Before the Republicans gained the upper hand, North Carolina was “a leader in really thoughtful coastal management,” said Geoffrey R. Gisler, a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “A lot of folks who have interests in developing areas that are currently vulnerable, and would become more vulnerable with sea level rise, objected to the public finding out that there was this projected significant sea-level rise,” Mr. Gisler said. “And so the legislature decided to prohibit looking that far out.”Mr. Gisler said that while its direct effects were limited, the 2012 law went hand in hand with a broader weakening in the state of environmental regulations that developers had opposed. Under the new governor, the revamped coastal commission produced a report in 2015 that looked forward 30 years — a “shorter, more credible time period,” according to its chairman, Frank Gorham — and foresaw only six to eight inches of sea-level rise. “Everyone looked at the 2100 time period, and the people that hated it dismissed it completely, and we just lost credibility,” he said of the earlier report.

Source: New York Times September 12, 2018 22:14 UTC