CA - Lessons from California on how to adapt to sea level rise
Sea-level rise is often pointed to as the unbeatable culprit chomping away at Southern California's most popular asset. But rising seas aren't the only reason the coastline is disappearing. Decades of development along the coast blocked sand flow to beaches.
The Pacific Ocean off the California coast could rise more than six feet by the end of this century, according to some estimates.
"We have a lot of time before some of these big changes. I mean, you could say 2100, you know, I'm not even going to be alive in 2100," Charles Lester, director of the Ocean and Coastal Policy Center in the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara, says.
"But the changes that we should be thinking about in order to be resilient then … needs to start now."
That rising water is forcing the state and its coastal communities to completely rethink their viability, resilience, and even their resistance to change.
"What does it mean to actually protect the coast in the face of sea level rise? Is protecting the coast, truly holding the line, and maintaining the world as we know it," Rosanna Xia, environmental reporter for the LA Times, says.
"Is maintaining the status quo what we actually want? Have we actually stopped to think about that?"
Today, On Point: Lessons from California on what must change for everyone in a world of rising water.
Guests
Rosanna Xia, environmental reporter for the LA Times. Author of "California Against the Sea: Visions for our Vanishing Coastline."
A.R. Siders, director of the Climate Change Hub and professor on climate change adaptation at the University of Delaware.
Also Featured
Serge Dedina, former mayor of Imperial Beach, California and Co-Founder and Executive Director of Wildcoast.
Charles Lester, director of the Ocean and Coastal Policy Center in the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara.
Angela Mooney D'Arcy, founder and executive director of the Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples.
Transcript
Part I
MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Imperial Beach is the Southernmost beach town on the California coast – it’s right up against the Mexican border. Former mayor Serge Dedina describes it this way:
SERGE DEDINA: It's the last really blue collar, funky beach town left in Southern California. We're a majority minority community. It’s 4 square miles surrounded by water really on all 4 sides.
CHAKRABARTI: It's not exactly an island. But Imperial Beach was developed in the early 1900s. And it's built on filled-in mud flats, and it’s surrounded to the south by the Tijuana Estuary and to the north by the wetlands of South San Diego Bay. And of course, to the west, there's the Pacific Ocean.
Dedina has seen some very high tides surge on Imperial Beach over the years, but it was one day in the winter of 2018 that sticks most in his mind. Forecasters had predicted king tides – those super high tides that coincide with a new or full moon.
