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as many as 131 New Jersey coastal

communities could be flooded every other

week by the end of the century the Union

of Concerned Scientists warns of that

worst case scenario should sea levels

keep rising lindsay christian spoke with

one of the report's authors climate

scientist Christie Dahl as part of our

ongoing series peril and promise the

challenge of climate change

so the Union of Concerned Scientists

conducted a study which is very

interesting it concluded that New Jersey

is second most vulnerable state to

suffer chronic flooding as it relates to

sea rise level how would that concluded

Christie

well we conducted a study of all the

lower 48 states and looked at all of the

coastal communities in each of the

coastal states and what we found is that

New Jersey is because that's such a long

coastline as so many towns along the

coast it really has a lot of communities

that could be affected by sea-level rise

in the future by the end of the century

if sea level rise happens at a

relatively rapid rate you could see on

the order of 130 communities in New

Jersey affected by chronic flooding well

when you say by the end of the century

but we're looking at short-term the

study concludes 21 communities will

experience it by 2035 that's about 18

years from now so how can towns prevent

this if at all right well they are

looking you're right there are a lot of

communities in New Jersey people that

will start to see this chronic flooding

in just the next 20 years or so and so

for those communities that are facing

this very near term chronic flooding we

need to start thinking about the way

we're living along the coast and that

could include making some adaptations

like defending the coast using sea walls

accommodating the rising tides by

allowing more open space so that when

the time does come up there's space for

the water to flow in the community

that's not blocked by

houses and things that are going to have

economic impact from a flood but we also

need to start thinking about whether

these are places that we can sustainably

live in the future Christie do you think

that due to the sustainability and

possibly prevent preventive measures

that could happen or could take place

right now to possibly prevent it in the

next 18 years with these communities be

habitable or inhabitable will residents

have to move out that's really the key

question and ultimately we wanted to do

this study so that communities could

better understand the risks that they

face both in the near term and the long

term now in terms of how much sea level

is going to rise in the next 20 years or

so that's fairly well set by our past

greenhouse gas emissions so between now

and the middle of the century there's

not much that we can do to prevent this

kind of sea level rise now when we start

looking farther out in the second half

of the century that's when the choices

that we're making today about our carbon

emissions really start to play out and

you could see a lot of these communities

avoid this chronic flooding if we work

quickly to drastically reduce our

greenhouse gas emissions you just

mentioned that was a great segue into

what I was just about to ask and that

has it relates to global efforts in

climate change can you speak a little

bit more to that as it relates to sea

level rise absolutely so we all know

that President Trump because the process

of withdrawing the u.s. from the Paris

agreement it's important to keep in mind

that that's a global agreement that will

extend far beyond the US borders and far

beyond the time of the Trump

administration so we're very encouraged

to see just how many countries are still

committed to the Paris agreement as well

as how many states within our own

country and our cities have pledged

their support to the Paris agreement but

when we look at the widespread nature of

the chronic flooding issues that our

coastal communities are going to be

facing in really in the near term

this these results really call for

strong federal role in coordinating

protection for our coastal communities

so withdrawing from the Paris agreement

is is a sign that that commitment isn't

there Christie thank you so much for

your time we appreciate it and thank you

for the city that you have conducted

thank you so much for having me

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