The 135-Foot Yardstick
The 135-Foot Yardstick
In 1935 a ship with a 135‑foot mast could just slip under the Cape Cod Canal bridges. Ninety‑one years later, the clearance is still 135 feet. The water hasn’t risen. The story has.
If the ocean were rising the way the press conferences claim, those masts would have been scraping steel sometime around the Reagan administration. They aren’t. The steel hasn’t moved. The ships haven’t shrunk. The only thing rising reliably is the tax bill.
The Real Movement Is Down
Subsidence, Not Sea Rise
Massachusetts is sinking, slowly, at roughly 1.5 millimeters a year — a slow‑motion elevator ride to nowhere documented in published geological surveys. Boston’s Seaport District is built on old fill, gravel, and whatever 19th‑century residents swept off their porches.
When the ground goes down, the water looks like it’s coming up. The optics are identical. The cause is not. And no carbon tax ever written stops gravity.
The Two‑Story Rehearsal
Catastrophe on Monday, Ribbon‑Cutting on Tuesday
The act runs like this. Monday: the coast is disappearing, the situation is dire, new revenue is urgently required. Tuesday: welcome to a brand‑new luxury skyscraper directly on the water, units start at $3.2 million, please tour the rooftop infinity pool.
If it’s a flood zone, stop building. If it’s a gold mine, stop taxing people for the flood. It cannot be both.
Building seawalls on sinking land is like putting a fence around a trampoline and calling it stabilized. Every dollar poured into a doomed wall is a dollar not spent on a bridge that genuinely needs replacing, a road that looks like an archaeological dig, or a wastewater system older than most Cape Codders’ beach chairs.
Three Straight Answers Owed
Before Anyone Reaches for the Wallet
- Tell the truth about subsidence. If the land is sinking, say so. Don’t cash a climate‑tax check by misnaming the geology.
- Explain the bridge math. If the sea is rising catastrophically, why is the 135‑foot Canal clearance unchanged since FDR was in office?
- Stop approving waterfront skyscrapers while warning residents the water is coming for their basements. The two cannot both be true.