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"An exploration of the responses that sea level rise demands along the West Coast"--
List of contents
Coast Under Siege 1. California against the Sea
2. Our Vanishing Coastline
3. A Town on the Edge
Saving the Golden Shore 4. The People’s Law
5. Protect at What Cost?
6. Choosing Casualties
Missing Pieces7. The People’s Coast
8. Overlooked and Forgotten
9. Rebirth Between the Tides
10. Relearning the Ways of the Shore
May We Open Our Eyes to Water 11. Grappling with Retreat
12. The Little Town That Would
13. Bridges to the Future
Acknowledgments
Notes and Further Reading
Index
About the Author
About the author
Rosanna Xia is an environmental reporter for the
Los Angeles Times, where she specializes in stories about the coast and ocean. Her breadth of work includes the highly anticipated feature documentary film,
Out of Plain Sight, which she directed and produced, and her celebrated book,
California Against the Sea, which received the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and a gold medal from the California Book Awards, among other honors. She was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2020 for explanatory reporting, and her journalism has been anthologized in the
Best American Science and Nature Writing series.
Summary
From a celebrated environmental journalist, the riveting exploration of sea level rise along the West Coast through human stories and ecological dramas.
"Viscerally urgent, thoroughly reported, and compellingly written—a must-read for our uncertain times." —Ed Yong, author of An Immense World
"When do seawalls make sense? And when is it better to give in to the tides? [...] In California Against the Sea, Xia [...] writes about the difficult realities of trying to incorporate fairness into our tally of costs and benefits." —The New Yorker
Along California’s 1,200-mile coastline, the overheated Pacific Ocean is rising and pressing in, imperiling both wildlife and the maritime towns and cities that 27 million people call home. In California Against the Sea, Los Angeles Times coastal reporter Rosanna Xia asks: As climate chaos threatens the places we love so fiercely, will we finally grasp our collective capacity for change?
Xia, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, investigates the impacts of engineered landscapes, the market pressures of development, and the ecological activism and political scrimmages that have carved our contemporary coastline—and foretell even greater changes to our shores. From the beaches of the Mexican border up to the sheer-cliffed North Coast, the voices of Indigenous leaders, community activists, small-town mayors, urban engineers, and tenacious environmental scientists commingle. Together, they chronicle the challenges and urgency of forging a climate-wise future. Xia’s investigation takes us to Imperial Beach, Los Angeles, Pacifica, Marin City, San Francisco, and beyond, weighing the rivaling arguments, agreements, compromises, and visions governing the State of California’s commitment to a coast for all. Through graceful reportage, she charts how the decisions we make today will determine where we go tomorrow: headlong into natural disaster, or toward an equitable refashioning of coastal stewardship.
