Coastal cities and climate change - You’re going to get wet 2

Coastal cities and climate change You’re going to get wet

海滨城市与气候变化

You’re going to get wet
你们要被淹啦

Americans are building beachfront homes even as the oceans rise
即使海平面上升，美国人仍在海滨建房

Jun 15th 2013 | FORT LAUDERDALE AND NEW YORK |From the print edition

BEFORE Hurricane Sandy tore through New York and New Jersey, it stopped in Florida. Huge waves covered beaches, swept over Fort Lauderdale’s concrete sea wall and spilled onto A1A, Florida’s coastal highway. A month later another series of violent storms hit south Florida, severely eroding Fort Lauderdale’s beaches and a chunk of A1A. Workers are building a new sea wall, mending the highway and adding a couple of pedestrian bridges. Beach erosion forced Fort Lauderdale to buy sand from an inland mine in central Florida; the mine’s soft, white sand stands out against the darker, grittier native variety.

飓风桑迪在肆虐纽约和新泽西之前，还路过了佛罗里达。滔天巨浪吞没了海滩，横扫了劳德代尔堡的水泥防波堤，冲上了佛州的A1A沿海高速。一个月之后，又有一系列风暴袭击了佛州南部，劳德代尔堡海滩和一段A1A高速都严重受损。工人们修建了新的防波堤，补好了高速公路，还增加了几座人行天桥。由于海滩受到侵蚀，劳德代尔堡不得不从佛州中部的一处内陆砂场购买沙子；相比本地粗糙且更黑的沙子，这种细软的白沙格外醒目。

Hurricanes and storms are nothing new for Florida. But as the oceans warm, hurricanes are growing more intense. To make matters worse, this is happening against a backdrop of sharply rising sea levels, turning what has been a seasonal annoyance into an existential threat.

对佛州来说，飓风和风暴并不稀奇。但随着海洋变暖，飓风变得更加猛烈。更糟糕的是，随之而来的还有海平面的快速上升，一直以来的季节性小麻烦，正在成为事关存亡的大威胁。

For around 2,000 years sea levels remained relatively constant. Between 1880 and 2011, however, they rose by an average of 0.07 inches (1.8mm) a year, and between 1993 and 2011 the average was between 0.11 and 0.13 inches a year. In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast that seas could rise by as much as 23 inches by 2100, though since then many scientists have called that forecast conservative. Seas are also expected to warm up, which may make hurricanes and tropical storms more intense.

大约二千年以来，海平面一直相对稳定。但在1880-2011年间，海平面平均每年上升1.8毫米，而1993-2011年间则是平均每年2.8-3.3毫米。2007年，政府间气候变化专门委员会（IPCC）预测，到2010年海平面上升可能高达0.58米，而此后有许多科学家认为这一数字较为保守。科学家预测海洋也会升温，飓风和热带风暴也会因此更加

猛烈。

Even as seas have risen over the past century, Americans have rushed to build homes near the beach. Storms that lash the modern American coastline cause more economic damage than their predecessors because there is more to destroy. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, a Category 4 storm, caused $1 billion-worth of damage in current dollars. Were it to strike today the insured losses would be $125 billion, reckons AIR Worldwide, a catastrophe-modelling firm. In 1992 Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm, caused $23 billion in damage; today it would be twice that.

即使一个世纪以来海平面都在上升，美国人仍然蜂拥到海滩附近盖房子。现代美国海岸受到风暴袭击所造成的经济损失比以前要大，因为被损坏的东西更多。1926年的大迈阿密飓风是四级风暴，造成的损失按如今的价值相当于10亿美元。灾害建模公司AIR Worldwide估计，如果它今日来袭，投保损失可能高达1250亿美元。1992年的五级飓风安德鲁造成的损失约230亿美元，放在今日可能要翻一倍。

Most Floridians live in coastal counties. Buildings cluster on low ground; more people than in any other state live on land less than four feet (1.2 metres) above the high-tide line. Florida’s limestone bedrock makes it easy for salt water from surging seas to contaminate its freshwater aquifers. And it relies heavily on canals for flood control, which a sea-level rise of just six inches would devastate.

大多数佛州人都住在临近海边的县里，地势低洼的地方满是房屋。住在高潮线上1.2米以内的美国人中，佛州人最多。佛州的基岩是石灰岩，在海浪冲击下，咸水更容易侵入淡水的含水层。还有严重依赖水渠排水，而海平面哪怕仅上涨0.15米，后果都可能是灾难性的。

South Florida is not the only region threatened by climate change and hurricanes. Increased rain, violent storms and rising sea-levels could inundate low-lying areas around San Francisco and Seattle, or burst the levees that protect swathes of Sacramento and California’s Central Valley from the Sacramento and San Joaquin river delta.

受到气候变化和飓风威胁的不仅仅是佛州南部。雨量的增加，风暴的增强和海平面的上升有可能使旧金山和西雅图的低洼地区变成一片汪洋，或者冲毁保护萨克拉门托的防洪堤，从萨克拉门托到圣华金河三角洲之间的加州中央山谷也会受到威胁。

Houston, the centre of America’s petrochemical industry, and Norfolk, Virginia, home to its largest naval base, could also be in trouble. So could some of the barrier islands along the Atlantic coast, such as North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and traditional Atlantic maritime regions such as Maryland’s Eastern Shore. These two areas, like South Florida, have seen sharp rises in population and development.

美国石化工业中心休斯顿，以及位于弗吉

尼亚州的世界最大海军基地诺福克，也会陷入麻烦。还有大西洋沿岸的一些堰洲岛，如北卡罗来纳州的外滩群岛；还有传统的大西洋滨海地区，如马里兰州的东岸地区。这两块地方同佛州南部一样，人口和地区发展都在快速增长。



New York is also at risk, as Hurricane Sandy showed last autumn (see charts). Manhattan is vulnerable to rising sea levels: the districts flooded by Sandy corresponded almost perfectly to land reclaimed since the 17th century (see map). That land is far more valuable now than it was then: Jeroen Aerts and Wouter Botzen of the Netherlands’ VU University reckon the value of structures threatened by storms and floods has increased four- to sevenfold in the past century. Since the flood map was last updated in 1983, floor space inside the city’s flood plain has risen 40%, to 535m square feet.

纽约也有危险，去年秋天的飓风桑迪已经证实了这一点（见表）。在海平面上升面前，曼哈顿尤其脆弱：这里被桑迪淹没的地区几乎同17世纪以来的填海地区几乎完全吻合（见图）。而这里如今的价值也远高于那时：荷兰阿姆斯特丹自由大学的Jeroen Aerts和Wouter Botzen估计，一个世纪以来，受到风暴和洪水威胁的建筑价值上升了4-7倍。纽约上一次更新洪水地图还是在1983年，从那时起，位于易受淹地区的建筑面积已经增加了40%，达到5千万平米。



However, traditional flood-mitigation schemes, such as buying out householders or raising existing buildings, are impractical in New York. Seth Pinsky, who spearheaded the city’s post-Sandy adaptation plan, notes that New York now has 400,000 people, 270,000 jobs and 68,000 buildings inside the 100-year flood plain. Ground floors in New York are built for shops. Raising buildings would either be too costly, too destructive to neighbourhoods, or both.

但诸如购买产权或加高房屋这种传统的减灾手段，对纽约都不可行。Seth Pinsky在桑迪之后首倡了城市改造计划，其中提到在纽约100年来的易受淹地区，如今已有40万人口，27万份工作和6.8万幢建筑。纽约楼房的第一层都建成了商铺，加高建筑要么太贵，要么破坏太大，或者两者都有。

Turning the shoreline over to beaches, dunes or wetlands will not work in crowded Manhattan, which like many cities wants more development along its waterfront, not less. Some have proposed protecting the city with massive storm barriers at the mouth of the Atlantic Ocean, similar to the gates that protect London, Rotterdam and St Petersburg. But aside from the steep price tag (as much as $29 billion), such barriers could worsen flood risk for areas outside them.

对人口密集的曼哈顿来说，把海岸地带变回沙滩、沙丘和湿地是不可能的，它跟许多城市一样，都希望近水地区发展更多而不是更少。有人提

议在大西洋的入海口处修建巨型风暴屏障来保护城市，就像伦敦、鹿特丹和圣彼得堡的做法一样。且不说这种屏障高昂的价格（高达290亿美元），它还会使屏障以外的易受淹地区更加危险。

In 2007 Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor, released PlaNYC, a scheme for adapting to climate change, which could be called “ambitious” or “dictatorial”, depending on one’s view of the mayor. It called for, among other things, protecting wetlands and planting more trees, which will keep the city cooler and capture more stormwater run-off. It also demands changes in building codes.

2007年，纽约市长迈克尔.布隆伯格公布了一项称为“PlaNYC”的气候变化计划。人们对市长的看法不同，这项计划可以说是“雄心勃勃”，或是“独裁专制”。除了其它方面以外，该计划要求保护湿地，种植更多树木，这样可以为城市降温，阻挡暴雨过多的水量。它还要求修改建筑法规。

Mike’s dyke
迈克筑坝

Many of its ideas were incorporated into a more sweeping post-Sandy plan released on June 11th, which calls for floodwalls and levees to protect vital infrastructure, such as a food-distribution centre in the Bronx and hospitals on Manhattan’s East Side, and coastal communities on Staten Island. It recommends storm-surge barriers to prevent creeks and rivers from backing up into residential areas; a new lower Manhattan district, modelled on Battery Park City, protected by a multi-purpose levee; and new or repaired natural barriers such as sand dunes, beaches and wetlands around the outer boroughs.

6月11日发布的一项更为全面的应对计划整合了许多“PlaNYC”之中的方案，该计划要求建立防洪堤来保护重要基础设施，如布隆克斯的食品批发中心和曼哈顿东岸的医院，还有斯塔顿岛的沿海社区。该计划建议用防波堤来保护大小河流，防止倒灌进居民区；用多功能堤坝来保护曼哈顿下城的一个新区，该区是效仿炮台公园城修建的；在近海的城区新建或修复天然屏障，如沙丘、海滩和湿地。

The city would offer incentives to building owners to move important stuff like electrical equipment higher off the ground. It would amend zoning and building codes to encourage new buildings to be raised higher, and require hospitals, telecoms and other utilities to meet tougher resilience standards. Mr Bloomberg put the price tag at nearly $20 billion, with city and federal sources for only $15 billion identified so far. But put beside New York’s extraordinarily high economic output, the price is hardly outlandish.

纽约市将对建筑的业主提供奖励措施，促使他们把重要设施如电力设备移到高处；还会改进区划和建筑法规，来鼓励抬高新建建筑；并要求医院、电信和其它公用设施满足更严格的弹性标准。布隆伯格先生开出

的价码接近200亿美元，目前确定的来自纽约市和联邦的资金来源仅150亿美元。但即使不考虑纽约超高的经济产出，这一价格并不夸张，也算合理。

New York’s plans illustrate that although climate change is global, adaptation is local. In America such things as land-use, zoning, construction and transport are typically under state or local control. That sets America apart from more centralised countries like the Netherlands. As Rohit Aggarwala, a former adviser to Mr Bloomberg, says: “It’s not clear the federal government is the leader on this issue, even if they wanted to be in charge.” During disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) may come in to clean up, but evacuation orders come from state and local authorities, and police, fire and medical teams also tend to be employed locally.

虽然气候变化是全球事务，应对方案仍是地区事务，纽约的计划印证了这一点。在美国，诸如土地利用、区域规划、建筑交通等通常属于州或地方的职能，这使得美国同荷兰这样更加中央集权的国家有所不同。正如布隆伯格的前任顾问Rohit Aggarwala所说：“联邦政府在（气候变化）这件事上的主导地位还不明确，那怕它希望能处在主导地位。”灾难期间，联邦应急管理局（FEMA）可以来清理破坏，但疏散命令来自于州和地方管理部门。而警察、消防和医疗队也一般是当地的雇员。

The federal government does play a supporting role, not least because it brings extra money. For example, FEMA buys up houses that are repeatedly flooded. Since 2009 the Army Corps of Engineers has incorporated forecasts of sea-level rise into all its civil-works programmes. The Department of Housing and Urban Development offers grants to encourage cities and regions to work together on climate-change-adaptation plans and studies. And a separate federal post-Sandy task force has required that any structure rebuilt with any of the $50 billion in disaster funds should be raised to one foot above the most recent federal flood guidance.

联邦政府的确扮演了支援角色，尤其重要的是提供了额外的资金。例如，FEMA买下了反复遭遇洪水的房屋。2009年起，美国陆军工程兵团将其所有的民用建筑项目中增加了对海平面上升的预计。住房和城市发展部提供资助来鼓励城市和地区合作，共同制定气候变化应对方案和研究项目。一个由联邦政府领导的独立桑迪灾后特别小组要求，任何使用500亿灾害资金的重建建筑工程，必须在最新的联邦洪水应对指南所要求的高度基础上再加高一英尺。

Last year Congress required the insurance subsidy that the federal government has long offered to householders who live and build on flood plains to be phased out. Such subsidies, in effect, pay people to live in dangerous places.

去年国会要求

联邦政府将保险补贴金逐步取消。政府一直用它来补贴在易受淹地区居住和建房的业主，而它实际上是付钱让人住在危险的地方。

A region’s preparedness depends in part on how seriously its leaders take climate change. Proactively minded cities have joined forces; New York and ten others are among the 61 cities around the world that, in partnership with the Clinton Climate Initiative, share plans and information to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and adapt to a changing climate. In Florida, four of the southernmost counties—which include the state’s three most-populous ones, accounting for more than a quarter of its total population—have formed the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact. These counties share data, work together on legislation and seek funding in concert.

一个地区对气候变化的应对能力，部分取决于该地区领导者对气候变化的认真态度。积极主动的城市形成了合力；纽约和其它十个城市，同世界其它一些城市（共有61个）共同参加了克林顿气候行动计划，共享方案与信息，减少温室气体排放，应对气候变化。佛州最南部的四个县――包括全州人口最多的三个县，总共超过全州人口的1/4――达成了佛罗里达东南地区气候变化应对协议。这几个县数据共享，立法协作并且共同寻求资金。

The federal government has limited sway over regions where people are less convinced of climate change. North Carolina’s legislators, for instance, have outlawed “scenarios of accelerated sea-level rise unless such rates are...consistent with historic trends.” (As one angry North Carolinian noted, this is like ordering meteorologists to predict the weather not by looking at the radar image of a hurricane barrelling towards the coast, but by consulting the “Farmer’s Almanac”.) A survey by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found cities in America among the least likely, globally, to have plans for adapting to changing weather. But some, at least, are starting.

有些地区的人们对气候变化持怀疑态度，联邦政府的影响力就受到限制。例如北卡罗来纳州的立法者们排除了海平面加速上升说的合理性，“因为与历史趋势不符。”（一位愤怒的北卡州人士说，这简直是要气象学家预报天气时不能看飓风逼近时的雷达图像，而是看“黄历”。）麻省理工学院的一项调查发现，美国城市在全球城市中属于最缺乏应对气候变化方案的。但至少有些已经开始采取行动了。

From the print edition: United States

注1：本文提到的sea wall, floodwall, levee, storm-surge barrier，本质上都是一样的东西，但功能上有所不同，汉语名称应该也有区别。考虑到过于专业，译文不作特别区分。
注2：Farmer’s Almanac应该叫农书，自然主要用途是指导农民种植的

，大致相当于带节气的阴历。这里用黄历是觉得更好玩。

气候变化, 纽约, sandy, 飓风, sandy, sandy, sandy, sandy, sandy