Miami: How Rising Sea Levels Endanger South Florida

Jeff Goodell for Rolling Stone writes: I began reporting this piece in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. I had seen what the hurricane’s nine-foot storm surge had done to New York City and, as a scientist I was interviewing at the time, said: “Imagine a world where the water comes in like that – but never leaves.” Miami, as it turned out, was the best place to do that. As soon as I arrived in the city to begin reporting the story, it was clear to me that in a world of quickly rising seas, Miami was in big trouble. Not surprisingly, this was not a universally held opinion at the time. In fact, when I bought it up with Miami city officials, they looked at me as if I were accusing them of child molestation. But it didn’t take a lot of digging to see the problem: a metropolitan area of 2.6 million people, sitting on a porous bed of limestone, the billions of dollars worth of real estate right on the beach, a political system in deep denial. Read full article here.