… PR makes Marthas Vineyard out to be a playground of the rich. My parents both were born here, and my ancestors have been here since probably the 1620s (according to what Mr. Railton called the Pease legend). My mothers father, Ellsworth Luce West, was the last living Vineyard whaling captain when he died in 1949 on his farm in Chilmark. Truck farming was normal life during the last Depression. My other grandfather, a doctor in Edgartown, was often enough paid in eggs and chickens. (Dr. Bob Nevin, his nephew who took over his practice, is more remembered today.) A century is not so very long ago. My parents told me that in those days the only ones interested in a water view were cows. Now, with the prospect of rising sea level, storm surges, and erosion, were glad enough to be where our ancestors planted roots for us on higher ground. For climate change is a certainty, bringing a higher sea level and storms of greater frequency and strength, though no one can predict with certainty the extent and timing of these changes. What will replace the trucking industry and ferry service when the carbon bubble bursts? For burst it surely will. More and more investors, institutional and private, recognize that 80% of the coal, oil, and gas that fossil fuel companies count as assets can never be extracted and burned, because if they are burned we will all die. This island is a microcosm of our island in space, the earth. The scientists who look at the vital signs of our planet tell us that earth cannot sustain life as we know it if the proportion of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere persists at more than 350 parts per million …
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 00:08:36 +0000
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