'Rising Seas,' long-form radio doc on climate change by Alex Chadwick and 'BURN: An Energy Journal'

My friend, former NPR colleague, and longtime journalism mentor Alex Chadwick has an incredible new radio documenting hitting the public radio airwaves this week. We're sharing it here on Boing Boing before it hits the radio-waves. I asked Alex to tell us a little about 'Rising Seas.' He explains:

The Rising Seas project grew out of an encounter at an MIT energy seminar almost a year ago. I met an Americanized Brit, Dr. Len Berry, from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. He's been speaking forcefully and clearly about the threat that rising seas present. At the end of his talk, I asked if Miami is a viable city. He smiled and answered, 'well, it is right now'.

And then I asked about the end of the century. He smiled again, but said nothing.

I've been talking to him ever since, and through him I met two other FAU scientists — both much younger — early to later 30's, both moms, both troubled that hardly anyone in south Florida seems aware of what they are facing.

I got fascinated with this place, and with this story, and spent more time on it than I usually do — and then found it very difficult to write. I knew too much, and I couldn't leave out parts that I liked.

Finally, I wound up building there piece around these two scientists, and their and my own bewilderment that we are going to lose a city like Miami (which I came to like much more than I thought I would), and that people simply don't know.

Here is a soundcloud link to the hour.

Here's our site.

And here is our Tumblr blog.


(Images courtesy of BURN; Photo of Alex Chadwick by Maggie Steber)