Notes From an Environmentalist; A Tale of Two Species.

                    A Tale of Two Species

Uh oh, it’s that time of year again. It’s when   feckless families of eco-tourists return to our shores.

These hippie environmentalists cavort around with no clothes, singing and courting and mating on the beach. They let their children spend their days playfully dashing in and out of the surf gathering tiny shrimp and clams for dinner. 

At the end of the summer these families depart for the south for more hedonistic days, leaving only a few broken eggshells and a small depression in the sand.   

They haven’t paid any taxes for schools, roads, bridges or buildings. They haven’t funded police and firemen to rescue them in the event of storms.

They haven’t brought any heavy equipment on the beach and they haven’t claimed it as their own. And they haven’t expected the Supreme Court to guarantee their right to develop and sell their barrier beach property unhindered by environmental regulations  

Now compare them to our own noble species. We build fine permanent houses on fragile eroding barrier beaches and convince American, Massachusetts and local taxpayers to pay for seawalls, groins and jetties to protect the houses.  

We make the beach rigid, unable to move, flex and repair itself after every storm. All such a beach can do is breakthrough, erode and wash away.

So who are the model the citizens of the three hundred barrier beaches that protect us from sea level rise? Plovers or ourselves?