Superstorm Sandy, the late-fall hurricane that blasted up the East Coast in late October, brought the issue of how to deal with climate change roaring back into public consciousness. The total cost of the swath of destruction this storm tore through the mid-Atlantic has yet to be fully estimated. Regardless of the cost, this event had the effect of changing public discourse on the subject of how we respond to climate change. Just months after national polls indicated that climate change response had faded to third in a list of the top environmental concerns by the general public, suddenly it’s back on everyone’s radar again. Even elected officials who have been reluctant to mention it, much less have an open discussion about it, are grudgingly admitting it is something we must deal with.
This massive storm, more than 1,000 miles in diameter, has been measured as the largest Atlantic tropical storm on record and the second-most powerful hurricane in modern history, beating even Hurricane Katrina in terms of sheer energy. While there is no definitively causal link to climate change, the damage it wrought to much of the East Coast raises legitimate concerns about how much this storm—and future storms—might be super-charged by climate-change conditions including a warming ocean and unusual late-fall atmospheric conditions.
The impacts of this storm and the public’s reactions to it collectively offer us a new lens through which we can view public perceptions as well as actual impacts on parks, public lands, and recreation resources from extreme weather events.
We've all seen the pictures of Sandy’s devastation—piles of floating cars, subway tunnels flooded to their ceilings, lower Manhattan darkened and black—images that were just shocking to see in the city that never sleeps. You might be tempted to think that most of the jurisdictions affected just weren’t quite ready to deal with a storm of this magnitude, but when you see the totality of the destruction, you realize that all these people and jurisdictions were not unprepared; there was simply little they could do in the face of such a storm.
If there was one good result of the storm, it is that it has caused people to talk about the long-term effects of climate change and what can be done to adapt before such impacts happen again.
As the hurricane blasted into the New York-New Jersey shoreline, the storm changed character, morphing from a late-season hurricane to a full-blown early-winter nor’easter. Urban areas, along with their parks, were smashed. New York City parks suffered enormous damage. Eleven thousand trees are reported down, and parks were closed for a full week, even the beloved and iconic Central Park, much to the dismay of city residents.
Some may say, “So what?” This storm might have been a little bit bigger and badder than any before, but what’s the big deal? Storms trash parks all the time.
And it’s not as if everyone is suddenly getting religion about the impacts of climate change. There are many in our own profession who don’t believe it is even a threat, and certainly not one of the magnitude that requires long-term planning, much less direct action to be taken now.
But sooner or later, whether you are a believer or non-believer, we are all going to have to deal with the impacts of climate-change conditions. Some areas of the country are feeling it more than others, and some are seeing the effects sooner than others, but it is difficult to find anyone who went through Sandy’s direct impacts who doesn’t believe that the ferocity and size of that storm had nothing to do with climactic change.
What we do know is that the East Coast sea level has been rising about an inch a decade. This much of a rise was once thought to be substantial if it occurred over a century. In addition, new evidence-based scientific research by the highly respected National Center for Atmospheric Research is showing that most climate-change prediction models are likely to underestimate potential threats. This new report, published in Science Magazine, states that the earth’s atmosphere is far more sensitive to carbon loading than originally thought, and as a result, predictive models for ambient temperature increases and related extreme weather events are on the low side of probability. It is far more likely that our atmosphere will be getting hotter sooner, that average temperatures will rise faster than thought, and that the long-term impacts of atmospheric loading will be much greater than were once predicted.
New York City has been looking at this issue for a number of years and implementing policies and practices on the ground to deal with it, including how they design and use their parklands, particularly those in flood-prone areas. “As badly damaged as many of our parks were, one of Sandy’s lessons is that the city is much better off ringed by waterfront parks, beaches, and wetlands that absorb the initial energy of these major storm events,” says Joshua Laird, assistant commissioner of NYC’s Department of Parks and Recreation. “The question facing us is how we can do a better job of creating landscapes that are both recreational and functional for stormwater management and that have the ability to absorb and redirect storm energy away from critical infrastructure.”
This is very advanced thinking about climate change. Other coastal areas along the Atlantic Ocean are realizing that they will soon need to face the same hard choices, and they are starting to plan for similar outcomes as well. But this is not a problem unique to coastal areas—they are just feeling it first. Virtually every region in America has to plan for their response to climate change. One clear conclusion of the recent events is that parks and public conservation lands are an essential part of the solution.
There is great challenge ahead, but also great opportunity for incorporating parks and conservation lands into long-term solutions. Among the key lessons that are we are learning as a result of this storm and other rapidly changing conditions:
There will be greater opportunity to acquire, manage, and program conservation lands if they are seen as part of long-term climate change response strategies. This makes the case doubly strong to justify the purpose and continue to expand this type of land acquisition through the Land and Water Conservation Fund and state-level open space and land acquisition and protection programs.
There will be greater costs to flood-proof parks. Where such funds will come from and how much will be needed is an open question now.
Some existing facilities might need to be abandoned or repurposed—the costs of repairing storm-damaged infrastructure will quickly become unsustainable under self-insurance systems as many park and recreation agencies now have.
Demonstrating the value of the investment in such conservation lands will be our greatest task, as park officials will need the support of the public to pay for necessary infrastructure upgrades.
More resiliency needs to be designed into systems, structures, and landscapes—those that can be flooded or sacrificed in storms and extreme weather events must be as resilient and recoverable as possible. This will be a challenge for landscape architects, planners, and managers to produce the best possible designs.
Parks and public lands must be at the heart of any discussion of how to best respond to the inevitable challenges that climate change brings. We need to wake up in our profession and get serious about engaging in this discussion now. It is high time we start taking the longer view.
Richard J. Dolesh is NRPA's Vice President of Conservation and Parks.