Flee the Sea:

Abstract

Sealevel rise is the defining issue of the century,” declared a May 2018 editorial from Florida’s Sun Sentinel newspaper. Ostensibly, the paper’s editorial board was sounding the warning about the threat to South Florida, but this declaration applies to nearly all coastal communities in the United States. As the sea continues to rise, coastal communities will lose territory, and they will lose people. The flow of sealevelrise refugees is just a dribble now, with the major exception being Puerto Rico where, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 130,000 people left the island in the year after Hurricane Maria, which struck in September 2017. The postMaria exodus resulted in a 3.9 percent drop in Puerto Rico’s population. A few souls have moved away from Miami and Miami Beach and a number of small towns on the Mississippi Delta, but the dribble is showing signs of acceleration as is the sea level rise. Flooding from high tides, made higher by sea level rise, has forced the congregation of a Unitarian Church in Norfolk, Virginia, to abandon the church building and move to higher ground. A few Native Alaskans have moved from their tiny beachfront villages into towns because of the ris“