Despite Rhode Island’s best efforts, we can’t study the climate crisis into extinction.

Knowledge is power, but in this case, we already know the solutions: stop hardening the coastline; don’t let a country club build an illegal seawall and then delay in making the privileged business take it down (it’s been two years since the 550-foot-long structure was unlawfully installed); give the natural world room to breathe; don’t let vehicles drive on the beach; home buyouts in flood-prone areas; hold polluting waterfront businesses accountable; actually enforce state environmental laws; stop passing unfunded mandates; support public transit; drastically cut our carbon footprint; and follow the recommendations outlined in the many climate studies taxpayers have funded.

Special interests, however, don’t allow for the implementation of significant, or even some moderate, climate solutions and environmental protections. To delay any meaningful action, the powers that be waste money and time endlessly studying this emergency.

The Ocean State is at it again.

Late last month, the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank and the Department of Environmental Management announced yet another study, this one about building coastal resilience.

The state has hired a London-based multinational firm that provides design, engineering, architecture, planning, and advisory services “across every aspect of the built environment.”

The idea for the study was born from the passage of last year’s Act on Coasts legislation, which amended the state’s climate plans to add a specific plan for coastal resiliency. You can never have too many plans to ignore.

The legislation mandated that this plan, like many of the state’s other climate-related studies, be updated every so many years — in this case every two.

Rhode Island’s chief resilience officer, Kim Korioth, has until next October to create a coastal resilience plan and present it to the powers that be. This plan needs to assess community vulnerabilities, recommend mitigation strategies, and identify financing sources to implement resiliency efforts.

Most of this research has already been compiled, and subsequently ignored, but Statehouse leadership can’t stop holding climate solutions for further study.

This new plan will also address concerns including sea level rise, increased storm frequency and precipitation, warming air and water temperatures, and changing biodiversity — as if these problems are something new and haven’t already been studied by local researchers, scientists, academics, and state agencies or the consultants they hired.

A few days after this new plan is published, press releases sent, and stories written, its recommendations will be forgotten, and Korioth’s office will begin updating the plan so it can be ignored again two years later.

In the May 29 press release announcing the “state’s first comprehensive coastal resilience study” — code for repackaged research — Infrastructure Bank executive director William Fazioli noted, correctly, that Rhode Island is already feeling the impacts of climate change, from more frequent flooding to overwhelmed stormwater systems to accelerating coastal erosion.

He also noted, incorrectly, that this new study “will give us detailed insights into vulnerable municipal infrastructure, and options to improve resilience. … This is another piece of the puzzle as we work together to build a more Resilient Rhody.”

Rhode Island already has a jumbled collection of climate studies that the powers that be have purposely failed to assemble, because the solutions don’t align with the wants of the few.

The Ocean State’s climate efforts are in a perpetual state of study. Endless reports, executive order promises, and toothless laws have done little to stimulate meaningful climate action. It took the state a decade just to ban plastic retail bags.

When we aren’t commissioning more studies, we’re creating task forces, subcommittees, and commissions, such as the Legislative Study Commission on Climate Change Impacts and Solutions, to study the studies.

It’s getting us nowhere. Our collective selfishness won’t be appreciated by future generations, or Mother Nature.

The hierarchy remains narrowly focused on economic growth and the promise of jobs — at least the ones artificial intelligence and robots won’t be taking. This singular focus largely treats climate action as an economic burden. Special interests keep promising, falsely, that the free market will devise an economic solution to the climate crisis.

We can no longer keep skirting around the edges. We need political leadership that will support significant investment in mitigation programs and initiatives, that will redesign the state’s car-orientated transportation sector, that won’t bow to the will of campaign donors and chamber lobbyists.

Another study isn’t going to move the needle.

The Climate Risk Reduction Act of 2010 promised a resilience strategy. The act was designed to help “move the state to an active response to climate change impacts by identifying some of the most critical issues that will have to be addressed, and by investigating and implementing cost-effective solutions and/or adaptation strategies for the state and its municipalities.”

The legislation created the Rhode Island Climate Change Commission, which then established three unfunded working groups.

This commission issued its first report in May 2012. The 40-page document reviewed key climate risks and vulnerabilities, identified current climate change initiatives, highlighted adaptation needs, and outlined next steps, such as assessing risks and vulnerabilities and developing an annual work plan.

The Resilient Rhode Island Act of 2014 was designed to provide a comprehensive and coordinated state response to climate change. It called for “establishing adaptive management as a basic principle for the management of the natural resources of the state for the benefit of the current and future generation of residents.”

That same year the Rhode Island Climate Change Commission became the Executive Climate Change Council, or EC3. It released a report in June 2014. The 87-page document noted the emergency “requires action now.”

A year later, another C was added to the EC3 — now known as the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council. Its first report, released in June 2015, was nine pages and reported “Climate change is happening now and Rhode Island has a lot at stake.” It also noted that as a coastal state, Rhode Island is “vulnerable to both sea level rise and significant storm impacts, as seen recently during Superstorm Sandy.”

Superstorm Sandy struck in fall 2012, but we continue to build along the shoreline and disrespect and weaken the natural protections Mother Nature provides.

In June 2016, the EC4 published another report. The 47-page document summarized the commission’s work, noted that both mitigation and adaptation are necessary to Rhode Island’s resilience, explained climate risks and vulnerabilities, and highlighted other climate-related reports, studies, programs, and plans.

The EC4’s 2017 report again warned the Ocean State is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and that Rhode Island needs to “take bold action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” It also highlighted the narrative of economic growth. The 38-page report’s opening paragraph lays bare where the state’s concerns truly lie.

“Although climate change presents us with formidable challenges, we also face an unprecedented opportunity to capitalize on technology advances, industry growth opportunities, and innovation solutions,” according to the report’s executive summary. “It is possible for Rhode Island to achieve climate change goals, while unlocking economic opportunity and improving the environmental and public health of our citizens and communities.”

The health of people and the environment are secondary. Addressing the climate crisis is a goal that we’ll just keep studying. These studies and reports are written in a manner so as not to offend special interests.

In summer 2018, state officials unveiled the Resilient Rhody plan — a collection of information plucked from some other 50 previous reports and studies. This document listed five dozen recommended actions, such as monitoring existing coastline pilot projects and creating beach and barrier migration pathways through property acquisition and relocation of structures.

Resilient Rhody also offered a host of guiding principles, such as “Equitably reduce the burden of climate change impacts with particular attention to environmental justice communities across the state,” and talked a good game — “Effectively addressing climate change needs to leverage bold emission reduction targets and adaptation measures.”

More of the same information and carefully crafted talking points, just presented differently — followed, again, by little meaningful action. If banning gasoline-powered leaf blowers and alcohol nips — two items society can easily thrive without — is too much for special interests to swallow, how are we going to address the climate crisis?

It seems the state’s answer is to use indefinite study to distract from the fact little to nothing of significance will be done to address this emergency. We’re just going to burn time and money.

At some point, we need to stop collecting information and put it to use. Now would be a good time.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.