Manyland changing thing9/19/2023 On Deal Island, climate skeptics, anthropologists, crabbers, pastors and scientists have spent the last five years trying to figure out where they can find common ground. It could happen within the lifetimes of these islanders, or some of them. The residents here need a climate policy that prepares their most vulnerable people for the flooded future that scientists say is on the way. Trump told him not to worry about rising sea levels because the island is going to be there “for a long time.” Scientists say Tangier Island is in a far more precarious position than that and could be uninhabitable two or three decades from now.Īnd yet one relatively modest effort may offer a glimmer of hope for a divided country. It’s just across the bay from Tangier Island, the mayor of which received a surprise call from President Trump this week. This is Trump country, and many of those who live here are deeply rooted in Methodist faith, are politically conservative and are wary of outsiders or government restrictions on their way of life. In some sense, Deal Island, a three-hour drive from Washington, is a microcosm of America today. “We have climate change four times a year. “Some of the arguments are a little silly,” said Stephen White, a longtime resident of the region. Many of those whose families have scraped out a living, largely through the bay’s bounty of crabs and oysters, attribute the retreating ground to erosion, or “land loss.” Still, climate change isn’t a popular phrase here. Rising global temperatures are expected to wipe out businesses, marinas and homes. Even under the rosiest scenarios, in which sea levels rise only 2 feet by 2100, much of the island will be underwater in a few generations. Much more, they say, could be subjected to flooding so frequent it would make living here almost impossible.ĭeal Island is on the front lines of climate change. Scientists are concerned that the ghost forests are a sign that within the next generation or so, parts of the island will become uninhabitable. Old-timers speak of plucking buckets of arrowheads from beaches that now lie underneath the bay. But rising sea levels, connected to climate change as well as land sinking since the last ice age, have steadily consumed Deal Island as their kin are born and buried. Some on the island and the peninsula that connects it to eastern Maryland can trace their ancestry back 300 years or more. The trees are dying farther and farther inland as salt water poisons the soil, an ominous sign that the rising sea is reclaiming this land. Stands of tall pines stick out like pale arboreal skeletons throughout the marsh on this island lashed by the Chesapeake Bay. DEAL ISLAND, Md.-The ghost forest is creeping into Deal Island.
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