When reading the news, the climate crisis is often framed in global terms. Most of the time, we dissect how emissions are impacting the ozone layer around the Earth, how sea levels will rise in all of our oceans, and how global deforestation is putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Each of these issues pose significant dangers to our planet. Often though, the scope of these issues is overwhelming and seems impossible to change, demoralizing many people from fighting to help the planet.
With this in mind, narrowing the scope of the conversation to how specific areas will be impacted can render the crisis more personal and demonstrate what changes people can make to their everyday lives. This personalization can make the solution to these issues more reasonable and within our grasp. Looking at the city of Boston, for example, uncovers issues pertaining to water, pollution, and other unknown factors that will impact people on a local scale.
The Vulnerabilities of Water
Many of Boston’s vulnerabilities center around one of its most historic landmarks: the Charles River. The Charles River plays an important role in the lives of not only many Boston residents, but many Massachusetts residents ranging from those in Cambridge and Allston to those in inland communities like Franklin and Hopkinton. While the Charles River is a critical aspect of life for many Boston residents due to its impacts on transportation, business, recreation, and real estate, among other things, it is also one of the biggest vulnerabilities that Boston has, specifically in regards to sea level rise.
The dangers of sea level rise are felt in many different ways, especially in the form of nor’easters, cold-weather storms characterized by high force winds from the northeast that can cause significant damage to the coast. These winds can cause storm surges on the coast and along river banks that have the potential to damage many residential buildings and businesses. Storm surges are already difficult to handle, but adding sea level rise to this equation causes the threat to get exponentially worse by increasing the amount of water that can come ashore and cause flooding and damages.
While many people in Boston and the surrounding areas will feel the impact of sea level rise, these burdens will disproportionately impact lower-income communities. Flood damages can be very expensive for many homeowners to fix, even if they have insurance to help cover the costs. This puts many lower-income individuals in tough positions, because they are forced to choose between paying for expensive repairs that they cannot afford or not fixing the damages, leading to the value of their residence to decrease. This dilemma puts unnecessary strain on these communities and pushes people to make choices that they should not need to make but must make due to the worsening impacts of the climate crisis.
Rising sea levels will also lead to the degradation of vulnerable infrastructure that will be very expensive and time-consuming to fix. Many roads and bridges in particular will be damaged by the rising sea level through constant erosion, forcing the city to spend municipal funds on costly infrastructure repairs. Indirectly and directly, sea level rise is leading to a decrease in the quality of life for many residents of Boston and the surrounding areas.
The Vulnerabilities of Pollution
While the Charles River is a major factor in Boston’s vulnerability to sea level rise, historically it has also brought attention to another major issue that must be addressed: pollution. The pollution of the Charles, through the pumping of sewage water from businesses and local communities into the river, has been a major problem that Boston has tasked itself with solving over the past few decades. Due to this environmentally harmful decision, the Charles has gained a reputation for being dirty and polluted. While dumping sewage into the Charles River is no longer allowed, the Charles and surrounding rivers are still contaminated due to pollution from sewage infrastructure and drainage systems, endangering those who use that water or live around it.
In addition to water pollution, Boston faces an air pollution problem due to the city’s transportation and commercial sectors. These sectors pump various different types of greenhouse gases, chemicals, and other harmful pollutants into the air based on the needs of the system that they are using. Boston has a track record of having incremental drops in air quality for a few days at a time, becoming more frequent in the winter and summer months. Any drop in air quality is harmful for certain groups, such as those with health conditions or young children, making air pollution dangerous and necessary to keep under control.
Air pollution and water pollution are not the only types of pollution in Boston, but they provide insight into the dangers pollution poses at large. Pollution broadly leads to health problems that leave everyone, especially individuals with current health conditions, at risk of getting sick and possibly worse.
Alongside high-risk individuals, entire communities are put at risk based on their location and proximity to sources of pollution. Constant exposure to pollutants can lead to chronic health conditions that people may struggle with for their whole lives. These health problems would be avoidable if sources of pollution were not located near residential areas or eliminated altogether.
The Vulnerabilities of the Unknown
In an interview with Dr. Daniel Schrag, a professor of environmental science at Harvard University, the HPR asked about what aspects of climate change are most frightening. “One of the scariest things about climate change,” Dr. Schrag responded, “is the vulnerabilities that we do not know yet, but may only figure out when disaster strikes.” The unknown vulnerabilities to climate change in our society add to the growing stresses that the climate crisis presents. Dr. Schrag added that “one has to believe that there will be other vulnerabilities that we haven’t anticipated that will reveal themselves as climate change accelerates.”
When Hurricane Ida hit New York City last September, it dumped multiple inches of rain onto the city. The heavy rain caused large amounts of flooding, especially damaging basement apartments. These apartments trapped many people in their homes, leading to the deaths of at least 11 people.
Additionally, increased flooding has revealed the risks of putting a building’s electric systems in the basement as flooding could cause the electric system to shut down. In many buildings, if the electric systems were to shut down, building operations would be heavily impeded and people who rely on electricity would be vulnerable. Those vulnerable individuals who may use electricity to run machines keeping them alive or making areas accessible, such as elevators or chair lifts, would be left with very few options for helping themselves.
The impacts of color on the environment are an interesting example of an originally unknown vulnerability that was discovered. Researchers have found that darker colored infrastructure and buildings absorb more heat from sunlight, increasing the temperature of not only those objects, but also the surrounding environment. This rise in temperature surrounding these cities can damage many ecosystems and organisms in the city, including human beings. Higher temperatures can lead to conditions including heat exhaustion or heat stroke, which can be fatal if left untreated.
Basement apartments, the location of electric systems, and the color of roads and buildings are just three problems on a growing list of unpredicted issues that we now have to address. Without proper preparation to protect communities, many people are put at risk, with that risk only getting greater as climate change worsens. Many of these problems, however, will only be revealed when disaster strikes and the region needs to recover and evaluate what happened.
The issues that have been revealed in other cities apply to Boston as well, making it pressing for these problems to be solved. This puts Boston at a complex crossroads as Boston can begin to address the challenges that are known, while many vulnerabilities have yet to be discovered. What can be done to fight climate change and adapt to these problems as they arise?
Adapting to and Addressing our Vulnerabilities
The narrative surrounding the future of Boston’s response to climate change is especially important due to Boston’s mayor, Michelle Wu, who has put forth an aggressive plan to tackle the issue. In a press conference with student journalists prior to the mayoral election, the HPR asked then-candidate Michelle Wu what her vision was for Boston’s role in the fight against climate change.
Wu started off by emphasizing that she was “excited to ensure that Boston is a leader when it comes to climate justice and showing the urgency that we need to take action.” Wu then outlined her environmental plan: “Broadly it is around decarbonizing our city, changing how we fund and invest in stormwater infrastructure, rethinking our food systems to promote more local and economically just food supply chains, [and also] a Blue New Deal as a coastal city to lean into our potential to ensure resiliency along our waterfront as well as the opportunities to benefit from wind energy and the jobs that it will create.”
The mayor’s climate plan is targeted towards cutting emissions, rethinking who and what is being funded, and reevaluating the critical roles of the land and water around Boston and how to best adapt and use both in an environmentally-conscious way. These proposed solutions are critical in the fight against climate change, but the most important part of these solutions is their implementation. For Boston to truly become a leader in the country on fighting the climate crisis, the city needs to plan out the infrastructure, innovations, and resources that are needed to properly address this issue.
The fight does not stop with policy, though. Many grassroots organizations have also demonstrated the importance of community organizing, education, and service projects in combating climate change. One grassroots organization that has seen some recent success in their fight is Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard. In September 2021, one of Divest Harvard’s main goals, Harvard’s divestment from the fossil fuel industry, was achieved when Harvard announced that it would allow its remaining investments in the fossil fuel industry to expire. This was a big victory for Divest Harvard, but it was not the end of their fight.
In an interview with the HPR, Claire Pryor, an organizer with Divest Harvard, mentioned that the group had two goals: “One working group is dismantling fossil fuel interests, which is focusing on continuing to press Harvard to divest, and the second working group is a reinvestment working group that is formulating a reinvestment demand of Harvard, not just of the money they divested, but of the entire endowment, a demand for a different kind of way for Harvard to be using its money.” Divest Harvard acknowledges that taking money out of the fossil fuel industry is a step in the right direction, but argues that money should now go back to the environment. The organization is using their power and influence on a local level to make changes to their community that can have reverberations across the state, the country, and the world.
Both elected officials and grassroots organizations have proposed concentrated solutions for combating the climate crisis, understanding that many areas of our society, including our energy systems, environmental regulations, and transportation systems, need to be changed. If both groups are able to use their power and influence to reshape the way our society and investments work, defeating climate change may not be a pipe dream, but a reality. All parties must be involved and keep their commitments, and those not only in Boston, but around the world, need to continue to put in their part to stop the climate crisis from worsening.
Image by Zixi Zhou is licensed under the Unsplash License.
