As sea levels continue to rise around the world, coastal communities and infrastructure have begun to feel the effects. Among these regions is Canada's Vancouver Island, the site of increasingly intense storms and flooding, reported Goldstream News Gazette.
What's happening?
Due to rising temperatures, ice sheets are starting to melt, bringing ocean waters higher and putting coastal communities at risk. Currently, the Oak Bay municipality on Vancouver Island faces the greatest flooding threat, with most of its shoreline barely above sea level.
"Rising sea levels, more intense storms, and eroding shorelines are no longer distant threats — they're happening now," warned Kevin Laird of British Columbia's Goldstream News Gazette.
Per the article, coastal sea levels are set to experience a rise of around half a meter (1.6 feet) by 2050, and a total of 1.3 meters (4.3 feet) by 2100 — "enough to submerge entire neighborhoods," Laird wrote.
Why are rising sea levels concerning?
While flooding in these regions may not have been uncommon in the past, rising sea levels and warmer ocean waters make these events more frequent and more extreme, putting lives and infrastructure at risk.
Most coastal infrastructure wasn't built to withstand the current state of oceans and storms, per the Goldstream News. Sea levels today aren't the same as they were even 20 years ago, and extreme storms can now flood entire basements within a few minutes.
While coastal communities such as several Vancouver municipalities have started taking preparation measures such as sea-level mapping, risk assessments, and stricter zoning regulations, significant infrastructure protections have so far proven difficult to enact and slow to take effect. Meanwhile, insurance coverage of flood-based disasters has begun to fall, putting homeowners in these flood-prone regions under both physical and financial duress.
It sounds like something out of a dystopia — but if the coasts continue to erode away and move more inland, submerging cities in the years to come, we all will eventually face the same threat.
What's being done about rising sea levels?
To protect our coastal regions, we need to mitigate the melting of ice sheets by preventing global temperatures from rising any further. As planetary overheating stems primarily from carbon pollution, swapping our dirty fuel-based energy consumption for renewable energy sources like wind and solar would be a step in the right direction.
"We can't just stand here and let the water take us," remarked one coastal citizen, per Goldstream News Gazette. "We need the province, the feds — everybody — to step up."
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