Climate Change Getting Action

Observant folks in Hampton Roads can't help but notice the creeping waters. The eroding yards along our waterfront. The flooding streets every time it rains more than a little.

All that is a fact of life here, as surely as snarly traffic and lost tourists. Over time, it's also getting worse.

As rivers rise, they take back creeks filled long ago. They imperil neighborhoods and installations. They overwhelm stormwater and sewer systems designed when the waters were lower.

Global warming is undoubtedly contributing to the problem, as it is in low-lying communities across the planet. Climate scientists have concluded that mankind burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests has been a primary cause.

There's another issue in Hampton Roads: We're in the middle of a 35 million-year-old meteor crater, the land around here is settling. Combine rising seas and sinking land and you have a bigger sea-level problem in Hampton Roads than almost anywhere else in America.

The current forecast, based on almost 90 years of data, puts the future sea level rise at 4.44 millimeters a year at Sewells Point, or about a foot and a half over a century. The data at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel is over a shorter period, but it predicts a 6.05 mm average annual rise.

Those forecasts don't include changes in that trajectory based on the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. (Atmospheric carbon dioxide recently climbed above 400 parts per million, levels not seen since the Pliocene era 4 million years ago. Scientists say rising CO2 will cause seas to rise higher, faster.)

Waters are already rising faster in Hampton Roads, a problem likely to get worse and more expensive. Houses and roads will have to be moved. Systems will have to be hardened. Water will have to be held at bay. Ground will have to be abandoned.

It's a welcome sight that lawmakers are finally showing urgency. Last week, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine convened a bipartisan gathering that included U.S. Reps. Scott Rigell, Bobby Scott and Rob Wittman, along with Mayors Will Sessoms and Paul Fraim. Officials from the Navy and state government joined.

They gathered at Old Dominion University, which is making a strong case to be the national center of academic research on sea-level rise. There is no school in America closer to the subject, both literally and academically.

And there is reason to be grateful that Richmond - where the Climate Change Commission has been dormant for four years - is once again paying attention to the plight of Hampton Roads.

Helping this community plan for what's coming, as well as the millions of dollars it will take to deal with the threat, is the first of many more steps to go.

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