Adapt or Die

The Adapt or Die Project will be six 30-minute episodes, a podcast, a radio program, and a book.

The time for hand-wringing and blame is over. Climate change is here. The impacts are evident locally and globally. The Adapt or Die Project is a global story told regionally. Consider that erosion is accelerating along the New England coast and that the Gulf of Maine is the world's second-fastest-warming body of ocean water. We are beyond reversing these trends, at least over the next few decades. Coastal flooding has become more frequent, and lobsters and other sea life are migrating north, altering life in New England coastal communities.

We need innovative people with ideas on how best to deal with this reality as we accept the need to shift from trying to protect the status quo – a doomed effort -- to adaptation and resilience. The Adapt or Die Project would explore the roles that individuals and organizations can play in confronting the growing crisis of climate change.  We would look at the government -- what can it do about global warming? What are the roles and ideas of scientists, engineers, politicians, coastal developers and other businesses, architects, lawyers, and NGOs? There are reasons for optimism as well as despair. We would define challenges and discuss some possible solutions. There are many experts close by.  Consider the universities – MIT, etc. – and such centers of oceanography as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Marine Biological Laboratory, URI’s School of Oceanography and the U.S. Naval War College.

We would look skeptically at the rhetoric around how to respond to the coastal effects of global warming as we seek to discuss realistic, science-based approaches.

Format

Bob Whitcomb, long-time editor and writer, including as co-author of Cape Wind, would host articulate experts who would help viewers understand where we are in all this now, and where we might go. Depending on availability, we may also have on all or some episodes Cornelia Dean, former New York Times science editor; author of, among other books, Against the Tide, and nationally known for her knowledge of coastal change issues, and Elizabeth Rush, author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, a Pulitzer finalist. The series would be shot mainly in studio but also in some other locations, mostly in New England.