SPEAKER STRESSES
COMMITMENT, COOPERATION
AS SEAS RISE
January 30, 2017
On Saturday, January 28, at the Cedar Key library’s upstairs room, Heather Dewar, journalist, author of When the Seas Rise, and Florida resident recounted her father’s upbringing in the old Florida Keys. She recalled that he knew every fish, every shore and wading bird, details about every boat he saw, whether the oncoming clouds meant a storm or nothing at all. The author then lamented the disappearance of the old Keys of Hemingway: “how special was the knowledge that old Florida coastal guys possessed.” Although the night before her library talk was the her first night ever in Cedar Key, Dewar remembers how her father always spoke lovingly of the town, which she now recognizes as one of those “cherished places where the old Florida way of life still survives.”
After establishing herself as someone who has long ties and a deep love for Florida, Dewar then moved towards the primary points of her talk: the seas are indeed rising, a good portion of the state her father knew and loved will be altered drastically, but with diligence, informed decision-making, and collaboration, there can still be a Florida that is a joy to live in.
Reading portions from her book, the author began by describing one of the earliest detections of sea level rise. In the early 1990’s, a Tampa surgeon called a University of Florida biologist about trees dying all around his vacation cottage near Yankeetown where the Withlacoochee river empties into the Gulf. The biologist, Jack Putz, a forestry professor and a plant pathologist, travelled to the doctor’s place expecting to discover a single disease killing the palm trees; instead they found that all trees- red cedars, palms, oaks, pines- were all dying throughout a sixty-mile stretch of coastal land all the way towards the Big Bend. They ultimately realized that the culprit was the rising sea levels, inundating the coast with salt water, killing the trees. We now know that the seas are rising twice as rapidly as they did twenty-five years ago, that Miami regularly experiences “Sunny-day flooding,” and that, because South Florida is built on a limestone bedrock, as porous as a honeycomb, sea walls will not stop the rising tides.
So is there anything we can do short of packing up and moving to higher ground? Is Florida doomed? Heather Dewar isn’t ready to concede that point just yet. She noted that communities along our coasts are already beginning to meet, to discuss, to cooperate, to plan strategy, and that these meetings are attended by scientists as well as real estate developers, members of the business community, and concerned citizens. As James W. Jones, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of agriculture and biological engineering at the University of Florida states in When the Seas Rise, Florida’s environment is definitely going to undergo radical changes due to climate change and sea level rise, “’yet in some instances it may create opportunities that we need to be prepared to take advantage of.”’
Heather Dewar clearly loves her home state; she became quite emotional when elucidating her conclusion. Florida has undergone many transformations since achieving statehood in 1845, and just as her father dealt with the death of the old Florida Keys he loved, so too will all Florida citizens face a deepening and profound sense of loss as their habitat is altered significantly. Dewar proposes a three-pronged approach: to know and accept that the sea levels are rising to record levels at a rapidly increasing pace, to grieve appropriately for what will be irreparably lost, and then get to work creating a new Florida which, though different from any of previous incarnations, is still a Florida which is “as precious to our children as it was to us.” As a coastal town which still clings to its position as part of the old Florida, Cedar Key would do well to listen carefully.
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