The tiny town of Stinson Beach, CA, is investigating creating a nature-based solution to protect 773 homes and six businesses from sea level rise. The solution involves developing dunes as opposed to sea walls. To date, the sea level in the town has risen eight inches over the past 100 years but precitions are that the region might see a 70-inch rise by 2100. The community is currently facing the loss of a significant number of homes to sea level rise by 2030.
County Planner Leslie Lacko said recent meetings with Stinson Beach residents have been well-received and engagement in the process has been strong.
“Your home is the place where you have family memories, a place where you feel the most comfortable,” she said, “and when that’s at risk, you feel a great sense of need to protect it. We are looking for a climate change adaptation that will allow people to stay in their places longer, protect natural resources, and sustain public beach access. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.” www.sfchronicle.com/...
The challenges of nature loss and global warming are linked - but so are their solutions.
Nature-based solutions for climate harness the power of nature to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also help us adapt to the impacts of climate change. They are win-win solutions that involve protecting, restoring and sustainably managing ecosystems to address society's challenges and promote human well-being.
Forests are probably the most well-known nature-based solution for climate change, but there are many more - including peatlands, mangroves, wetlands, savannahs, coral reefs and other landscapes.
A report from WWF-US found only 36 of 151 countries indicated they would increase forest cover, plant trees or expand natural areas in their national climate plans.
Some 3,000 miles away from Stinson Beach on Maine’s Casco Bay, eleven communities are collaborating on projects using “nature-based infrastructure to mitigate coastal flooding caused by the climate crisis.” The project’s $.5 million in federal funding has been matched by local funding sources.
Projects could include salt marsh and dune restoration, green infrastructure to reduce stormwater runoff, landscaping parks to mitigate flooding and runoff and other nature-based solutions. These solutions can be more sustainable and less expensive than hard infrastructure, [Gayle] Bowness says. “Instead of building a seawall, can we start rehabilitating a shoreline … to shore up some of the erosion … and … bring back some of the natural sediment,” she says.
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“Now is the time to start planning for the solutions that will ensure our coast can be economically, environmentally, and socially resilient to current and future impacts,” [Sara] Mills-Knapp, says. “We know that nature-based solutions to flooding are essential to protecting habitats and communities… in this important long-term planning effort.”
Meanwhile, officials STILL SUPPORT Carbon Capture and Storage
The UNIPCC and the IEA continue to stand by their position that carbon capture and storage processes can be instrumental in limiting temperatures from rising beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius. Yet CCS programs in the United States call into question their effectiveness.
The Department of Energy invested nearly $1.1 billion from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund CCS projects at coal plants and industrial sites. $438 million went to fund CCS projects at three industrial sites. Two were completed and are operational.
EIght projects at coal plants received close to $684 million. Three did not make it through the planning phase.
The economics of CCS for coal-fired power plants are particularly grim because the energy that must be used to capture carbon can consume as much as a quarter of a plant’s total generation capacity, Mark Jacobson, senior fellow and professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment, told Canary Media last fall.
“When you run the numbers, there’s virtually zero capture rate,” he said. “I think the whole thing is a scam, just a big scheme to get funding subsidies.”