year, this decade, or this century. We definitely won’t pull that “mortgage forgiveness” crap the banks pulled in Virginia Beach and here in Norfolk. Wind and wave would never get that message, of course, but the real estate market just might… and if it did, the walls would pay for themselves long before they were ever needed.
“If I might follow up, it seems like the walls are protecting ground that will be in danger forty to sixty years from now, not ground that’s in danger right now. Why is that?”
“First of all, we need a buffer zone. Everything at the edge of the land right now, everything the coast is made of—rocks, sand, salt marsh, mangrove swamp—all of it is resistant to erosion. Not perfectly resistant, you understand—anybody who’s looked at beach erosion knows that—but a lot more so than plain old dirt. Unfortunately, rising sea level means that in a lot of places, plain old dirt is what’s going to be exposed to the ocean. Eventually, of course, the soluble stuff will get washed away and what’s left will be more rocks and marshes and such, but most of us are not prepared to wait that long. We’ll need to consult with local wildlife experts to develop plans for new wetlands—planting the right marsh grasses and so on—but the bottom line is that the shoreline is going to have to be reconstructed every ten years or so to respond to the rising ocean.
“Second, we can’t protect everything. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what can be protected, what most needs to be protected and how long it’s going to take. Now, how many of you can visualize a four-dimensional matrix of sea level rise, construction time, and land value estimates?”
There was a silence as deep as the tomb.
Carrie smiled. “Me either. That’s why I brought in all these experts in the first place.”
“There are several fairly important cities that don’t appear to be protected at all,” said another reporter. “Why is that?”
“You’d have to ask the experts about that,” she said. “Do we have one here? Let’s see…” Carrie activated a connection to the Committee on Seawalls. A young woman with blue eyes and a light-brown ponytail was sitting at the computer. She was probably one of the students working with the engineering team.
“You’re following this, right?” The student nodded. “How does your team answer the question?”
The student sighed. “I’m afraid the answer is that some cities can’t be saved,” she said. “Miami, for instance. It’s built on limestone, and limestone is porous. You can
build walls a thousand feet high, but the water’s just going to flow right under them. And in the case of New Orleans, you’d have to build the walls on top of silt… which would be compacted by the weight, which would cause the walls to sink and you’d be back where you started. I’m sorry.” She glanced in Carrie’s direction with a slightly aggrieved look on her face, as if to say there, I just pronounced a death sentence on two major cities in front of half the D.C. press corps. Anything else you’d like me to do on your behalf?
Another reporter stood up. “Brentwood Smith, TKB Foundation,” he said. “Do you think it’s the job of the federal government to implement this plan?”
“Who said anything about the feds?” said Carrie, smiling a little. “The idea here was just to put together the best plan we can come up with. Who implements it, at what level, isn’t a question we’re looking at. That said, some states would be better able to do this on their own than others. Louisiana, for example, has 7,721 miles of tidal shoreline. Pennsylvania has eighty-nine miles and a slightly larger state budget. Now let’s take a question from online.” She went through a list of online reporters and independent bloggers until she found someone who seemed less likely than most to throw her a gotcha question.
“Taylor Pagonis of Inside the Street. Whoever does this, it’s still going to involve buying an enormous amount of land. How do you do that at a price that won’t either bankrupt the buyer or the sellers?”
“That’s a good question. The honest answer is that we don’t have an answer to it yet. This plan is still a work in progress.” The really honest answer was that Carrie strongly suspected there wasn’t an answer. Either everybody who owned property along the coast was going to go bankrupt, or the rest of the planet was going to go bankrupt trying to bail them out. Or both.
In the Pacific Ocean, the cool phase of the ENSO—the phase called La Niña—was underway. This brought some extra rainfall to the Pacific Northwest, but California, Nevada, and Arizona still suffered from lower-than-“normal” precipitation.
Between the Sierras and the Rockies, wildfires raged over the land. Eastward as far as the 95th meridian, crop-killing drought conditions held sway from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
In the southeast, rain was lower than average, but adequate. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the heat. By mid-May, everything from Texas to the Carolinas was experiencing highs in the mid-90s, and things got worse as May turned into June.
There was still rain—but when the air was dry, it was very dry. In the Ozarks and the southern Appalachians, forest fires started easily and spread rapidly.
* * *
Commencement was over. Isabel was, officially, a college graduate. With honors and everything.
She gave one last hug to Ian and Chris, another one to Deon, and to Ikuko, Zoshia, and Mei, exchanged an awkwardly polite nod with Laurie, and… that was it. Isabel had a feeling she was supposed to have made more friends than this during her time here. On the other hand, the whole family had showed up—Mom, Pop, Chelsey, Scott, Kristen, Jourdain, and all four grandparents.
Well, almost the whole family. “Rod sends hugs and kisses, but he’s trying to close a big deal this weekend,” said Chelsey. Isabel nodded. She had no problem with Rod’s absence, and she liked his hugs and kisses better in verbal form and relayed via someone else.
Speaking of hugs and kisses, Jourdain got things started by wrapping her little arms around Isabel’s waist. “Ann-Is-Bell!” she said, that being as far as she could go toward “Aunt Isabel” at age three. It was hard to tell at this point, but the little lady seemed to be inheriting a lot of her father’s looks. Isabel just hoped she didn’t inherit his personality, and maybe not too much of her mother’s.
Then she was in a clump of her family’s embraces—Mom, who was all choked up and had actual tears streaming down her cheeks, Pop, who squeezed her around the shoulders with arms hardened by decades of heavy use and said, “You always could do anything you set your mind to,” Kristen who at some point had turned into the beauty of the family, and Scott, who was now about as tall as Pop—wait, when had that happened? And the grandparents, all in their seventies but still healthy enough to give Isabel a certain amount of confidence in her own genes.
“Ready to start adulting?” said Kristen.
“I think so,” said Isabel.
“I should hope so,” said Chelsey. “You’ve been adulting since you were about nine, chunkybutt.”
Isabel rode in the back seat of Mom’s minivan, with Jourdain snuggled between her and Chelsey. Everyone else in the family had tried to dress up at least a little, but her older sister was wearing a T-shirt and fanning her belly with the bottom of it, as if trying to get some air flowing between her outsized boobs. She gave a little sigh of contentment.
“You’re in a good mood,” said Isabel.
“Oh yeah,” said Chelsey. “I just want you to know… don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m really, really glad I didn’t take your advice.”
“Um… what advice was that?”
“On Jellicoe treatments,” she said. “Turns out the government’s not gonna pay you to get Jellicoed unless you’ve got a serious hard-drug problem. So I went ahead and got a discount treatment. It’s supposed to take at least three weeks to get the full effect, but it’s already been two weeks and I feel great!”
“Well, I’m glad it worked.”
There was an awkward silence—or not quite a silence, since Pop had the radio on. As always in the Bradshaw household, it was tuned to whichever NOAA weather channel had the best reception in this area. That was what radios were for if you worked on the water and your retirement plans included being alive.
“So when do we get to meet this Hunter?” said Pop.
“He’ll be meeting us at the restaurant,” said Isabel, hoping Hunter wouldn’t be late. “Turn left up ahead.”
* * *
You could have a decent meal at Celebrazione alone or with a date, but, as the name implied, the place really specialized in big gatherings. Knowing that the Bradshaws wouldn’t be the only family in town celebrating graduation right now, Isabel had made this reservation three months in advance. The minute Pop opened the door and she was greeted by the smell coming from the kitchen—a combination of simmering tomato sauce, baking bread, wine, sharp cheese, garlic, fennel, and rosemary—she was glad she’d chosen this place.
Isabel was seated at the head of a long table, with Pop on her right and Hunter on her left. Scott sat at the far end, surrounded by grandparents. She and Hunter were both having the appetizer, wattle noodles and steamed Swiss chard in a heavy cream sauce.
“They didn’t have this when I worked here,” said Isabel, swirling the coffee-colored noodles onto her fork.
“God, that’s birdseed,” said Chelsey, seated on the other side of Hunter. “Literally. Remember when wattles were those things hanging on old people’s necks?” She turned to Jourdain, who was sitting in a high chair, and playfully rubbed the pink skin under her daughter’s chin.
“Don’t knock it,” said Isabel. “Pound for pound, wattleseed flour’s got more protein than steak.”
“Please tell me you’re not turning vegan on us.”
“Not until they can make soft-shelled crabs out of tofu, I’m not.”
“What’s good here?” said Hunter.
“I’m having the linguini with house mussels, but for you I’d recommend the veal marsala.” Hunter had a shellfish allergy. He could be in the same room with it, but couldn’t eat it. That was going to be a problem if she ever brought him home—her parents would hardly know how to be hospitable if they couldn’t throw a crab feast.
Isabel was hoping Pop wouldn’t start questioning Hunter on his future plans. What happened instead while they were waiting for the food was almost as depressing—the conversation turned to the situation on Smith Island, where Mom had grown up and her parents still lived.
That community had the same set of problems as everybody
else on low-lying ground, plus the additional problems of subsidence and erosion that had been plaguing them long before sea level rise became a concern. For a lot of people, Hurricane Gordon and “mortgage forgiveness” had been the last straw. Mom-mom and Pop-pop Horton were sticking around as long as they could, but a lot of other people were trying to do what the people of Holland Island had done just over a century ago—move the whole community to the mainland, one home at a time.
Nobody was happy about this, and they were right not to be happy. Smith Island had been settled for four hundred years, plus however long the Native Americans had lived there. The state had put a lot of money into restoration efforts. The idea of abandoning it…
You calmly told Governor Camberg that Miami and New Orleans were lost causes. Now you’re shedding tears over a place whose whole population could fit into one housing project in either of those cities. Parochial much?
Smith Island is different. It literally has its own accent. Last time Mom and I got to talking about Sandy, Mom slipped and said “billionahrr.” If we lose it, we’ve lost something irreplaceable.
Right. Unlike New Orleans, which is of no cultural importance whatsoever. Especially when it comes to music or cuisine.
What about the Smith Island cake? It’s the official state dessert. And it’s delicious, I might add.
It’s a stack of pancakes glued together with frosting.
No, it’s not. You have to bake it.
Which is why Mom stopped making them—having to wash ten baking pans at once was a ridiculous amount of work. On a good day, Isabel could deal with her inner critic by getting it sidetracked.
About this time, the food arrived. The mussels came first. They were quite simple—smoked mussels in olive oil with garlic, rosemary, and sea salt.
