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California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline

On this edition of Your Call’s One Planet Series, Los Angeles Times environmental journalist Rosanna Xia discusses her new book, California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline. Xia documents her travels across 20 of California’s coastal communities, listening to the stories of people who are grappling with a rising ocean.

She writes, "Within just a few decades, Californians have managed to alter the shoreline resulting in such a way that the realities of climate change seem unimaginably daunting. Collapsed buildings, flooded roads, shattered seawalls—all the problems that make the coast so fragile today are not by some fault of nature. A problem exists because our human-built world keeps getting in the way of the rising sea. But this current story of our coast does not have to end in disaster. We can choose to act, to reconsider, to determine a more sensible future. How we proceed can make all the difference, and it’s on all of us to forge a new ending."

Guest:

Rosanna Xia, environment reporter covering the California coastline for the Los Angeles Times, and author of California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline

Web Resources:

NPR:Sea level rise could drastically erode California beaches by the end of the century

The Los Angeles Times: In the face of sea level rise, can we reimagine California’s vanishing coastline?

Malihe Razazan is the senior producer of KALW's daily call-in program, Your Call.
Rose Aguilar has been the host of Your Call since 2006. She became a regular media roundtable guest in 2001. In 2019, the San Francisco Press Club named Your Call the best public affairs program. In 2017, The Nation named it the most valuable local radio show.