Reality of rising sea levels
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, how will our urban coastal areas deal with the challenge of rising sea levels? And how do we even begin to think about where to start? On Dec. 3, Harvard Law School’s David Barron, J.D. ’94, the Honorable S. William Green Professor of Public Law, addressed some of these questions at a talk sponsored by the Environmental Law Society. No one disputes that urban sea levels are rising, said Barron, who co-taught a class last semester on the urban responses to sea level rise. The challenge, he says, is in planning for frequent and intense flooding in places that don’t normally experience it. When people talk about solutions, they usually focus on planning or engineering, he said. But we also need to think about how the solutions will be implemented. Barron discussed a range of ideas, each presenting its own challenges. The first approach he called “retreat”...