According to a recent report by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), a worldwide group of scientists who study Earth’s frozen regions, the rapidly accelerating melting of all our ice is raising sea levels. Ironically, this is threatening the very industry overwhelmingly responsible: the fossil fuel industry, which will definitely feel the strain of rising sea levels, which is already impacting coastal regions across the globe.
As a result, oil ports in cities like Houston and Galveston and in nations like China and Saudi Arabia are threatened with being overwhelmed, according to the report. As sea levels rise, coastal communities become increasingly vulnerable to flooding and other extreme weather events. When those events occur, their infrastructure and other valuable resources get compromised.
Much of the damage from rising sea levels is baked into humanity’s future, but these losses can be mitigated. As the authors write, costs and damages will be even more extreme, “with many regions experiencing sea-level rise or water resource loss well beyond adaptation limits in this century if our current level of emissions continues – leading towards a rise of 3º C or more.”
For the first time in human history, Earth had an average global temperature 1.5º C higher than pre-industrial levels in 2024. That was the threshold established by the 2015 Paris climate accord as a possible tipping point for containing damage to the planet. As greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane are released into the atmosphere, they trap heat (hence "greenhouse"), warming the planet in ways that cause extreme weather from droughts and heat waves to hurricanes and rising sea levels.
“Refusing to turn off the oil taps means keeping the taps on for sea level rise,” James Kirkham, the chief science adviser at ICCI, said in a statement to The Guardian. “Accelerated ice melt and ocean expansion has already caused the rate of sea level rise to double in the last 30 years. Unless leaders double down on transitioning away from fossil fuels, the terrible impacts of sea level rise will only increase further – affecting every country with a coastline, including those who continue to obstruct increased decarbonisation efforts.”
