Pitch
Time for MIT to say goodbye to the reclaimed swamp land on the Charles river and move to higher ground.
Description
Summary
MIT was built on reclaimed swamp land, which will be under water with a few feet of sea level rise. While sand bags and pumps may be a short term solution, a new place needs to be found for the entire institution, preferably in a location more than 250 feet above current mean sea level so that the move only has to be made once.
What actions do you propose?
Find a new location to be home to the Institute. While this will have a negative economic impact on the City of Cambridge, it will pale in significance to the environmental impact of several meters of sea level rise.
Acknowledging that the sea level is rising and preparing for that rise is a novel policy idea. It is a clear break from the current trend to develop property close to the ocean, a trend that stretches from Florida north to Maine.
Mass loss from both the Greenland and Antarctica is in an exponential growth phase, with a doubling time for the rate of mass loss on the order of a decade. If this trend continues, MIT does not have centuries to find dry land to move to, but decades.
Perhaps a leveraged buyout of Worcester Polytechnic would be in order.
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