Six Art Installations Making Sea Level Rise Visible – Metropolis

Waterlicht Museumplein Amsterdam by Daan Roosegaarde (Studio Roosegaarde CC BY-NC 2.0 via Flickr).

Around the globe, artists are reckoning with climate change and finding new ways to render the impacts of rising seas legible…

“Quite often on the news you’ll see these graphs showing sea level rise and flooding levels, and it can be quite hard to grasp the magnitude of it all,” says architect Andre Kong. “With something that devastating, how can you understand what it actually looks like and what it actually means?

New Research Shows People, Wildlife, and Marine Environment Benefit When Island-Ocean Connections are Restored – SCRIPPS

Floreana Island (by eatswords CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Flickr).

“By applying this knowledge to islands worldwide, we can understand the marine benefits of island restoration projects and maximize returns for our conservation management investments for people, wildlife, and the planet,” said Stuart A. Sandin, PhD, lead co-author of the perspective and a marine ecologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego…

‘Sand is like gold.’ The pricey race to restore Florida beaches before the next hurricane – KOAM News Now

Miami Beach Lifeguard Towers Collage (by Anthony Quintano CC BY 2.0 via Flickr).

For decades, Florida has been restoring its beaches by dredging or trucking in more sand. But the practice is becoming more challenging — and expensive, thanks to the rising cost of beach-quality sand. Offshore sand deposits, especially on Florida’s southeast coast, are dwindling after decades of repeated beach restoration projects. As local governments squabble over the right to use the remaining sand, its price is rising…

The Red Sea’s Coral Reefs Defy the Climate-Change Odds – New York Times

Temple, Red Sea (Andrew K CC BY-NC 2.0 via Flickr).

…(T)he wildly colorful coral reefs in the waters outside the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh, where the annual United Nations climate conference is taking place, are an anomaly: They can tolerate the heat, and perhaps even thrive in it, making them some of the only reefs in the world that have a chance of surviving climate change…

A deal on loss and damage, but a blow to 1.5C – what will be Cop27’s legacy? – the Guardian

At COP27 Closing Plenary, 19 November 2022 (by Kiara Worth, UNFCCC COP27, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 via Flickr).

Developed countries as a bloc are still in the top five emitters, taking historical responsibility into account, but individually they are eclipsed by rapidly growing emerging economies, such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and other petrostates, according to Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House climate adviser…
“This Cop was something of a failure, because it completely let the world’s biggest emitter, China, off the hook,” he said. “Global emissions can’t fall until China’s emissions fall. This is the key to climate protection.”

‘No safe place’: Kiribati seeks donors to raise islands from encroaching seas – the Guardian

A view of mangrove shoots planted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and others on Tarawa, an atoll in the Pacific island nation of Kiribati, 2011(by Eskinder Debebe, UN Photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Flickr).

Pacific state needs billions for its ambitious plan – its president demands wealthy nations act to help now

Developing countries vulnerable to the worst ravages of global heating have spent the past week at United Nations climate talks urging more support from wealthy nations. The Pacific state of Kiribati has a very specific and unusual demand – that its islands be physically raised up to escape the encroaching seas…

How to Pay for Climate Justice When Polluters Have All the Money – the New Yorker

COP27 Closing Plenary Session 19 November 2022 (by Kiara Worth UN ClimateChange CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 via Flickr).

You can imagine the tension—the anger—that comes from watching your part of the world dry up or flood, knowing that the countries whose pollution caused your problems also have enough dollars to repair the damage…COP27 is one more reminder, however, that justice only proceeds, fitfully, through politics. Rebalancing the world’s wealth, even a little, is the trickiest of political tasks. Yet our chances for a livable world may depend on it.

Here’s Where the U.S. Is Testing a New Response to Rising Seas – the New York Times

Shoalwater Bay in Tokeland, Washington USA © 2013 Deepika Shrestha Ross

As climate change gets worse, tribes like Shoalwater Bay are being squeezed between existential threats and brutal financial arithmetic. Consigned to marginal land more than a century ago by the United States government, some tribes are now trying to relocate to areas better protected from extreme weather yet lack the money to pay for that move.