While Climate and Energy continue to show surprising strength as issues in Senate races across the country – fascinating developments as local politicians find that climate change vastly complicates the normal infrastructure demands, beyond the filling of potholes.
MIAMI BEACH — At least twice in a normal year, the Biscayne Bay rises to swamp the streets of this fashionable resort town in an event known as the “king tide.” Water spills over seawalls and gurgles up through storm drains in what scientists say is a preview of life in Florida in a warming climate.
But this is an election year, when even nature becomes a foil for competing political narratives. When a highly anticipated king tide hit the Florida coast last week, state and local officials surged into action to ensure that any flooding was kept out of sight.
Crews went to work at daybreak Thursday to fire up brand-new pumps installed to prevent seawater from inundating expensive bayfront real estate. By late morning, the TV reporters who arrived in wading boots to film flooded streets instead saw only puddles. By Oct. 10, when the state’s two gubernatorial candidates met for a televised debate, the streets were completely dry, and the Republican incumbent was able to deflect a question about the impact of climate change on the state.
The scramble to limit the damage from rising waters — practically and symbolically — illustrates the challenges and pitfalls faced by politicians this year in dealing with the divisive issue of climate change. Particularly in hard-hit coastal states such as Florida, where rising sea levels are now an inalterable fact, the effects are becoming harder to ignore or suppress, though officials regularly still try.
-The flooding also poses a special challenge for conservative politicians who are skeptical of the scientific consensus on human-induced climate change. Some Republicans, like Scott, have gradually arrived at a somewhat schizophrenic position, refusing officially to take a position on global warming even as they ramp up efforts to deal with its immediate effects.
MIAMI BEACH — As she planned her run for the Florida House of Representatives this year, Kristin Jacobs told her team that she wanted her campaign to address the effects of climate change. Her advisers were initially skeptical, noting that voters typically said they cared about the environment, but considered the issue less urgent than the economy and health care.
Ms. Jacobs, a commissioner for Broward County, pressed her case, arguing that few issues were more critical to residents of southeast Florida than street flooding at high tide — sometimes even on sunny days — and ocean water seeping into their drinking water. “It’s how you ask the question,” she said. “Is clean water important to you?”
Voters have answered yes so far, handing Ms. Jacobs a victory in the Democratic primary in August with more than 76 percent of the vote. Opinion polls suggest she will cruise to victory in November.
The results were “shocking,” said Steven J. Vancore, a pollster and political consultant advising Ms. Jacobs.
While politicians are increasingly willing to include environmental messages in their campaigns, many at the national level still steer clear of the politically charged topic of climate change. But in communities across the country where the effects are lapping at the doorsteps of residents, pragmatism often trumps politics, and candidates as well as elected officials across the political spectrum are embracing the issue.
Some local Republican officials in Florida and elsewhere say they can no longer follow the lead of state and national party leaders like Senator Marco Rubio and Gov. Rick Scott, who have publicly questioned whether human activity has had an effect on climate change. (Though both have recently taken a more vague “I’m not a scientist” stance.) The Center for American Progress Action Fund, a left-leaning advocacy group in Washington, tracks the statements of American political figures on climate change and reports that more than 58 percent of Republicans in Congress have denied a link between human activity and global warming.
But in the Florida Keys, George Neugent, a Republican county commissioner, said that while people might disagree about what to do about climate change, the effects of flooding and hurricanes were less ambiguous. “Clearly rising tides are going to affect us,” he said.
Still more work to do, as evidenced by yesterday’s Detroit Free Press report on overwhelmed storm sewers in southeast Michigan following torrential August rains, which exacerbated toxic algae blooms in Lake Erie, leading to a Toledo water shut-off in early september.
Untreated waste acts as a sort of fertilizer for invasive plant species like phragmites and toxic algae blooms that clog waterways and can turn beachfront areas into stinking swamps. Raw sewage also can endanger the region’s drinking water with high levels of bacteria, adding to the algae problem that sparked a two-day water crisis in Toledo in August.
To put 10 billion gallons in perspective, consider that it would equal about 20 million 50-gallon baths, using a measurement suggested by the U.S. Geological Survey.
“It’s not really a good idea to dump 10 billion gallons (into the water),” said Carl Freeman, a biological sciences professor at Wayne State University, noting that improperly treated sewage is rife with harmful pathogens.
Although officials blame the huge sewage dump on the historic Aug. 11 storm that pounded the region with more than 5½ inches of rain, the issue is a long-standing problem because of aging or inadequate infrastructure, development patterns and loss of wetlands. The Southeast Michigan Council of Governments reported in February that “60%-70% of the existing sewer system was built before 1970, which means it is at the end (or beyond) its useful life.”
Climate change not mentioned in the report, even though increases in large precipitation events are one of the most widely predicted, and best observed, effects of climate change.
