A Dispatch from Amsterdam Avenue

A little over a year ago, President Mohamed Nasheed of the island nation of the Maldives held an underwater cabinet meeting. He assembled his cabinet, equipped with scuba gear, in order to highlight the rising sea levels that threaten island nations around the world. Research conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that within the century, sea levels will rise between 19 and 59 centimeters. While oceans’ rising a couple of feet may seem an insignificant change to those who live inland, for low-lying island nations in the Pacific like Tuvalu, Kiribati, and Nauru, a rise of mere centimeters can spur the existential crisis hauntingly referred to as “disappearance.” Yet we would be remiss to discount disappearance as an exotic phenomenon, for it threatens to strike closer to home.

In 2008, our Dear Leader Michael Bloomberg had the foresight to establish the New York City Panel on Climate Change. Helmed by one of Columbia’s own, Cynthia Rosenzweig of the Earth Institute, the panel convened to explore the breadth of climate change’s implications for New York City. Unsurprisingly, as the city straddles the confluence of a river and a sea, rising sea levels were among the chief concerns of the NPCC. According to the 2009 edition of the panel’s Climate Risk Information Report, New York will witness rising sea levels of between 12 and 23 inches by 2080. These are no ordinary inches.

Yet these figures do not matter for two parts of Manhattan. We can expect the ever-resilient Wall Street, anchored in a forest of skyscrapers, to survive. Even in the face of total cataclysm, the resourceful investment bankers of the Financial District, donned in nautically inspired attire, will pilot their Chris-Crafts in a convenient beeline from Greenwich to the valet marinas off Battery Park, giving new meaning to the phrase “captains of finance.” Ascending the nearby skyscrapers, they will conduct business as usual, brokering, banking, and then boating home again. Uptown in Morningside Heights, shielded by the topography the university’s forefathers favored for their school on a hill, Columbia will remain similarly undisturbed by the rising sea. Students will continue living in collegiate bliss while, next door, Harlem suffers the immense indignity of incessant flooding. New York City will be reduced to two poles: the ivory tower of Columbia and the steel towers of the Financial District.

For those students who rarely venture out of Morningside, not much will change. But for those who consider the charms of New York as being found in neighborhoods such as the Lower East Side, SoHo, and the Village, sea-level rise is a daunting prospect. For generations, a large proportion of Columbia’s applicants have sought to attend a fine college in a fine city. In a year when Columbia can boast the highest rate of early decision application in its history, we are left to wonder: Will students keep coming if New York becomes a different city? Unlikely. New York is a unique place to study, an unendingly dynamic patchwork of communities and cultures, nested in distinct and evolving neighborhoods. One can attend a fine college in a lot of places—any Ivy is a good example. The right city is harder to find. The NPCC’s findings show that a long-valued aspect of a Columbia education is now at risk. For while the city may not cease to function, its most charming neighborhoods are set to go the way of Atlantis and join the ranks of the forlorn Maldives (unless Dutch engineers return to really make this a “New Holland”).

The NPCC projections for sea-level rise include an interesting provision: In the case of “rapid ice-melt” at Earth’s poles, the forecasted sea-level rise in New York City could reach 55 inches by 2080. Add to this the daunting findings that show previously once-in-a-decade floods recurring every one to three years, each time inundating the city with over seven feet of water. And to underscore the tempestuous wrath of Poseidon, the annual probability of an intense hurricane’s striking the city is set to reach 50 percent. The low-lying neighborhoods downtown will be seized by the sea. Faced with biblical disaster, unable to afford Chris-Crafts, and unwilling to sully their vintage-inspired frocks, the hipsters who color downtown will likely decamp to less trying climes, the charm of New York lost in a mass exodus of alternative spunk. And with their flight, Columbia will lose a major part of its appeal. On the off-chance the hipsters stay to create some aquatic-grunge subculture (think “Waterworld”), the swim test will finally come in handy. Columbia really does prepare us for the future, however hellish it may be! Come the weekend, students will swim in packs like schools of fish: breaststroke to the Bowery!

Esfandyar Batmanghelidj is a Columbia College first-year. He is a member of the rugby team. C.U. in Hell runs alternate Thursdays.