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Music picture a map of Florida with its long sandy beaches and wetlands or cities like New York Venice and Alexandria all metropolis is with some pretty watery boundaries now try to picture what these might look like in a hundred years the Sunshine State might look very different than it does today the same goes for Manhattan Island or Mumbai this is our best guess of a warmer future one where sea levels are gnawing away at the corners of our carefully drawn maps coastal cities are first in line for big changes and some that can afford it are gearing up to spend billions to make sure they survive you you might think of the great ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica as giant banks of freezers and where we're running down those rows of freezers unplugging them that's Ben Strauss CEO and chief scientist of climate central they're a nonprofit organization that researches and reports on climate change including sea level rise researchers like Ben have concluded that the world is guaranteed to see 4 feet of sea-level rise just based on greenhouse gases we've already put into the atmosphere once we unplug a freezer it's unplugged you can't plug it back in and it's going to melt that's pretty scary especially if you live on a coast and according to the UN more than 600 million people live in coastal areas that are less than 30 feet above sea level and any amount of further emissions will cause sea levels to rise higher with scientists like Ben expecting a rise of 10 to 20 feet or more some coastal areas are already struggling during some high tides in Miami water already slides across city streets this is happening now and it's a physical sign of rising sea levels there are already neighborhoods in the United States that I know about where real estate value has evaporated because floods that used to be rare or non-existent now happen multiple times a year it's a block here or a block there but it's really affecting people climate central created a visualizer called surging seas to drive this point home it shows how coastal cities will fare as the climate heats up look at New York New Orleans Shanghai or Lagos and you'll see how melting ice could push shorelines inland it's one of a few projects online that are designed to make the threat feel immediate I think climate change tends to be such an abstract and distant seeming problem for most people we want to make it as real and personal as possible people being able to look up their own neighborhood their own home helps to do that here in New York the sea level is actually rising faster than in lots of other parts of the country we did a whole video about it anyway earlier this year the city unveiled an ambitious plan to keep the lower part of Manhattan safe I often said after sandy you don't find a lot of climate change deniers in New York City they plan to fortify the city and may actually build out land into the East River by 50 to a hundred feet it's not the first time that New York has reclaimed land from water but prior expansions were mostly done to increase living space this one will be to keep the water away from our living rooms the plan will cost an estimated ten billion dollars we can't overstate the disruption that it would cause to take no action so we absolutely have to act Jaynee bethey she is the director of the mayor's office of resiliency her team collaborated on a big study that looked into the climate risks faced by lower Manhattan so we didn't just look at sea level rise and storm surge but we also looked at intense precipitation and extreme heat and across the city you know we're taking steps to address these multiple hazards and multiple risks that we we face from climate change for anyone living near the coast sea level rise presents problems but for cities the issues are really unique imagine water pouring into the streets on a regular basis just soaring high tide you open your door and you walk into a street filled with water it would impact underground infrastructure that we rely on imagine subway tunnels getting flooded on a regular basis or the building of the foundations of buildings corroding in addition to building out into the river the city plans to install flood gates and critical places that would flip up in a flood to keep water out of low-lying land but for now these plans are still just concepts they aren't even sure how they'll pay for it yet but private funding is still on the table we're not planning for development but that also depends on whether or not we're able to get funding from the federal government we'll have to figure out how to finance this if funding doesn't come from the federal government then development might be part of the solution wandering around lower Manhattan it's spooky to think about how dramatically climate change could redraw these city blocks and it's obvious that one threatened area here is driving a lot of the urgency Wall Street so Lauren Manhattan is an economic center of the city a 1 in 10 jobs are located in lower Manhattan 75% of subway lines go through lower Manhattan so we know that we need to protect natan lower Manhattan in order to protect the economic vitality of New York City but in a lot of places in the US alone extreme preventative measures like New York's are out of reach to communities one in Alaska and another in Louisiana are relocating to get away from rapidly eroding coasts and a 2018 study found that as many as three hundred and eleven thousand houses in the United States will be vulnerable to chronic flooding by 2045 in other words climate migration is already a reality and policymakers here in New York want to avoid the chaos that could come from displacing a city of almost 9 million people you can't just pick up and move a city very easily and because cities are such important concentrations of human lives and economic activity I think we will invest a great deal in defending them I don't expect us to be trying to move Manhattan I expect us to be defending it as vigorously as we can we might not have as much time to build out the barricades as you might think while most projections focus on 2100 it's not like sea levels will wait to 2099 to suddenly attack water will trickle in slowly seeping into our lives and disrupting infrastructure property values and coastlines in the process it won't be sudden but it will be fast it's the speed of change that I think is the most dangerous thing about it a bullet isn't dangerous if I'm holding it in my hand or throwing it at do it's the speed of the bullet that makes it dangerous it's the speed of climate change and sea level rise which are going to make them dangerous if you want to learn more about sea level rise including why it doesn't rise at the same rate in all places check out our other video and don't forget to subscribe thanks