Climate Point: The future is now. Humans steer a ‘Perilous Course’ on the East Coast

Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. I’m William Ramsey from Staunton, Virginia

Our “Perilous Course” reporting effort from dozens of Paste BN Network newsrooms looks at how humans along the East Coast are grappling with the climate crisis. We also examine how local and state governments are helping people — or, more often, not acting with meaningful money and planning yet.

Chief Wolf Mother Donna Abbott of the Nause-Waiwash indigenous tribe worries as her ancestral lands along the Eastern Shore of Maryland sink, curbing a tradition of trapping muskrats that already was hard to sustain with a younger generation.

• “Ghost forests” are replacing some of the vibrant marshland she has roamed in wading boots for decades.
• In the Chesapeake Bay region alone, more than 80,000 acres of forest have been transformed into salt marsh in the last 150 years.

Randy Scott sits in his basement apartment in the Flats neighborhood of Mamaroneck, New York, and wonders if the township and others will fix repeated flooding before the water kills him. He barely escaped last fall as water poured down from his street-level window near the underground apartment's ceiling and the downhill door was blocked by a grimy deluge.

His neighbors rescued him just in time.

Glenda Browning walks the sand at Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina, and looks down at her dream home, “Pelican Point.” The Atlantic Ocean menaced it. After the last big hurricane hit her home, she and her husband decided to sell and shutter their vision of retirement with an ocean view.

We spoke to more than 80 people this summer as Paste BN Network journalists pounded the hot pavement and met neighbors dealing — often on their own without much government help — with heat island effects, flooding, loss of cultural sites, stronger storms, stressed fisheries.

Sea-level rise is and will continue to be a major factor, giving people who live near the coast terrible decisions to make about the future.

• Often, Black and brown neighborhoods in low-lying areas need the most protection but may get the least.
• It was driven home over and over as we reported Perilous Course that the American effects of the climate crisis also are a social justice issue affected by our country's ongoing history of inequity.

Hard choices are coming in future years.

The land surface along both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts is sinking. Scientists have predicted the southern third of Florida could be underwater by 2100.

We have a special eye on Florida this week, with concern for people in the path of the current storm.

Ian slamming Florida. How bad is it?

We’re watching Florida and nearby states as Hurricane Ian hits, mindful of how a slow-moving storm can whip up widespread flooding.

Other hurricane-related stories:

• Here's how to track the progress of Hurricane Ian, with helpful graphics.
• We're here to guide you through all the basics to protect your home from storm damage.
• How does the hurricane scale (called the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale) actually work? We break it down for you.

Stay safe, and check on your friends and neighbors.

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