Portsmouth man initiates sea level awareness campaign

Posted 6/26/15

Above: William "BT" Hathaway stands at McCorrie Point Beach last week wearing a T-shirt he plans on selling as part of a sea level rise awareness initiative that he hopes will go viral.

PORTSMOUTH — McCorrie Point Beach is a special …

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Portsmouth man initiates sea level awareness campaign

Posted

Above: William "BT" Hathaway stands at McCorrie Point Beach last week wearing a T-shirt he plans on selling as part of a sea level rise awareness initiative that he hopes will go viral.

PORTSMOUTH — McCorrie Point Beach is a special place for William “BT” Hathaway. He proposed to his wife Maryse on this sandy spit five years ago and the beach is only a short walk down from their Windstone Drive home.

But he’s worried that by the time his great-grandchildren are ready to build sandcastles, the entire beach will be gone.

According to scientists studying climate change, said Mr. Hathaway, by 2100 sea levels will rise by about five feet. To illustrate the devastating effect that would have on local shorelines, he stood with his back to the shore and raised his right arm until it was parallel to the ground, drawing an imaginary line representing the new mean high tide mark 85 years in the future.

“That would fill right to the entrance of the beach,” he said. “There would be nothing left.”

Mr. Hathaway’s on a crusade to increase everyday people’s awareness of looming sea level rises, an initiative he hopes will go global. His Five-Feet Project will culminate on June 19, 2016, when he hopes at least 1 million people from around the world will gather at beaches and other low-lying spots to draw attention to the issue. (He picked that date because it falls on or about the summer solstice.)

“I want to be able to say to my kids and grandkids that I made as valiant an effort as I could to at least get this conversation much further down the road and make it real,” said Mr. Hathaway, wearing a blue T-shirt with a broken line representing the five-foot mark and emblazoned with the phrase, “Up to my neck in sea level rise” and his website address.

Mr. Hathaway, one of the owners of Hathaway Home for Funerals, readily admits he only recently started thinking about sea level rises. “Somewhere in the last six months the whole issue of climate change started to click in my mind. Before that I really wasn’t paying a lot of attention to it. I can’t point to one thing; it just kind of kept emerging,” he said.

He started doing research and was shocked by many scientists’ predictions on the amount that sea levels will rise by 2100.

“Basically the projection is five feet before the end of the century — within the next two or three generations. That’s insane,” he said. “This place, First Beach, Second Beach, Fogland … All of these special places that we all visit every day that are families have counted on and just plained enjoyed for generations are going to be gone, irretrievably.”

‘Flo’s? Gone’

Bowen’s Wharf in Newport is particularly vulnerable, he said, as is Common Fence Point and Island Park in Portsmouth. “There are places in Island Park where in 70 years, houses will have to go because the high tide level will be at their front door. Flo’s? Gone.”

That spurred the idea of finding a way to help “non-scientific people” easily grasp the problem. He thought of making videos or building an app, but said it would take too much time and money for someone who’s not a software engineer. He also tinkered with a big art project — perhaps covering Second Beach with blue cloth five feet above the sand.

“And who knows, maybe I’ll do something like that someday. But again, that’s a multimillion dollar extravaganza,” said Mr. Hathaway.

Then it hit him.

“What about people? What about T-shirts? Five feet — here it is,” he said, pointing to his shirt. “Human bodies — let’s line them up. A thousand people, each in a thousand places, that’s a million scattered around the world. The idea is to get real, everyday people to places like this, places like Second Beach.”

Awareness, then solutions

He’s hoping the idea will go viral and raise awareness about sea level rises the way the “ice bucket challenge” drew attention to ALS. Once people are educated about the problem, he’s hoping they’ll then take the necessary steps to reduce carbon emissions in their own homes.

But he knows it will be a difficult task. “The tools available to us to wipe out carbon pollution are pretty meager,” he said. “It’s going to be a huge challenge. But every two-cycle lawn and garden tool that gets put to rest forever is a little piece. If you can do that times a million people, you’re starting to move in the right direction.”

Mr. Hathaway, whose project is less than two weeks old, is well aware of the dramatic changes he needs to make himself in order to reduce carbon emissions.

“I’m not just pointing fingers,” he said. “I’ve got at least 10 internal combustion engines in my world and an oil-burning furnace. A year ago, I wasn’t even aware that I should be thinking about these things, and now I’m facing them and it’s daunting. It’s going to be daunting for all of us to begin to chip away at the lifestyle we’ve had and be at peace with what comes next, and in the process make sure we’re keeping this world safe and accommodating for the generations that come after us.”

Confident of success

Mr. Hathaway believes he has a real shot at getting a million people to turn out on June 19, 2016, partly because of the early endorsements he’s already received about the Five-Feet Project.

One came from John Englander, author of “High Tide on Main Street,” who participated in a symposium in Newport last year and who is deeply involved with issues surrounding sea level rise. The other is from Veronika Meduna, author of “Science on Ice” and a broadcaster for Radio New Zealand.

“If people with these kinds of backgrounds are jumping on board, I think I have a legitimate shot at reaching the million person goal,” Mr. Hathaway said.

He’s also heard from people in other parts of the world who are already suggesting spots to gather on June 19, 2016.

“I’ve started some conversation with folks in New Zealand and they sent me a picture of a beach down there where they want to gather people,” he said. “When people in New Zealand pick it up on Twitter — which is this cluttered, crazy place — and say, ‘Yeah, that makes sense,’ and one of them works for the national radio and another is a researcher down there, I have a very good feeling about it.”

For more information about the Five-Feet Project, visit www.five-feet.org. There’s also a Meetup page here and a Facebook page here.

climate change, mccorrie point beach, sea level rise

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