‘The existential threat of our time’
IPCC climate change report forecasts grim future for Brooklyn
COURIER LIFE, AUGUST 13-19, 2021 11
BY BEN BRACHFELD
Climate change is set to hit
home hard for Brooklynites, according
to a new report.
The report, compiled by
the UN’s Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change and
released on Monday, paints a
daunting picture of the catastrophic
effects that increased
atmospheric Co2 is already
wreaking on the world, and
where we’re inevitably headed
in lieu of drastic action — including
here in Kings County.
“It’s not surprising to us,”
said Elizabeth Yeampierre, the
executive director of Sunset
Park-based climate advocacy
group UPROSE. “But despite
the fact that we expected that
news, it’s still dire. It’s still troubling.
It still makes you want to
cry when you see it in print.”
The report fi nds that human
activity has already signifi -
cantly increased average global
temperatures, and there remains
only a slim chance that
the world will remain below the
1.5 degree Celsius benchmark
set at the 2015 Paris Accords
that, if passed, spells an exceedingly
dark future.
The report notes that the
world is already feeling the effects
of climate change, with
more frequent extreme weather
events and sea-level rise already
occurring, and that these
effects worsening in the coming
decades is inevitable and irreversible
— although abject catastrophe
could still be averted
if society rapidly weans itself
off fossil fuels.
The report has wide-ranging
implications for the entire
world, and New York is no exception,
with more frequent
storms and normalized fl ooding
in low-lying coastal regions
now being essentially unavoidable.
“I think what this report
says is that we still have to do
the work,” said Brett Branco, director
of the Science and Resiliency
Institute at Jamaica Bay.
“But we’ve already changed
things signifi cantly enough
that we also have to learn to live
with the consequences.”
Report co-author Bob Kopp
said that “regardless of how
quickly we get our emissions
down,” sea levels are likely to
rise by 6-to-12 inches by midcentury.
“If average global temperatures
rise by up to 4 degrees
Celsius, we could see sea levels
rise by up to 2 feet by the end of
this century.”
Sea levels rose off New York’s
coast by 9 inches between 1950
and 2017, according to sealevelrise.
org, which cited data by the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, and
those levels are now rising by
an inch every 7-to-8 years.
If the worst possibilities
come to pass, signifi cant portions
of coastal Brooklyn, like
neighborhoods on Jamaica Bay,
Williamsburg, Red Hook, Bay
Ridge, Sunset Park, and others,
could in the coming decades be
underwater and unlivable, with
storms like Hurricane Sandy
becoming more regular occurrences.
“It’s surprising to me that
Superstorm Sandy wasn’t the
ultimate lesson,” Yeampierre
said, noting that the city’s infrastructure,
including its subways,
had faced devastating
fl ooding during the 2012 storm.
The storm’s impacts are
still being felt today on various
fronts. The MTA has conducted
repairs to several East River
subway tunnels, such as those
carrying the L, R, and F lines
— but still has much work to do.
And the ever-evolving Gateway
Tunnel saga stems from damage
caused to the century-old
Hudson River tubes caused by
the storm.
“Climate change is telling
us that you’re not gonna survive
if you continue to move in
the direction you’re moving,”
Yeampierre said.
The effects of rising seas
and increased storms is a focus
of President Joe Biden’s dual infrastructure
plans, which, together,
are set to spend trillions
of dollars upgrading energy
grids, coastal sea walls, electric
car charging stations, and
fl ood-mitigation support.
“Congress has ignored
the great existential threat of
our time. And that is climate
change,” said Vermont Sen.
Bernie Sanders, who chairs
the Senate Budget Committee.
“If we do not act boldly and immediately
all over this planet,
the world that we will be leaving
our children and grandchildren
will be increasingly unhealthy
and uninhabitable.”
‘The city’s shifting climate
could also spell doom for innumerable
species of plants and
greenery that currently call
Brooklyn home. Warming, acidifying,
and rising oceans could
be devastating for marine life
in Jamaica Bay and elsewhere,
and even some solutions, like
seawalls, would have signifi -
cant impacts on current ecology.
And the city will simply
become hotter, with the “heat
island” effect amplifying as average
temperatures increase.
“Some of Brooklyn would
remain livable,” said Sara
Gronim of 350 Brooklyn. “But
there would be less room for
most of us, it would be less
green and less moderate in
terms of climate.”
Low-lying neighborhoods in
southern Brooklyn, like those
around Jamaica Bay such as
Canarsie, Marine Park, Bergen
Beach, and Mill Basin, face particular
vulnerabilities. Branco
says that residents are already
having to learn to live with the
threats, and some residents
may end up deciding to relocate
if the challenges become too
much to bear.
“Unlivable is an individual
decision, but we do know that
in some communities around
Jamaica Bay and other parts
of Brooklyn, people are having
to learn to live with the
water,” Branco said. “On a full
moon, even on a sunny day,
they’re gonna experience some
fl ooding in the streets outside
their house, in their yards.
And they’re fi guring out ways
to cope with that. And if it becomes
too diffi cult for them to
live with that, they may choose
to leave.”
Branco notes that building
fl ood-resilient infrastructure
in these areas will be expensive
and could have a negative impact
on bay marine life.
“We have to make some
important decisions,” Branco
said. “There are probably some
very, very expensive things to
do, elevate homes and streets,
build seawalls, there are things
we can do to make the fl ooding
less severe, less impactful.
But those decisions have consequences
for some of the important
things in the bay, like habitats
for marine life and birds on
the edges.”
State Sen. Andrew Gounardes,
who represents many
of the southern Brooklyn
neighborhoods at greatest risk,
worries that in the absence of
actions, his constituent communities
could cease to exist.
“I’m trying not to think too
cataclysmically now, but certainly
that’s a concern,” Gounardes
said. “Neighborhoods
we’ve lived in for decades and
decades, a hundred-plus years
in some cases, might cease to
exist if the very worst of what’s
possible actually comes to be.
For low-lying coastal communities
like ours, which have already
experienced just a small
taste of what climate change
can do, it is absolutely worrisome.
And certainly creates a
deep sense of urgency.”
In fairness to local leaders,
experts concede, New York City
and State have passed some ambitious
climate legislation, and
begun serious resiliency work.
The Climate Leadership and
Community Protection Act was
passed in Albany in 2019, setting
statewide decarbonization
targets — including an 85 percent
reduction in greenhouse
gas emissions by 2050. Also in
2019, the city passed Local Law
97, heralded by some as groundbreaking
government action
in the fi ght against climate
change, which requires all
large buildings in the city meet
energy effi ciency standards by
set target dates.
Gronim noted the less highprofi
le, but still important,
work the city is doing to restore
salt marshes on Brooklyn’s
coastline, such as those around
Coney Island. Much of the city’s
climate policy is devised with
guidance by the New York City
Panel on Climate Change, a
group of scientists with wideranging
disciplines and expertise.
Coney Islanders deal with the aftermath of devastation left by Superstorm
Sandy in October, 2012. File photos