With more than half of the world's population living less than 100 miles from the ocean, sea level rise due to climate change poses a substantial threat to human civilization. A recent study led by Larry Keating (Professor Emeritus) and Dana Habeeb (doctorate student) at Georgia Tech's School of City and Regional Planning and funded by the Georgia Conservancy examined the effects of sea level rise on coastal Georgia's Chatham, Liberty, and McIntosh counties. Keating, Habeeb, and a group of graduate planning students found that "Nearly 31 percent of the land in the three counties, roughly 419 square miles, will be inundated by sea level rise. More than 20,000 households and more than 50,000 people — 85 percent of them in Chatham — will be submerged." The group added, "It is time to think about responding to these very real eventualities."
