There’s been a great deal of focus lately on the local effects of the rush by federal and state authorities to build big wind farms near the Vineyard to ameliorate climate change, but very little focus on the local effects of climate change itself.
Except in Oak Bluffs, where there is quiet work underway to prepare for the worst, including sea level rise that is expected to erase beachfront property as it is now known, and the potentially ruinous effects of extreme storms caused by climate change. And it’s all backed by a state grant.
With sea level rise at our doorstep and storms chomping away at the shoreline it’s time to rethink an economy based largely on seasonal, coastal recreation. Why? Because as Ginny Jones, a lifelong Islander from a farming family muses so succinctly, “We can’t eat tourists.”
Clam chowder, bay scallops, fried oysters. Wampum bracelets. Shellfish are the grand bounty of the soft, sparkling salt ponds that ring the Island shore. We’d be hard pressed to find a local cultural symbol more significant than the water-worn purple and white quahaug shell. Purple — the Island color.
That well-worn phrase — climate change. We know it’s out there, hovering over our lives like a heavy cloud. But what does it mean exactly — to you and the Island of Martha’s Vineyard?
It means striking changes in the three most critical components of Island life:
• The natural environment — the air, land and water;
One day last month close to five inches of rain fell on Martha’s Vineyard. In Chilmark alone it caused a five-foot wide, four-foot deep sinkhole on State Road, the collapse of a two culverts and the dirt road to Lucy Vincent Beach, the collapse of an old granite bridge and the closure of South Road near the Allen Farm due to an impassable puddle.
Suddenly it’s flooding everywhere, all over the world — and it’s no fluke.
Climate change is complicated; sea level rise is not. We live on an Island — a glorified sandbar — and the sea is closing in on us. It is rising much faster than anticipated. In the last century sea level rose by about a foot. In this century, due to human-induced global warming, it is expected to rise at least five feet, according to a new report by the international Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program.
For the first time in living memory, Wasque Point on Chappaquiddick, a famed spot where riptides attract thousands of saltwater fishermen each year, will be inaccessible for much of the summer. The reason is the ferocious erosion now eating away huge chunks of the southeastern corner of Chappaquiddick at a rapid rate. The once-wide sandy beach at Wasque Point has been replaced by 20 to 28-foot sheer cliffs, with truckloads of uprooted pine and oak trees stuck in the crashing surf at their base.
