Praying for Tangier Island

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2017

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Residents of Tangier Island, in the Chesapeake Bay, live through each hurricane season in fear of a major storm that would decimate their land. With its highest point only four feet above sea level, the island loses ground to erosion every year, and its residents may be among the first climate-change refugees of the United States. “I do believe in climate change,” Trenna Moore, a schoolteacher, says. “But I believe in what it says: centimetres a year. We’re losing feet.” The New Yorker’s Carolyn Kormann and the Radio Hour’s Sara Nics travelled to the island, and spent time with James Eskridge, a commercial crabber and mayor of the town of Tangier, Virginia. A stalwart supporter of Donald Trump, Eskridge told the President of the residents’ desire for a seawall around the entire island. Based on his own observations, Eskridge disputes the entire scientific community that sea-level rise is a threat, but he sees that the danger is real: “If we were to get a hurricane to come in, it would wipe out the whole harbor here, and probably a good chunk of the island.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a real trade to bond.
0:03.0	The One World Observatory,
0:06.0	the straight of the block for West Boulevard and make that right.
0:09.0	I basically just think it would be interesting to look at the emergence of a criminal economy.
0:14.0	And also, I'm always amazed that there aren't more profiles that are out there.
0:19.0	This really subversive, strange thing, in rap, especially,
0:22.1	and see what their lives are like other sites. From One World Trade Center in Manhattan,
0:29.2	this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:36.5	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:38.4	I'm David Remnick.
0:39.8	2017 has been quite a year, a horrendous year in some ways, with many natural disasters.
0:46.9	Three of the worst hurricanes in memory, the worst wildfire season on record in California,
0:51.4	and from everything climate science tells us, the future holds
0:55.6	more frequent events like this, more severe events as the planet continues to warm.
1:01.9	Not long ago, as Houston was scrambling to deal with destruction from Hurricane Harvey, the
1:06.5	New Yorker's Carolyn Korman was on a small boat. She was there along with the radio hour Sarah Nix in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, and
1:14.6	there too, a storm was heading their way.
1:17.6	We're with the mayor, headed out to rescue a baby Osprey. How old do you think it is? Two babies.
1:30.3	Two babies. They're not ready to fly yet and they might be in trouble with the storm coming tomorrow.
1:37.3	There's a big storm moving toward a low strip of land called Tangier Island. The island's mayor, James Eskridge, is moving a pair of juvenile offspring,
1:47.7	big birds of prey that live on the water, to safety.
1:50.8	There was a tire last year, almost ready to fly.
	...

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