SURGE: The Lowcountry Climate Magazine, Issue 4

Belvin helped found the Charleston Climate Coalition when he saw empty space where a Lowcountry climate movement should be. Today, he serves as CCC co-director. He comes from a background in creative writing and tries to bring that vision-making to climate work. He grew up on the Isle of Palms, and looks forward to the day when he no longer fears for the future of the beach.

Belvin Olasov Co-Editor in Chief

Sydney Bollinger (she/her) is a Charleston-based arts & entertainment and climate writer. She has written for Charleston City Paper, INTO, Film Cred, Filmmakers Without Cameras, and other places. Her creative work can be found in HASH Journal, Dunes Review, among other literary outlets. Find her online @sydboll.

Sydney Bollinger Co-Editor in Chief

Camela Guevara (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and designer living and working in Charleston. She creates handmade monuments to unsung labor. Her practice explores the intersection of art, craft, and fashion, and her work embodies a sense of pleasure and reverence for the labor of sewing. She offers a joyful alternative path of homemade fashion that honors the many skilled hands that clothe us. See her work @camelaguevara.

Camela Guevara Art Director

Katy Mixon is a visual artist working in painting, sculpture, and quilting. She earned an MFA from The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a BA from Davidson College. She is an alumna of The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The artist continuously cleans her hands, brushes, palette knives, and carving tools with baby wipes. Inspired by memories of her grandmother’s sewing room, stacked sky-high with scrap fabrics, she began repurposing the used wipes as material for quilted paintings. She composes the pieced tops and hires a local quilter to add the batting and backing. She finishes each piece with hand stitching, often using crewel embroidery to define brush marks and tonal variations. The prismatic color and geometric patterning draw on the rich visual histories of pieced quilts as sustainable forms of generational, abstract storytelling.

See her work @mixdpaint on Instagram or online at www.mixonstudio.com

Hailey Williams was born and raised in the Carolinas. Hailey is an MFA Candidate for Poetry and Arts and Cultural Management at the College of Charleston, received her BA in Writing Seminars with a minor in Film and Media from Johns Hopkins University, and served as the 2019 Artist in Residence for the Dry Tortugas National Park. She is currently a Graduate Assistant at the College of Charleston. Her previous roles include Editorial Assistant for Crazyhorse Literary Magazine, Executive Assistant for International Arts and Artists, and Sales and Marketing Assistant for Johns Hopkins University Press. Her work has been published or is forthcoming at the Birmingham Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Humana Obscura, and Free Verse Press among others.

Hailey Williams Creative Writing Editor

You’re reading Surge Issue 4. If you’re a new reader, welcome! Surge is the Lowcountry’s climate magazine, where we share stories about the climate crisis and the brave, creative local folks rising to meet it.

Often, folks look at the scale of the climate crisis and think it’s out of our hands. But we’re here to tell you that not only is the climate crisis actionable on a local scale, but also that cities and towns changing their systems are at the forefront of successfully stopping the climate crisis. We, Charlestonians, can be a leader in the Southeast on rising to the climate challenge.

To be a climate-concerned citizen is to see the world through ecofuturist glasses. An asphalt parking lot could be an urban food forest! The 1.7 billion dollars going towards highway expansion could go towards a robust bus system instead! And you get to be a piece of the puzzle when you join with action groups like the Charleston Climate Coalition.

The climate crisis isn’t your fault. I’m willing to bet that you, dear reader, didn’t lobby and lie on behalf of fossil fuels for decades. Yet you do find yourself in one of the most consequential periods of human history – one where the planet as we know it is on an express ride to extreme heat, floods, and chaos unless we band together and do something about it.

In this issue, we’re sharing stories from the frontlines of Lowcountry climate action. Read about urban natureweaving, climate solutions, the issue with I-526, ecotour storytelling, and South Carolina State Park artists. Maybe you’ll see a place for yourself in these stories of small-scale environmental heroism. In many ways, it’s just like loving your home.

sponsor highlight - mic smith photography

The “Thousand Year Floods” of 2015 that dumped as much as 2 feet of rain in short order on communities across South Carolina. The 2005 relief response to the ravages of Hurricane Katrina along the Mississippi coast. The chaos of the Hurricane Floyd evacuation in 1999 with 3.5 million people in four Southeastern states caught up in fear and gridlock.

Mic Smith has chronicled the impact of these climate emergencies and many others throughout his career as a photojournalist.

From 1994-2008, Mic earned state and national honors for his work with The Post and Courier in Charleston, before leaving the newspaper to start his own business, based from his Isle of Palms home. And while he expanded his efforts to include portrait and marketing photography, he has continued his work in journalism, including assignments from The Associated Press.

Through the years, Mic has captured a wide range of subjects from unforgettable football games to presidential campaigns to the beauty of the Lowcountry landscape. Yet many of his most riveting images still come during hurricane season, as the threat of disruption and destruction have become an increasingly expected part of life along the coast.

www.micsmithphotography.com

Love, Belvin Olasov and Sydney Bollinger, Surge Co-editors-in-chief.

Art as Activism

South Carolina State Parks

Artist-in-Residence Program

Written by Sydney Bollinger

Georgia Walters got in her truck and left the beach at Edisto State Park. Then she noticed something running across the road, so she slammed on her brakes.

“I turned to look and it was a little baby raccoon,” said Walters, a nature photographer. “He ran up into one of the palms and I stood there and photographed him for about an hour and got to observe his mannerisms and the way he does things.”

This was the first time in Walters’ career as a photographer that she was able to photograph a baby raccoon — and it happened here in the Lowcountry. At the time, Walters was an Artist-in-Residence (AIR) with the South Carolina (SC) State Parks.

“The program is an opportunity for artists to enjoy a week at one of our SC state parks and gain inspiration from our natural and cultural resources. In return, the artist provides an original piece of artwork that is displayed in the park,” said Mikaela Grooms, who oversees the AIR Program and also serves as the SC State Parks Marketing Coordinator.

Casey Shoub, also known as the Upstate Outdoor Adventurer, is an aerial videographer and photographer who was also an AIR at Edisto State Park and a frequent visitor to South Carolina’s state parks in his youth.

“State parks are where me and my family vacationed. So overall [the residency] allowed me to reflect on my youth, gave me a chance to connect with nature, and take inspiration from the environment around me,” he said.

Art, and programs like the State Parks Artist-in-Residence program, provide a way for people to share their stories and experiences with the natural world. In this way, we can all be connected to Walters’ experience with the baby raccoon and Shoub’s eagle-eye aerial shots.

“Every mountain peak, every grain of sand has been an important part of the ecosystem for its area, so we all need to work together to try to protect it whether that means not throwing out trash to make sure that we pull any invasive plants that are growing,” Walters said.

Sharing these photographs, artworks, and experiences is activism. Creative expression is both something we can all take part in and key to thinking about and understanding issues like land conservation, maintaining biodiversity, and climate change.

“I think art can convey many things and situations. In my work I aim to share the beauty of nature in an effort to encourage people to enjoy it, appreciate it, and protect it for us now and those who come after us,” said Shoub.

Artwork and stories connect us to one another, but also to the more-than-human world so we can see its intricacies and power.

“I’ve seen many forms of art that have inspired me in some way...if everybody found a way to put their passion into some form of art, we could create a movement inspiring everybody to protect the planet,” said Walters.

Photography by Casey Shoub & Georgia Walters

Above “Edisto Marsh - Spring” by Casey Shoub. Below “Raccoon Baby Crooktree” by Georgia Walters.

“iffoundeverybody a way to put passiontheirinto some form of art, we could create a movement inspiring everybody to protectplanet”the

Celebrating Preservation!

Historic Charleston Foundation’s

Charter Day 2023 Award Winners

Since 1947, Historic Charleston Foundation’s Charter Day has honored organizations, individuals, and other entities that have made extraordinary contributions toward protecting Charleston’s irreplaceable historic buildings, neighborhoods, and other special sites. Please join us as we celebrate those whose work and vision have impacted the preservation of the Lowcountry’s historical, architectural, and cultural legacy, as well as made significant contributions to the future of our vibrant community.

Farmers & Exchange Bank Building, 141 East Bay Street | Old St. Michael’s Rectory, 39 Meeting Street

Strawberry Chapel, Chapel of Ease, Moncks Corner | Starlight Motor Inn, 3245 Rivers Avenue

STONEY CRAFTSMANSHIP AWARD

Andrea Hazel, Artist | Sheila Wertimer, Landscape Architect | Karl Beckwith Smith, Artist

JOSEPH H. (PETER) MCGEE AWARD

Richard Habersham, Phillips Community Association President Christian Sottile, Principal, Sottile & Sottile Jamie Westendorff

Since 1947, Historic Charleston Foundation’s Charter Day has honored organizations, individuals, and other entities that have made extraordinary contributions toward protecting Charleston’s irreplaceable historic buildings, neighborhoods, and other special sites. We celebrate those whose work and vision have impacted the preservation of the Lowcountry’s historical, architectural, and cultural legacy, as well as made significant contributions to the future of our vibrant community. HistoricCharleston.org

WHITELAW FOUNDERS AWARD

CHARLESTON 2030 PROJECT

Highlighting aspirational, eco-futurist visions for the Lowcountry

CHS 2030: Urban natUreweaving

500 years ago, the Charleston peninsula was covered with maritime forest. Blue mistflower and aquatic milkweed ran alongside ferns and river oats, all under a thick canopy of oaks and pines. Today, Charleston’s land is dominated by brick, concrete, asphalt – what those in the urban planning realm call “impervious surfaces.” Water pools instead of being flushed through soil and roots; too-hot summers are magnified by trapped heat; pollinators and wildlife find dead zones where there once was food and shelter; and we, as humans, are denied a fundamental link to the natural world.

Dense urban living and living among nature are not mutually exclusive, and the tide is turning towards embracing a wilder cityscape. Some of that comes from big policy items – the City of Charleston’s Climate Action Plan espouses tree planting and wetland migration, accounting for rising sea level by making space at the water’s edge for endangered marshes to move landward. But we can also turn city life green on an individual scale, yard by yard, roof by roof.

Advocates and organizers are one vanguard of the urban green wave. Rebecca Fanning’s adventures in marsh and stream restoration and concern for biodiversity loss brought her to found Community Hydrology. The mission? Mobilize folks to spread native plants and steward water bodies. By her reckoning, this work doesn’t have to be complicated. You can scatter seeds in your backyard, or group up and take out some invasive plant species from a public watershed near you.

“The opportunity that I see with rehabilitation or restoration is that it actually does require a human hand to get it right. And by right, I mean restored to a more natural Lowcountry habitat,” Fanning said, thanks to the invasive plants that will win out if we don’t intentionally support natives.

Fanning notes that native foliage is often repressed in Charleston due to our adherence to aesthetics inherited from England, with monoculture grass lawns and neat hedges prioritized over bunches of native flowers and shrubs. But there are all sorts of visual strategies that can be taken with dense herbaceous native plants to make them more welcome.

“Don’t make it look like a jungle that could hide a tiger. When the plants are coming up and they get about knee high, cut them and they’ll sprout hydra heads and stay in a growth form that you can see over,” Fanning said. “That will mitigate some of the stress of people who are programmed to believe that messy plantings are hiding predators, this sort of lizard brain fear that we have when looking at a jungly, tangled web of plants.”

Charleston has an ecological designer who was inspired to bring permaculture concepts to “an audience that might hear permaculture and think messy gardens,” as well as to a community being hit hard by climate change and development: Al Mason, founder of Plan’td Ecological Design. She’s been working with homeowners to design yards that maximize native foliage, account for water drainage and shade, and look beautiful doing it.

“Native plants, there’s a huge breadth of them in the Southeast – there are so many colors and structures and textures that I play with in the work I do to create a landscape that could look almost identical to these formally shaped landscapes,” Mason said. “It’s really just shapes and silhouettes that we’re working with, but I’m replacing them with a species that’s native.”

Mason likes to see humans as a keystone species and believes in our ability to contribute to the life forms around us. One focus area for her is creating corridors of native greenery, even if it’s just getting a chain of participating yards in a row, because of how deeply pollinators and wildlife benefit from continuity.

“I think fragmentation, or the loss of connectivity between … spaces that have specific food and forage for birds and pollinators, is what’s really harming a lot of biodiversity as well as the general population of insects and birds,” Mason said. “So connectivity and creating corridors is really just establishing these green spaces, these pollinator gardens, bird habitats, where it’s uninterrupted by human development.”

“That backyard or two in between one green space to another is what’s going to make the difference between that local population of insects, of lizards or birds, surviving or not surviving.”

Mason stresses the importance of urban nature to our inner landscape, and how we can tune into the cycles of the natural world through biorhythmic living. Plants and wildlife that shift seasonally help us understand the timing of the natural world. In a city of unchanging live oaks and evergreens, treasuring habitats that serve migratory birds and butterflies, like the night herons that nest in Battery Park, helps take us out of mundane routine and into a seasonal cycle. Similarly, refuges in nature, whether it’s a rewilded backyard or an urban park that has enough native wildflowers and pollinators to feel dense, offer mental space and clarity.

“I’m not here to bully anyone into building a pollinator garden,” Mason said. “I’d love to inspire and I hope as a result they can feel the benefits deep within their nervous systems, and just who they are as people.”

Written by Belvin Olasov

Photography by Joel Caldwell & Living Roofs, Inc.

The Southeast has another designer on the vanguard of urban nature weaving: Kate Blatt Ancaya, cofounder and landscape architect at Living Roofs, Inc. Based in Raleigh, NC, many of her early projects were in Charleston, and she sees great opportunity here for leaning into green roofs – roofs that hold vegetation – in a big way.

“Thinking about ways to stitch nature back into our cities,” she said, “we have plenty of rooftops.”

Traditional roofs are ecological dead zones, and with so much of the city’s surface area being covered with them, that’s a lot of opportunities left on the table. Green roofs not only offer a new frontier for the forage and refuge greenery our birds and butterflies need to survive, but also provide a host of infrastructural benefits that Charleston sorely needs.

“I think the main thing that we need to do is change the narrative around green roofs from being this ornament or decoration, because we need to think of green roofs as infrastructure,” Ancaya said. “Not just as a nice-to-have but as a must-have. These are systems that are proven to really meet the challenges of our day, and also in our region, where we have increased rainfall, increased storms, high heat, extreme drought, extreme humidity, we’re dealing with a whole host of challenges… start thinking of them as standard practice.”

There are a few reasons why green roof adoption isn’t higher. Some of it stems from lack of education – some builders and buyers don’t realize that green roof types can vary by budget and goal and think of them as not an option. Retrofitting buildings for green roofs can be a challenge because of their higher load, making some existing buildings poor candidates. But new buildings can easily accommodate a green roof so long as it’s considered early on. The upfront cost is higher than a conventional roof, with a return on investment of around five to six years. Those savings come from the cooling green roofs provide.

“Building occupants are maybe enjoying lower energy costs or extended lifespan of their roofing, economic benefits,” Ancaya said. “But that building is also providing a community-wide benefit of lowering temperature and also helping manage stormwater and reducing flooding.”

Charleston faces its fair share of woes stemming from its transition away from its maritime forest roots – in the pursuit of standard urban development, we’ve dulled our lived connection to nature, starved the more-than-human world around us, and created recurring infrastructural disasters around heat and flooding. But we have a growing movement of folks weaving together nature and cityscape in a thoughtful, holistic way, planting the seeds of an urban Charleston area that feels lush, fulfilling, and more livable.

“The multifunctional-ness of green infrastructure is what makes it so important,” Ancaya said. “We can be solving multiple things at one time.”

tour de earth day

We’re

Come out for a slow roll bike ride through Downtown Charleston’s eco-hotspots, featuring talks and stops on food, art, marshkeeping, environmental justice, and more! Sign up at charlestonclimatecoalition.com.

Surge

of Charleston Climate Coalition! Join

WHAT UNION PIER COULD BE

Betsy: The Union Pier site is on the historic Charleston Peninsula, right behind the Harris Teeter grocery store on East Bay Street. It’s actually a 64-acre property, so it’s really big. Since the founding of Charleston in 1670, this site has been closed off for port and shipping operations. This redevelopment proposal is exciting because it has the potential to open up that waterfront area back to the public. For the past several decades, much of that prime waterfront real estate has been closed off for private operations of the Ports Authority.

Many folks may be familiar with the Carnival Cruise operation, which has been a primary activity at the site. Carnival had a lease with the Ports Authority, using Union Pier as their home port terminal operation. So in May of last year in 2022, the Ports Authority announced their plans to transition away from that home port contract. When the lease ends between the Ports Authority and Carnival in 2024, the Ports Authority will pivot away from these longer home port stays into more abbreviated port of call stays, freeing up a big portion of the property that’s been used essentially for parking and cruise operations for redevelopment.

Belvin: So what once was a massive parking lot for cruises and some defunct port buildings is now going to be a giant new development in the heart of downtown Charleston.

Affordable Housing

Betsy: Unfortunately, not much affordable housing at all has been proposed. I mentioned the 1600 units, only 50 units out of the 1600 are being proposed as affordable units right now. Needless to say, that’s nowhere near enough. And that’s something that I’m hoping the community will really come together and rally around to push for not only more affordable housing units… but that those affordable units are dispersed all throughout the site. So they’re not just in one location, maybe far away from the water or in a less desirable area.

Green Space

Betsy: The green space so far proposed is about 19 acres. And I think that a lot of folks would say, Okay, that’s pretty good. There’s 36 acres of upland, 19 acres of which are proposed for open space, but a lot of that’s actually not on the upland. A big part of the open space that’s being proposed is on the existing pier area. So it’s going to be, hopefully, if it translates to reality upon build out, a pretty cool Island Park concept, a really big park, right there on the water, that I think will be a huge community benefit and asset if done well. That being said, there isn’t enough green space on the rest of the property.

[Editor’s note: as of press time, Lowe, the developer of the site, has proposed a new park corridor, acreage unclear.]

Equity

Betsy: Acknowledging that low income Americans are more likely to use transit, bike and walk in urban areas – this vision for Union Pier must not perpetuate these inequities. So we have to create a livable community that’s accessible for everybody. And it goes back to some of these main themes we’ve been talking about – more publicly accessible open space, access and direct safe connections to the water, housing for all, community, spaces for art venues, gatherings. Which requires setting aside what could be developable, profitable, valuable, waterfront space, for the public realm for everyone to use and enjoy.

Organizing

Betsy: This definitely can’t be done alone with just one, two, or three organizations at the table. We need community support and input in a big way. And there’s a lot of opportunities upcoming to get involved. Those special meetings are all scheduled before votes happen at Planning Commission or City Council. So we’ve definitely got some time to get organized and get out to the meetings. But this is moving quickly. I want to make that clear. There should be a sense of urgency with getting involved in getting on the record with this.

GET INVOLVED - SIGN THE PETITION

You can sign this grassroots petition to Reimagine Union Pier For The People, urging the City of Charleston to slow down the Union Pier development process, hear the voices of those often ignored, and address affordable housing, flooding mitigation, sustainability, mobility and a host of other issues.

https://chng.it/d29MTspj

The following is an excerpt from a Surge Radio interview with Betsy La Force, Coastal Conservation League’s Director of Sustainable Communities, on the Union Pier development. Find the full interview and future Surge Radio pieces at surgechs.com.

Our Shorebirds Story Is Still Being Written

Written by by Chris Crolley

Storytelling is as old as humanity. It is one of the things we do better than any other creature known to taxonomy. This complex communication skill finds its origins in the spoken word, music, dance and art. Interestingly enough the other thing Homo sapiens do well is bipedal locomotion. We can outwalk and outrun any animal on earth.

If you combine these two superlative attributes they yield an animal that is highly evolved for walking and talking, storytelling and ambulation. We are uniquely prepared for immersive experiences in nature like guided outdoor storytelling, hiking, kayaking, water based ecotours. This is what I facilitate for a living.

Today’s story follows dwindling bird populations and a call to action to prevent certain species from going extinct. You see, bird populations have declined by more than 70% since 1970. That’s nearly 3 billion birds erased from the annual counts. This decline, just like back in the late 60’s and early 70’s, is directly related to human impact.

Our coastal birds are suffering from a condition known as “Coastal Squeeze.” As human populations on the coast increase and sea levels continue to rise, there is nowhere left for the birds to feed, rest, or nest. Almost all of our “people

beaches” have been re-nourished because the resorts and beach communities depend on the beach for revenue and, with rising water levels precipitate, coastal erosion can disappear a beach overnight. This renourishment process costs hundreds and millions of dollars. In today’s dollars South Carolina has spent well over $500 billion on these processes. Comparatively, we have spent near zero dollars on renourishing wild bird nesting areas. Meanwhile the seabird and shorebird nesting island are washing away due to rising water levels, just like the people beaches.

Historically rising water levels were not an issue for the birds. The early Cretaceous period, about 70 million years ago, was one of the hottest times in the history of the earth. There was no ice at either pole and the ocean level was in modern day Columbia, SC. During the last Ice Age, a mere 25,000 years ago, the water level was 60 miles further east of the modern coast line. Ocean levels have been fluctuating on Earth for quite a while, and birds adapted. The problem today is that the next available high ground is paved and forest and prairies have been cut down in favor of new development. What was previously habitat is now grocery stores, schools, churches, resorts, parking lots, and highways. There is nowhere for the birds to go.

This nesting season bird eggs will wash away with the full moon and the new moon on tides higher than anyone alive have ever seen. Least terns will resort to nesting on roofs of buildings in the city, again this year. Feeding and resting birds

will be chased off of narrow shore lines by dogs and humans. Bird nesting colonies on track for a successful year will only make it as far as the Fourth of July, only to fail in the wake of all-day beach parties and all-night fireworks.

When DDT was the problem the idea that a group of bird lovers could defeat the international, multi-million dollar chemical corporation seemed impossible. At least then there was a villain and a solution. Now, the villain is us and the solution requires changing our cultural understanding and behavior. Still, we can protect birds through actions like planting native plants and avoiding pesticides to watching birds and sharing what you see. For coastal birds we should be conscious of not disturbing them on the beach whether they are resting, feeding, or nesting. We should insist our state and federal legislators vote into law a congressional mandate that for every dollar spent on renourishing a people beach there be a percentage paid into a program that considers wild bird preservation action including renourishing wild beaches..

The story we are telling is not new. It is the same story we told when the birds were in trouble 60 years ago. If we fail to act decisively and soon the next story we will be telling will be what it used to be like when Pelicans, Black Skimmers, Least Terns, Red Knots, Oystercatchers, Warblers and Finches still existed on earth.

Photography by Gately Williams & Cacky Rivers

SOUTH CAROLINA LOVES YOU

by Noah Meier

I haven’t experienced a summer of freedom since I was thirteen years old. Before the swamp flushed me out of her, legs still young and dripping with sandy loam, tangled, maybe amongst the tupelo and the cypress had never been prettier.

My muddy dizzied self would shut my eyes facing the world. Before letting go entirely, letting the wet dirt eat me up. Nature always wins, she always feeds, she is always satisfied when all is said and done. I wish to find some similar position, a life where I am constantly fed and waded through.

An urban Southern revival of a dead god commits their final summoning sin by stealing a life among the Spanish moss from my bare childish hands.

Lead me, then, to the ultimate release! Into lightness! May I find peace, for once! Oh, from the loneliest of nights, algae growing on what is left of me when the world is over, bloated, rotting and meaningless and yes, I beg of you, let the alligators have what remains.

Clockwise from top left: Black Skimmer by Cacky Rivers, Coastal Expedition by Gately Williams, Oyster Catcher by Cacky Rivers, Pelicans by Cacky Rivers.

Wash pot

by R. R. Setari

She said it was a wash pot, Left from the days her own grandmomma took in folks’ laundry, Boiled they sheets and baby clothes.

Large and iron and flaking rust on the bottom, Out in the field to fill with rain water

And flood water

On nights when the Lord wasn’t willing And the creek did rise.

We filled it with sweet gum balls, cedar cones, Needles from the long leaf pine

To trouble and bubble and say words from a Scottish play we ain’t never seen And never gonna see.

We scooped in gray green potion water from the swell and make believe We be sea witches

Til our momma called us in to wash our hands of the algae bloom. And we asked big momma why the wash pot ain’t get used any more. The water got too high, too muddy, too thick. No matter how much you scrubbed and boiled, Those baby clothes never again came away clean.

Buildings

Production – new buildings create emissions through the mining and logging of materials, the manufacturing of concrete, and the installation

Energy usage – buildings are like cars that constantly idle, constantly using energy for lighting, heating/AC, water systems, etc.

Build with green materials like adobe or hempcrete.

Action item: green building incentives in local towns and cities!

Weatherize and retrofit buildings to be more energy efficient.

Action item: fund local weatherization initiatives!

MAKING SENSE OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS: IMBALANCED SYSTEMS

Written by Belvin Olasov

ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION

IMBALANCED SYSTEMS

GLOBAL WARMING CLIMATE CHANGE

CLIMATE CRISIS

ENVIRONMENTAL & HUMAN CONSEQUENCES

Waste Transportation Nature Food Energy

CLIMATE CHALLENGES

Car usage drives climate pollution by burning fossil fuels.

Production of goods means consumption that expends resources and energy – especially plastic, a petroleum product

Disposal of waste leads to landfills that leak methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Natural resources need to be protected and expanded in order for their carbon-absorbing properties to help draw down the climate crisis.

Factory farming creates incredible amounts of climate pollution, which we can reduce by lowering meat consumption and sourcing locally.

CLIMATE SOLUTIONS

Improve our bus system to make their routes more frequent and comprehensive.

Action item: push for funding increase from BCDCOG (Berkeley Charleston Dorchester Council of Governments)!

Improve walk & bike options.

Action item: connect bike lanes across the Lowcountry!

Electrify vehicles.

Action item: push for EV infrastructure from municipal & county governments!

Lower plastic consumption. Action item: pass further plastic restrictions in municipal & county governments!

Lower general consumption.

Action item: support local circular economy businesses!

Increase composting of food waste.

Action item: expand successful City of Charleston compost dropoff program to surrounding municipalities!

Protect and take care of marshes and wetlands.

Action item: perform marsh stewardship with groups like the MARSH Project, Charleston Waterkeeper, Charleston Surfrider, or Sustainability Institute

Reform development practices to ensure.

Action item: put marsh conservation and marsh migration requirements into local zoning codes!

Plant trees!

Action item: plant trees!

Reduce the amount of meat we’re eating weekly.

Action item: work with restaurants to support vegan options!

Reduce food waste by diverting meals to hungry folks.

Action item: support local nonprofits that distribute donated prepared food!

Buy your food from local farms and grow your own.

Fossil fuel energy sources like coal and fracked gas are the primary driver of the climate crisis. We must transition towards green energy to ultimately reverse the climate crisis.

Reform our monopoly utility, Dominion, to focus on solar and wind over gas.

Action item: get SC legislature and the Public Service Commission to oppose gas expansion! Install solar.

Action item: accelerate municipal & county government adoption of solar panels!

At the South Carolina Aquarium Sea Turtle Care Center™, sick and injured sea turtles are transported from all over South Carolina and beyond for a second chance at life. Witness this incredible work for yourself on your next visit to the Aquarium!

Visit today. scaquarium.org

WE NEED YOU TO KEEP SOUTH CAROLINA WILD

CONSERVE The S.C. Wildlife Federation, South Carolina’s first conservation group, has relied on science since 1931 to conserve the state’s special places and wildlife for all.

ADVOCATE Work with us to promote conservation of our wild places by working with policymakers in Columbia and Washington.

RESTORE We have a broad range of hands-on and education programs for members to restore habitats around the state.

EDUCATE Enjoy our ongoing educational program to inspire hope and ignite passions for protecting natural habitats.

SOUTH CAROLINA WILDLIFE FEDERATION

Bridge to

Written by Nathan Stevens

Artwork by Cara Fischer

Head to Governor’s Park at any time between 6:30 to 9 am or 3:30 to 5:30 pm and you’ll be staying put a long while as caravan lines of cars and 18-wheelers filter overhead. The Mark Clark Expressway bisects the park with long strands of concrete, steel and smog. On days with heavy trucking traffic, the expressway will transform into a ramp of smoke stacks, the exhaust pipes of so many trucks cluttering the sky like the artwork to Pink Floyd’s Animals. In an era of climate change and rising inequality, the specter of the American highway looms above them all.

The 526 expansion has been tagged with that classic public policy failure label “boondoggle.” The price tag is nearly as eyepopping as the blue steel of the Don Holt Bridge, with the planned eight-mile extension ballooning from initial estimates in the hundreds of millions to nearly $2 billion. The county has adjusted down to 1.78 billion in one estimate, which would still be five times the county’s annual budget.

The proposed expansion would create a 9½-mile, four-lane road from West Ashley, to Johns Island, and then onto James Island with a connection to the end of the James Island connector at Folly Road. The plan is to alleviate current traffic woes and allow for the expressway to better serve the Wando Welch Terminal. Public policy makers across the United States constantly push for wider roads and more lanes to allow the flow of traffic to run more smoothly. However, this runs up against the principle of induced demand. As Field of Dreams puts it, “if you build it, they will come.”

Texas proves a perfect, discouraging example of induced demand. The Katy freeway is the world’s largest highway by lanes. At 26 lanes at its widest, the freeway can hold a mindboggling number of cars. “Hold” being the correct word, because they sure ain’t going anywhere fast. Over a decade of expansion and the Katy Freeway has created worse traffic. According to Joe Cortright at City Commentary, “the morning commute has increased by 25 minutes (or 30 percent) and the afternoon commute has increased by 23 minutes (or 55 percent).” More exit and entrance ramps, more communities with highway access, all lead to an increase of drivers, creating a positive feedback loop of more and more cars on more and more lanes.

Highways are also a consistent weapon used against BIPOC and working-class communities. The great concrete snakes winding around North Charleston through and around Rosemont and Charleston Heights constrict those communities on both sides with a highway and the deeply pedestrian-hostile Spruill Avenue. 526 threatens to exact a similar toll to the communities it bisects. Study after study has proved that proximity to a highway leads to negative health outcomes, from air pollution increasing asthma rates to decreased quality of sleep thanks to noise pollution. Charleston, stubbornly, refuses to invest in public transit infrastructure and pedestrian safety, instead spending ever greater sums for worse products.

North of Morrison, there is the “bridge to nowhere,” a proposed road to a never-built neighborhood that came to an end when the economy crashed in the late ‘00s. Now it only serves as a surreal detour in the marshland, a bridge of wide concrete that suddenly ends in a patch of rough grass and clover. The Mark Clark Expressway is already built and no clover will overrun its concrete until Charleston itself falls. But the current 526 boondoggle might lead to the same result. A bridge to displacement, a bridge to climate change, a bridge to wasted money – a bridge to nowhere.