What Climate Change Will Mean for the Jersey Shore

• Susan Phillips
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

A new study published by the Princeton-based Climate Central shows coastal flooding along the East Coast will soon become commonplace and threaten the homes of 3.7 million people. New Jersey and the Chesapeake Bay are at risk, according to the report. Newsworks Tonight host Dave Heller spoke with Ben Strauss, an author of the report. Strauss says two things are happening with New Jersey, rising tides, and sinking land. He says that by 2030, the ocean will rise another half a foot down the shore. To slow down sea level rise, Strauss says a global decrease in greenhouse gas emissions are necessary. He says locally, another step would be to preserve marshes and wetlands. But either way, Strauss says some residents would have to retreat.
“It’s almost certain that the map of America is going to be redrawn due to sea level rise,” said Strauss. To listen to the entire interview with Strauss, click here.
 

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