“A new report about climate change . . .” — so begins yet another round of media coverage, but does anything come of it? A major study released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Monday concluded that the danger is rising so rapidly that the planet and its inhabitants — us included — will soon be unable to adapt. The key observation is that nations, including the United States, have not done nearly enough even to meet present threats of sea level rise, wildfire, heat waves, or drought, much less cope with the disasters of the future. Fast-approaching challenges include pestilential disease and crop failures that will create population dislocations on a global scale, the 270 researchers from 67 counties said.
Recognizing the pressure, change may be coming, in East Hampton Town, at least. Addressing sea level rise and coastal erosion through the Coastal Assessment and Resiliency Plan, and the town's hamlet studies and community wastewater treatment in downtown Montauk are among long-term planning priorities, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc noted in his 2022 State of the Town statement. Jeremy Samuelson, the new town planning director, had served as the chairman of a working group on the resiliency plan, and, as director of Concerned Citizens of Montauk earlier in his career, had a front-row seat on the quixotic United States Army Corps of Engineers’ wasteful effort to protect a row of residential properties and hotels from the ocean’s encroachment. That project quickly came to be reviled as “Dirt Bag Beach.”
For the East End of Long Island, doing our part will also require substantial shifts, including figuring out how to wean ourselves off the fossil fuel-belching, east and west-vehicle traffic that now serves an overbuilt region. It will mean honestly confronting existing waterfront development and curtailing all additional construction in vulnerable areas. The most pressing response is for immediate and massive reductions in gases like carbon dioxide and methane, not promises of going carbon-free by such-and-such a date 20 or 30 years from now.