Gloria Tello is reconsidering. “’These are things you have to think about now, before you invest your life savings into a business.’”
A stylist who does hair and makeup for weddings, Ms. Tello had planned to capitalize on nearby bridal boutiques and open her own studio in the City of Coral Gables, Miami-Dade County, Florida. Having experienced water inundating the streets while a college student and learning of the risk of heavy neighborhood flooding over the next decades, she is reconsidering. While some businesses pile sandbags at their doors, she wonders “how small business owners can cope with it.”
Coastal California is already experiencing the effects of sea level rise.
Says San Mateo supervisor Dave Pine, “We are at the point of no return in fighting climate change and if we don’t reduce emissions there will be catastrophic impacts.”
With sea level rises set to affect more than 100,000 residents of San Mateo County (as of a 2009 analysis, “The Impacts of Sea-Level Rise on the California Coast”), potential property damage in the county is estimated to be about $39 billion.
California coastal communities both north and south are filing suit against 37 “carbon majors,” including Shell, Chevron, Statoil, Exxon, and Total. San Mateo and Marin Counties in northern California and San Diego County’s City of Imperial Beach claim that greenhouse gas emissions from the fossil fuel companies’ activities over the last 50 years have locked in substantial sea level rises, which will cause billions of dollars’ worth of damage to properties and businesses, as well as endangering lives.
San Mateo and Marin Counties and Imperial Beach claim that the defendant companies “have known for nearly 50 years years that greenhouse gas pollution from their fossil fuel products has a significant impact on the Earth’s climate and sea levels” and engaged in a “co-ordinated, multi-front effort to conceal and deny their knowledge of these threats”.
See:
“When Rising Seas Hit Home, Hard Choices Ahead for Hundreds of US Coastal Communities” | Union of Concerned Scientists, July 2017
“Exxon, Shell and other carbon producers sued for sea level rises in California” | Laura Paddison, The Guardian, 26 July 2017
“Rising Seas in California, An Update on Sea-Level Rise Science” | Working Group of the California Ocean Protection Council – Science Advisory Team (OPC-SAT), California Ocean Science Trust, April 2017
“The Impacts of Sea-Level Rise on the California Coast” | California Climate Change Center, 2009
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