For years, climate change lived somewhere else.
It was photographs of collapsing glaciers, stranded polar bears and graphs describing what might happen in some sufficiently distant year that we could be appropriately alarmed about and still make our dinner reservation.
In Orange County, that luxury is disappearing.
Climate change is increasingly about our beaches, homes, roads, insurance, tourism and property values. Higher seas make high tides and coastal storms more consequential. Warmer conditions increase heat risks. And along our coastline, erosion threatens the very identity and economic engine of Orange County.
In 2017, Newport Beach approved a project to raise portions of the publicly maintained seawall around Balboa Island. The city has also completed a sea-level-rise vulnerability assessment examining threats to public lands, infrastructure and development.
Newport Beach has never been confused
Newport Beach has never been confused with an environmental commune. But when rising water threatens multimillion-dollar real estate, public infrastructure and the local economy, climate adaptation becomes considerably less ideological.
San Clemente is engaged in a long-term effort to put sand back on beaches that have been narrowing for decades.
A wide beach absorbs wave energy before it reaches homes, bluffs, roads and railroad tracks. When beaches narrow, everything behind them becomes more vulnerable.
California’s climate assessment projects that without significant intervention,
California’s climate assessment projects that without significant intervention, 31% to 67% of Southern California beaches could be lost by the end of this century.
Orange County’s inland communities face increasing heat. Hotter days mean greater demand for electricity and greater health risks, particularly for older residents and outdoor workers.
Then there is wildfire. Orange County’s hills regularly experience the dangerous combination of dry vegetation, heat, low humidity and Santa Ana winds. Climate change does not cause every wildfire, but hotter and drier conditions can increase fire risk and worsen already dangerous conditions.
For Orange County, this is no longer simply
For Orange County, this is no longer simply a discussion about what the planet might look like in 2100. It is about whether we will have enough sand on our beaches, whether seawalls will be high enough, whether coastal infrastructure can withstand erosion and how much taxpayers will spend protecting what we have already built.
We have underestimated our impact on nature before. Humans drove species including Steller’s sea cow and the Caribbean monk seal to extinction. What once seemed almost inconceivable, that humans could erase an entire species, became historical fact. We should be equally cautious about assuming the planet is simply too vast for humans to fundamentally alter.
The underlying science is straightforward. Carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases retain heat. Oceans absorb much of that additional heat, seawater expands as it warms, land ice melts and sea levels rise.
Scientists can debate precisely how quickly particular consequences
Scientists can debate precisely how quickly particular consequences will arrive in a particular Orange County neighborhood. Uncertainty about the timing or magnitude of a problem is not evidence that the problem doesn’t exist.
There are legitimate disagreements over what we should do. Reasonable people can debate electric-vehicle mandates, renewable-energy subsidies, seawalls, beach nourishment and how quickly an industrial economy can move away from fossil fuels.
But Orange County should be able to have that debate without pretending nothing is changing.
Residents should examine what their elected officials propose
Residents should examine what their elected officials propose to do, the evidence behind those policies and decide which approaches deserve their support.
If we act cautiously and the worst predictions about climate change never materialize, the price of being wrong is a cleaner, healthier planet for our children; if we do nothing and the science is right, the price of being wrong could be irreversible.
Mother Earth will probably survive climate change. She has survived extraordinary upheaval before. The more immediate question is what Orange County and the world will look like when our children inherit it. The planet may endure, but that does not mean it will remain as hospitable to human life as the one we inherited.
John Szabois a journalist who lives in Newport
John Szabois a journalist who lives in Newport Beach, California. He has previously been published in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications and earned his MA in Journalism from Indiana University.
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