The collection of local officials, academics and others were aghast at the flooding photos University of Miami geology chair Hal Wanless projected on the walls of a St. Petersburg College conference hall. The photos were taken recently in a Miami Beach neighborhood where the periodic king tide has begun to regularly cause more flooding than ever when it occurs.
To Governor Rick Scott, that's just "nuisance flooding."
To Wanless and his audience, it's a slow-motion disaster.
To most of those gathered Friday at SPC, the increasing flooding that comes with the king tide is not just a sign that sea-level rise is happening, but that if cities, counties, states and feds don't start confronting it now, coastal residents are in for trouble down the line.
“We're entering a new world where the old rules aren't going to apply," Wanless said.“You need to understand this so you can know how to go in and make a real difference.”
The event, put together by the college's Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions and the Institute on Science for Global Policy, took place at SPC's Seminole campus to view the phenomenon as a gradually approaching problem to be prepared for and tackled rather than questioned as real or tied to human activity. The multi-day conference's title? "Sea Level Rise: What's Our Next Move?"
Discussions at times got into the wonkier aspects of climate change's impacts, like dealing with flood insurance rates when it's unclear how rapidly the water level is going to come up or by how much, as estimates range somewhat dramatically. (The Institute on Science for Global Policy cited NOAA's estimated 4.1-6.6 foot. rise in global ocean levels by 2100 in materials it handed out ahead of the event.)
Another issue that came up was property rights — whether local governments should be held responsible for rebuilding roads that continually get damaged during weather events made worse by higher water levels, namely if those roads lead to private property that couldn't otherwise be accessed by the property owners without those publicly funded repairs.
With seawater seeping into South Florida's aquifer, a key drinking water source for the area, how to deal with demand for water became an issue.
Halting the practice of building on barrier islands and other nearshore areas, or if governments would continue paying to renourish beaches, also came up.
Of course, given how heavily politicized the issue has become, the focus of the conversation often turned to the question of how to deal with the fact because, either out of scientific illiteracy or distrust of the government, many people — including some high profile presidential candidates from South Florida, despite the area's being essentially ground zero for sea-level rise — don't believe it's happening.
“We need to educate the electorate about the imminentness and the seriousness and the reality and the non-reversibility of this," Wanless said.
With Florida in such a vulnerable place when it comes to the phenomenon, some officials derided the state and federal political systems for making it easy for monied industries to drown out the voices of those trying to convince lawmakers to base policies on sound science, and not what the industries want.
“I think the problem stems absolutely in this country from political corruption,” said South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard. “[Here} in Florida we are the poster child for a corrupt legislature and governor's office that is under control..."
To that, the audience clapped loudly and cheered, and Stoddard continued.
"...under the control of Florida Power and Duke Energy, that no decisions are made in Tallahassee that are not pre-approved by FPL and Duke Energy."
The state's major utilities are often criticized for being part of the reason Florida is one of four states in the country where it's illegal to generate and sell your own electricity via rooftop solar panels, something that, if done en masse, may curb carbon emissions and slow the warming of the the earth, thus stemming sea-level rise.
Even if Florida's cities and counties and the federal government try to create policies that intelligently address the impacts of rising seas for decades to come, the state has ways of trying to block such attempts.
"Political corruption has the ability to control the local processes and throw and in the works of the federal process, and prevent meaningful mitigation,” he said.