Ten years ago, I wrote a book called "The Golden Shore: California’s Love Affair with the Sea." Back then, I suggested that California, with almost 40 million people and the world’s fifth largest economy, was proof that you could grow a progressive society while protecting your coast and ocean. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the book “just might make you feel optimistic about the future.”
Well, that future has arrived and I’m less optimistic. This winter’s atmospheric river storms, coastal flooding, erosion, sea level rise, saltwater intrusion into rivers, and sedimentation dumping thousands of tons of soil into the ocean were only the most recent of the state’s disasters. The year 2022 alone brought a massive red tide in San Francisco Bay, the continued die-off of 95% of northern California’s kelp forest between the Golden Gate and Cape Mendocino, and a spike of gray whale deaths along the entire coast.
Climate impacts threaten communities, both human and wild, ranging from whales and their ice-dependent Arctic prey to the 26 million people living in the state’s nineteen coastal counties that, as of 2021, generated around 85% of the state’s $3.3 trillion dollar GDP.
