By reading this weeks lesson, it really taught me how important sea level rise is, and how it is effecting so many places and people. I found a New York Times article called “Rising Sea Levels May Disrupt Lives of Millions, Study Says”. This article talks about how sea level is rising because of green house gas emissions. 13 million people could be effected by sea level rise in the United States, which is three times more than the current estimates. Learning about the coastal communities in the lesson commentary and throughout this course, I knew that they were in danger, but reading through this article, it really opened my eyes. The article states that sea level can rise up to over three feet in the next century if gas emissions continue to rise. The other estimates also did not account for the rapidly increasing population. In our lessons, we learned that coastal communities with large populations are in great danger and could loose so much more. The psychological impacts and economic impacts could be more severe.
Reading about the increasing populations and individuals who could be impacted by sea level rise, brings me back to why I thought this class was interesting in the beginning. I think that global warming is such an issue in our culture, and if we don’t fix the amount of fossil fuels that we burn everyday, the impacts would be severe. At the end of this article it talked about how more than 1 million people in California, New York, and New Jersey would be affected. Those places have a significant impact on me because so many of my family members live there, and I know we are talking about years and years into the future, but its still a scary thought. I am constantly thinking of what I using during the day, and how big my carbon footprint is. More people need to be aware of what we are doing to our environment and our coastal areas.
Schlossberg, T. (2016, March 14). Rising Sea Levels May Disrupt Lives of Millions, Study Says. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/science/rising-sea-levels-global-warming-climate-change.html