We’d Better Retreat from the Coasts While We Still Can, Scientists Urge Amid Climate Crisis

As many as 1 billion people are expected to be forced out of their homes by the droughts, floods, fires and famines associated with runaway climate change over the next 30 years — and they all have to go somewhere. This massive global exodus can go one of two ways: either it will be a chaotic mess that punishes the world's poor, or it can be a path to a fairer, more sustainable world.

Flooded streets after Hurricane Sandy show the
damage that can occur in vulnerable coastal areas.
 We should plan for the inevitable and strategically
retreat from such vulnerable coastal communities
 now, scientists argue in a new paper.

In a new policy paper, published today (Aug. 22) in the journal Science, a trio of environmental scientists argue that the only way to avoid the first scenario  is to start planning now for the inevitable "retreat" from coastal cities. 

"Faced with global warming, rising sea levels, and the climate-related extremes they intensify, the question is no longer whether some communities will retreat — moving people and assets out of harm’s way — but why, where, when, and how they will retreat," the authors of the paper wrote.

Read the story from LiveScience by Brandon Specktor - “We’d Better Retreat from the Coasts While We Still Can, Scientists Urge Amid Climate Crisis.”