December 2012 - Parks & Recreation - 31

Climate Change: Now Can We Talk?

S

AP IMAGES/USAF/MASTER SGT. MARK C. OLSEN

UPERSTORM SANDY, the late-fall hurricane that blasted up the East Coast in late October,
brought the issue of how to deal with climate change roaring back into public consciousness.
The total cost of the swath of destruction this storm tore through the mid-Atlantic has yet to
be fully estimated. Regardless of the cost, this event had the effect of changing public discourse on
the subject of how we respond to climate change. Just months after national polls indicated that climate change response had faded to third in a list of the top environmental concerns by the general
public, suddenly it's back on everyone's radar again. Even elected officials who have been reluctant
to mention it, much less have an open discussion about it, are grudgingly admitting it is something
we must deal with.
This massive storm, more than 1,000 miles in
diameter, has been measured as the largest Atlantic tropical storm on record and the second-most
powerful hurricane in modern history, beating
even Hurricane Katrina in terms of sheer energy.
While there is no deﬁnitively causal link to climate change, the damage it wrought to much of
the East Coast raises legitimate concerns about
how much this storm-and future storms-might
be super-charged by climate-change conditions
including a warming ocean and unusual late-fall
atmospheric conditions.
The impacts of this storm and the public's reactions to it collectively offer us a new lens through
which we can view public perceptions as well as
actual impacts on parks, public lands, and recreation resources from extreme weather events.
We've all seen the pictures of Sandy's devastation-piles of ﬂoating cars, subway tunnels ﬂooded
to their ceilings, lower Manhattan darkened and
black-images that were just shocking to see in
the city that never sleeps. You might be tempted
to think that most of the jurisdictions affected just
weren't quite ready to deal with a storm of this
magnitude, but when you see the totality of the
destruction, you realize that all these people and
jurisdictions were not unprepared; there was simply little they could do in the face of such a storm.
If there was one good result of the storm, it is
that it has caused people to talk about the longterm effects of climate change and what can be
done to adapt before such impacts happen again.
As the hurricane blasted into the New York-New
Jersey shoreline, the storm changed character,

C O N S E RVAT I O N

BY RICHARD J. DOLESH

morphing from a late-season hurricane to a fullblown early-winter nor'easter. Urban areas, along
with their parks, were smashed. New York City
parks suffered enormous damage. Eleven thousand trees are reported down, and parks were
closed for a full week, even the beloved and iconic
Central Park, much to the dismay of city residents.
Some may say, " So what? " This storm might
have been a little bit bigger and badder than any
before, but what's the big deal? Storms trash parks
all the time.
And it's not as if everyone is suddenly getting
religion about the impacts of climate change.

Hurricane Sandy's storm surge
swamped the New Jersey coast
with unprecedented force.

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