PEP, June 2010: Rising waters, green solutions

By JANE LaTOUR

We are cooking ourselves alive, but there are better recipes for our planet. As power plants and cars burn more coal and gas, carbon dioxide and other polluting greenhouse gases collect in the air like a thick blanket. The earth is getting hotter and the seas are rising as oceans warm and the northern icecaps melt. Polar bears stranded on shrunken ice flows are not the only ones in trouble.

“Climate Risk Information,” a report from the New York City Panel on Climate Change, projects extreme temperatures, precipitation and sea level changes, accompanied by drought, forest fires, hurricanes, storm surges and flooding, but it also envisions adaptive scenarios.

Scientists who contributed their expertise to the study — along with the city’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability — came from famed facilities such as NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia University’s Earth Institute and CUNY’s Institute for Sustainable Cities. The report inspired an imaginative exhibit on display at the Museum of Modern Art through Oct. 11 called “Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront.”

The green movement and President Barack Obama are working to reduce carbon emissions nationwide, but with sea levels projected to rise 2 feet over the next 50 years, New York City needs its own answers. For the MOMA exhibit, five teams of architects worked out real solutions to the rising tides at five different low-lying waterfront sites, such as Governors Island, the Gowanus Canal and parts of Staten Island.

Each installation includes a graphic depiction of the city’s coastal profile shrinking inward as the waters rise. The artistically presented ecological proposals include piers, parks, wetlands, even an oyster farm, and other innovative strategies to handle storm surges and rising waters.

To get a vivid sense of New York City under water, visit the exhibit or explore the information and images on-line at http://moma.org/explore/inside_out/category/rising-currents#description. The Climate Change Report is available at: www.nyc.gov/html/om/pdf/2009/NPCC_CRI.pdf.