A rising tide of concern

ST. MARYS -- Georgia's wildlife agency minced no words recently in declaring climate change "a threat inherent with uncertainty," perhaps the state's starkest warning ever on a politically sensitive subject dismissed by many elected officials.

Here, though, on Georgia’s 100-mile-long coast, most everybody takes seriously rising seas and dying marshes caused by drastic changes in the Earth’s climate. They live already with the proof: greater tidal surges; flooded roads; and ages-old trees killed by salt water creeping further inland.

If the dire predictions of state, federal and university scientists prove true, then billions of dollars of property in Brunswick, Darien, St. Marys and Savannah and on the islands of St. Simons, Sea and Tybee will be under water within a century.