Miami Beach residents must decide how to respond to the water that's invading their homes.
Once the stuff of computer models and science fiction, rising seas are now a reality in South Florida. Glaciers are melting, the ocean is expanding, and water is invading the land formerly known as dry.
Miami Beach, a city perched on a crepe-thin spit of sand and muck, has recently needed only a nudge – a heavy downpour or an unusually high tide – to see basements and low-lying streets submerged. More water is coming: six to 10 inches of rise by 2030, and perhaps more than two feet by the time today’s high-school seniors turn 60.
That leaves residents with a stark choice: to flee home, to pay for new seawalls and elevated roads and pumps that suck the water away, or to live on the hope that a better solution will emerge. It’s a dilemma that will replay itself across the U.S. as the climate changes, as people decide whether to stay or to go when hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and heat endanger their communities.