Producer Blog: Sea level rise is 'so clearly fact'

In our documentary “Sea Change” about the impacts of sea level rise on North Carolina’s coast we interviewed Spencer Rogers, a coastal geologist for NC Sea Grant who also serves on the science panel for the NC Coastal Resources Commission. He lamented how sea-level rise and climate change had become political issues not science, saying “sea level rise is not a theory, it’s a measurement.” Indeed it’s been measured for over a hundred years and there’s no question the sea is rising.   The only debate left is how fast it will rise in the future and how much could mankind be contributing to that acceleration.

That our society’s political partisanship permeates science and sound public policy is disheartening. Only two coastal communities, Nags Head and Wilmington specifically mention sea level rise in their comprehensive planning and many people I reached out to for participation in this documentary were reluctant to talk on camera about sea level rise as though there is some risk in publicly acknowledging what is so clearly fact.

The good news is that tide is starting to turn. Farmers in conservative-leaning Hyde County acknowledge sea level rise because they are already living with more flooding, higher storm surges and saltwater intrusion into their farm fields. They are proactively addressing it to try and adapt. Nags Head is also being proactive with a town committee and a comprehensive plan to deal with the impacts of sea level rise. Even NC-20 a pro-business group representing our coastal counties that fought for the controversial state policy to only look out only 30 years at sea-level rise projections instead of to 2100 publicly acknowledges that both climate change and sea level rise are real and need to be proactively addressed.

In our last documentary “Searching for a Fix” about opioid addiction people talked about the need for ending the stigma around addiction and openly talking about it as a first step towards effectively addressing the problem. The same can be said of sea level rise.