Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, by Elizabeth Rush
Creative nonfiction has officially come into its own. Exhibit A: this beautiful, smart, necessary book about the effect sea level rise is already having on marginalized communities in the U.S., as well as their plant and animal neighbors. As much scientific as it is an internal journey, Rising is a powerful work that touches intelligently on several timely topics. While it seems almost perverse to be reading a book about the dangers of sea level rise while my state of California is enduring yet another horrific fire season, with a fire just two counties away now reported to be the largest in the state's history, of course it is all part of the same tale: climate change.
Rush visits several locations but the ones that stick out the most are Oakwood Beach on Staten Island and Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana. These are very different communities, but similar in a few crucial ways: the residents are all lower-middle or working class; increasingly violent storms have destroyed homes there; the areas used to be wetlands; and the communities that lived there are pulling out wholesale, selling their homes and land to the government so they can be returned to nature.
These two communities illustrate the two ways this devastation occurs: In Oakood Beach, land that never should have been developed was paved and built over, turned into affordable, oceanfront housing for New Yorkers who otherwise couldn't afford their own homes. These residents were told the area was safe, but the sea doesn't care where you've decided to build your house. Instead, the neighborhood became a bowl where flooding seawater could fill the area very quickly and then had no way to get out. Homes were inundated so fast that people caught unawares were killed in the flood. On the Isle de Jean Charles, encroaching sea water has introduced so much salt into the ground that plants are literally pulling up their roots and trying to escape uphill, leaving the soil with nothing holding it together. The Isle is dissolving into the sea, bit by bit. Fish and shrimp are fleeing, and birds can't hunt there.
Traditionally, swamp and marsh have been the refuge of people who couldn't live elsewhere, undesirables forced into the border between land and sea by prejudice and racially charged economic policies. Now that the ground is falling out from under their feet, they're unable to afford the flood insurance that would help them rebuild, and also unable to afford to leave. They're stuck in their flooding homes while the waters rise. Many who live in flood plains are required to purchase flood insurance, and usually from the National Flood Insurance Program, but doing so is expensive and also requires policy holders to rebuild in place after a flood. So not only are these people paying more than they can afford in insurance, not only is the sea level rising and causing worse flooding more often in these areas, but the residents are forced to stay and rebuild houses that will surely flood again, and again. The program is now maxed out; there is no more money to rebuild these people's lives.
It's not just the people that Rush is concerned about. She's an environmental journalist, after all, and cares deeply about the plant and animal life in these areas. Coastal wetlands, I learned, hold a quarter of the Earth's carbon even though they only cover about 5% of the planet. When wetlands are exposed to too much salt and water, they start to rot, releasing that carbon and a huge amount of methane into the atmosphere, both of which are greenhouse gasses contributing to climate change. The unhealthy earth is making itself sicker, and we are not the only ones to pay the price. Wetlands are important resting points for migratory birds; where will they go if the wetlands disappear? How will they eat or breed? We are all made poorer by a loss in the animal kingdom.
This book is part science, part reportage, and part meditation. We are there with Rush as she works through her emotional response to what she learns. We are there when a male colleague acts inappropriately towards her and she is forced to cut ties with him. We are there as she struggles with an unfair gut reaction to being a white woman sharing space with a black man. I feel that books like this are rare; Rush takes a scientific fact and not only finds the human angle within it, but also within herself.
If you're in the Napa area, I highly recommend you join Elizabeth Rush at the Napa Main Library Thursday, 8/9 at 7:00; Napa Bookmine will be there selling books as well!
Rush visits several locations but the ones that stick out the most are Oakwood Beach on Staten Island and Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana. These are very different communities, but similar in a few crucial ways: the residents are all lower-middle or working class; increasingly violent storms have destroyed homes there; the areas used to be wetlands; and the communities that lived there are pulling out wholesale, selling their homes and land to the government so they can be returned to nature.
These two communities illustrate the two ways this devastation occurs: In Oakood Beach, land that never should have been developed was paved and built over, turned into affordable, oceanfront housing for New Yorkers who otherwise couldn't afford their own homes. These residents were told the area was safe, but the sea doesn't care where you've decided to build your house. Instead, the neighborhood became a bowl where flooding seawater could fill the area very quickly and then had no way to get out. Homes were inundated so fast that people caught unawares were killed in the flood. On the Isle de Jean Charles, encroaching sea water has introduced so much salt into the ground that plants are literally pulling up their roots and trying to escape uphill, leaving the soil with nothing holding it together. The Isle is dissolving into the sea, bit by bit. Fish and shrimp are fleeing, and birds can't hunt there.
Traditionally, swamp and marsh have been the refuge of people who couldn't live elsewhere, undesirables forced into the border between land and sea by prejudice and racially charged economic policies. Now that the ground is falling out from under their feet, they're unable to afford the flood insurance that would help them rebuild, and also unable to afford to leave. They're stuck in their flooding homes while the waters rise. Many who live in flood plains are required to purchase flood insurance, and usually from the National Flood Insurance Program, but doing so is expensive and also requires policy holders to rebuild in place after a flood. So not only are these people paying more than they can afford in insurance, not only is the sea level rising and causing worse flooding more often in these areas, but the residents are forced to stay and rebuild houses that will surely flood again, and again. The program is now maxed out; there is no more money to rebuild these people's lives.
It's not just the people that Rush is concerned about. She's an environmental journalist, after all, and cares deeply about the plant and animal life in these areas. Coastal wetlands, I learned, hold a quarter of the Earth's carbon even though they only cover about 5% of the planet. When wetlands are exposed to too much salt and water, they start to rot, releasing that carbon and a huge amount of methane into the atmosphere, both of which are greenhouse gasses contributing to climate change. The unhealthy earth is making itself sicker, and we are not the only ones to pay the price. Wetlands are important resting points for migratory birds; where will they go if the wetlands disappear? How will they eat or breed? We are all made poorer by a loss in the animal kingdom.
This book is part science, part reportage, and part meditation. We are there with Rush as she works through her emotional response to what she learns. We are there when a male colleague acts inappropriately towards her and she is forced to cut ties with him. We are there as she struggles with an unfair gut reaction to being a white woman sharing space with a black man. I feel that books like this are rare; Rush takes a scientific fact and not only finds the human angle within it, but also within herself.
If you're in the Napa area, I highly recommend you join Elizabeth Rush at the Napa Main Library Thursday, 8/9 at 7:00; Napa Bookmine will be there selling books as well!
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