Norfolk, Va., on front line, tackles rise in sea

If you’ve spent this Black Friday morning buying plasma TVs, you might not yet have realized that we’re famous. That’s right: an article about Norfolk is on the front page of today’s New York Times. What aspect of our city is so important that America’s newspaper of record has written about it prominently? The fact that it’s disappearing into the sea.

We famous.

The Times looks at the neighborhood of Larchmont, where “residents pay close attention to the lunar calendar, much as other suburbanites might attend to the daily flow of commuter traffic.” They interview a Larchmont resident named Hazel Peck, who, on evenings when the moon is full, parks a block away and “walks through a neighbor’s backyard to avoid the two-to-three-foot-deep puddle that routinely accumulates on her street after high tides.”

The stark fact that Norfolk has “experienced the highest relative increase in sea level on the East Coast — 14.5 inches since 1930” precedes the Times’s reportage of a fact that in its way is even more startling: “climate change is a subject of friction in Virginia.”

It’s not a subject of friction in Larchmont, of course, any more than in any coastal community where sea levels are as low as in Norfolk. Sooner or later, nothing will be a subject of friction in Larchmont unless the friction is expressed by fish, because Larchmont will no longer exist.

Try Googling “island disappears,” as I did just now to help myself recall which island country is disappearing into the sea. Upon seeing the results, I realized I would have to narrow my search terms, because dozens if not hundreds of islands have already vanished in this way.

Vanuatu is the one I was thinking of; its inhabitants have been evacuated in anticipation of its total disappearance. But in 2006 the Independent reported that the “obliteration of Lohachara island, in India’s part of the Sundarbans, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of climate scientists has started coming true.”

That prediction is as follows: “As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.”

Norfolk is one of those coastal cities. In a few hundred years—let’s conservatively say by the year 2300—it won’t exist. Maybe the land where the airport sits will be barely above water, but my house in Colonial Place certainly won’t be. I suppose the fact that I’ll be dead by then means I shouldn’t care, and I suppose not believing is a short step from not caring.

It’s one thing to believe cap-and-trade legislation isn’t the best way to convince industries to stop polluting. I disagree with that opinion, but it’s one I can debate reasonably against. Even if you believe global warming is happening but isn’t caused by man, we can have a debate. But if you claim that there’s no global warming at all, you’re either crazy or you’re a liar with an ulterior motive.

The residents of Larchmont should invite Ken Cuccinelli to their neighborhood to see the situation for himself. I assume Larchmont has a civic league? If so, its members ought to walk him through their flooded streets under a full moon and then show him pictures of those same streets fifty years ago.

The danger is that in response Cuccinelli might sue them. A more metaphorical (and therefore less legally actionable) demonstration might be to serve him a glass of water, then add ice cubes until the water spills over the rim and gets his suit wet.

The Times quotes Jim Schultz, “a science and technology writer who lives on Richmond Crescent,” as saying that “We are the front lines of climate change. No one who has a house [in Larchmont] is a skeptic [about the fact that] the world is getting warmer and wetter.” It’s probably too late to save the lowest-lying streets in Larchmont without spending more than the houses there are worth. But it’s not too late to prevent our reaching the “tipping point,” beyond which warming will accelerate precipitously. We’ve just got to remove the crazies from the debate—or else convince them of something already stupidly obvious to residents of the coast.

Obama wind program draws praise from McDonnell, Sierra Club

Governor McDonnell admires the administration’s plan for offshore wind energy farms.

Poll: Allen first choice for GOP nomination

Former Senator George “Macaca” Allen is Virginia Republicans’ first choice to face Jim Webb in the 2012 election.

Virginia Congressmen secure millions for local projects

This Times-Dispatch blog gives a rundown of earmarks won for our state by Virginia Congressmen.

Stunner: Cooch’s office rips Corey Stewart’s “Rule of Law” resolution to shreds

The Virginia Attorney General’s office has done something I agree with.

Tea Party invests at local level in Virginia

Long Washington Post article about the Tea Party’s big plans for our coming state-level elections.

ODU survey says residents favor light rail expansion

According to a survey done by ODU’s Social Science and Research Center, “91 percent of respondents want to see light rail go beyond Norfolk’s 7.4-mile starter line.”

Transit future for Hampton Roads

At two upcoming public meetings, “local transportation planners will detail the Transit Vision Plan [and] gather feedback on the ideas for the future.” The first is Tuesday at Newport News City Center; the second is Wednesday at the HRT Facility in Norfolk. If only the Daily Press had also printed the times of day.

Students’ gadgets can be searched, Cuccinelli says

Ken Cuccinelli has written in an advisory opinion that “students’ cell phones and laptops can be seized and searched by public school officials if violations are suspected,” reports the Associated Press. The opinion was requested by Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle County, “after high school and middle school principals in the county voiced concerns about cyberbullying.”

Searching students’ phones and laptops will probably reduce cyberbullying, just as requiring airplane passengers to fly naked would reduce the threat of terrorism. In fact, you could have a system where travelers fly naked only “if violations are suspected.” Surely no authorities would ever abuse the power to make those judgment calls.

The last week has seen a national hissy fit in response to new TSA procedures that many consider invasive. While I’m one of the many who consider them invasive, I’m a little stunned that this alone, of all measures enacted in the name of our safety, elicits such a protest. (Some other things that have been done to “keep us safe” include the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, torture at various CIA black sites, torture at Abu Ghraib, torture at Guantanamo Bay, presidential assassinations, suspension of habeus corpus, and warrantless wiretaps.)

The difference, as I see it, between all those other “safety measures” and the TSA patdowns is that the latter are being conducted commonly now on white Americans of European descent who believe they should be above suspicion due to immutable aspects of their identity, such as ethnicity. Whether or not security theater makes them feel safe, they don’t shout about it if the people who get all the “extra screening” have Arabic names. Likewise, searches of laptops and phones are fine if they won’t be conducted on our laptops and phones.

Glenn Greenwald reported earlier this month that the government is stopping Bradley Manning supporters at the border and seizing their laptops and phones. Manning is the intelligence analyst with the US Army who’s accused of leaking the “Collateral Murder” video to WikiLeaks earlier this year; he now faces up to 52 years in prison. The federal government is using a little-known law to harass his supporters when they pass through U.S. Customs.

Explains Greenwald: the U.S. “has the authority to conduct border searches of people entering the country that are far broader than for those inside the country, and such searches require no search warrant. The Government has that power in order to prevent security threats from entering the country, but here, they are clearly exploiting and abusing it in order to conduct investigative searches which would ordinarily require a search warrant but for which they have no basis to obtain one.” (Italics mine.)

It’s quite easy to imagine how laws that allow searches only “if violations are suspected” can devolve into opportunities for people in charge to do whatever they want without repercussions or oversight. That’s probably why, as Fox News reports, “The American Civil Liberties Union urged police to ignore Cuccinelli’s guidance, saying it lacks any legal foundation and conjures constitutional conflicts.”

I doubt Cuccinelli is an admirer of the ACLU, but he ought to thank them for having just given him a perfect slogan for his next campaign. “Vote Cuccinelli: His Guidance Lacks Legal Foundation And Conjures Constitutional Conflicts.”