Climate change is causing homes to fall into the ocean

We had a visitor this week who wanted to learn about our sheep grazing methods. We showed her how our managed intensive grazing build up soil carbon.We told her that by storing large amounts of carbon in the soil we were, in our small way, helping to prevent flooding and to mitigate the chaos caused by climate change.

I told her that, for us, climate change still seemed somewhat like an abstraction. Sure, there seem to be increasingly powerful storms and, on average, winters are less cold.

But our climate is generally very resilient. Thus, we are not profoundly affected by the increasingly chaotic climate in many parts of the world. Neither disappearing sea ice nor rising sea levels, to point to two serious consequences of climate chaos, seem more than just vaguely troubling.

Two recently published articles made it very clear to me how very lucky, at least for  now, we Minnesotans are.

Publishers Weekly magazine interviewed Barry Lopez about his new book Horizon. Lopez has travelled in and written about the Arctic extensively. Here’s an excerpt from the interview.

Publishers Weekly: You’ve spent decades traveling to polar regions. Have you seen the effects of climate change?

Lopez: Oh, my god, yes. In Alaska, for example, the sea ice has dwindled so much that the wind has “fetch”: with all that open water the wind builds up big waves that crash on shore, and buildings that have stood for centuries are flooded or knocked down. I was on a ship coming into [northern Canada’s] Peel Sound, and saw no ice there, which is unprecedented; in all the historical literature, Peel Sound is a place you just can’t get to, it’s jammed with ice even in summer. It’s infuriating when newscasters say the jury is still out on climate change. We’re dealing with this criminal delay in facing up to global warming because people who are making a lot of money with the way things work now are reluctant to change.

You can read the entire interview here:  https://tinyurl.com/y22qhz8w

Water from that melting sea ice is raising sea levels a very long way from the Arctic. But, like in the Arctic, it’s disappearance is causing homes to fall into the ocean.

Photographer Greta Rybus travelled to Senegal, an African nation with an Atlantic Ocean coastline. There she visited the fishing community of St. Louis. Marion Durand interviewed Rybus and wrote about it in Bright Magazine. Bright also published some of Rybus’ photos. Here’s an excerpt from the article entitled: In Senegal Climate Change is a Fact

Marion Durand: One of the places you’ve visited is Saint Louis, or Ndar, as the locals call it. It’s a city that’s most threatened by climate change in Africa. What did you see there? What did the locals tell you?

Greta Rybus: On the day I reached there it was particularly high tide. It’s a low-lying area so it’s pretty common to see houses falling into the ocean. There are complicated safety hazards, unpredictable storms, and weather patterns that are harder to plan for. A lot of people said that fishing has become a lot more unsafe.

A lot of the fishermen are seeing weather patterns change, and thus have to change their fishing practices and go out at sea for days when they could just go for a few hours. There has been salination of the soil and as a result, a lot of farmers are not only [dealing with] lack of rains, but they’re also struggling because their soil and their wells — which are important water sources — are salty. Little changes like rain coming too early or too late, or it being a day short, means the difference between being able to sustain yourself or not.

You can read the entire article here  https://tinyurl.com/y229gsrl

As I go about my daily work I think it’s important to remember that homes are falling into the ocean.