| How much is global and how much is local in terms of reducing carbon emissions at Logan International Airport to combat the effects of rising sea levels? The prognosis: sea levels will rise two to six feet by the end of this century, with storm surges adding another five feet to that marker.
Massport’s goal is to reduce carbon emissions at Logan by 40 percent and energy consumption by 25 percent below 2012 levels by 2020. It plans to spend a projected $9 million on flood barriers, coastal management and water pumps to keep runways and terminals from becoming flooded during future storm surges. Logan has already seen a reduction in flights and an increase in passengers since 2000. Logan has doubled its use of renewable energy sources since 2012 and cut shuttle-bus trips. The report’s critics say that the 2012 bar on carbon emissions and energy consumption reduction is too low and that an earlier measure should have been used. Massport responded that 2012 was the first year for which a full data set was available.
Logan’s initiative is laudable and it’s part of a groundswell – or maybe, an attention surge – on the effects of climate change. But the coastal dilemma goes far beyond the airport. Last week, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh announced a climate change panel that will meet every two weeks to address the bigger issues. Much of Boston’s most valuable seaside land, including the Back Bay, the Seaport District and the land that now hosts the JFK Library, UMass Boston and the Bayside Expo, is Ground Zero for flatland flooding. For years, Morrissey Boulevard, now the locus of considerable redevelopment investment, has been regularly flooded during storm surges.
Thousands of miles to the south of us is the 450-year-old Florida city of St. Augustine, which now gets flooded at least 10 times a year. As did Boston, St. Augustine enjoyed a seaside building boom in the 19th century. Now, those Gilded Age buildings are often closed during storm-caused flooding. Contaminated drinking water is also a worrisome issue in the city.
Coastal cities can only do so much by themselves. If one municipality builds a seawall, its neighbors might get its diverted water, and most municipalities don’t have the purchasing power to buy the best technology.
Globally, the conversation gets even bigger. Developing nations, rapidly becoming the world’s biggest carbon emitters, are telling first-world nations that they want reliable electricity and their own passenger vehicles, which we’ve had for a century and take for granted.
The dialogue between the haves and the want-to-haves will likely go well beyond 2020. Much kudos to Massport for making a major commitment to set a do-as-I-do example. If it follows through, it will be doing everything it possibly can to sustain itself. But human nature being what it is, it may be time to call on retired airline Captain Chesley Sullenberger, who saved 155 lives including his own in a January 2009 landing of a crippled passenger jet on the Hudson, to teach future pilots how to land on water.
