By Kim Stanley Robinson
Do you like going to the beach? Too bad. They’re all doomed.
I say this because beaches are by their nature located right at sea level. Waves break on them to make their sand; tides move that sand around. There are a few beaches around the world where sand is so copious that giant dunes have formed, as in Namibia or the California coast north of Santa Barbara. Those might manage. But most form a coastal verge not much higher than the current highest tides.
New projections released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the U.S. put minimum sea-level rise at 12 inches within the next 28 years. That number doubles, at least, by the end of this century — and possibly rises to as high as 8 feet. Even the low-end estimates, almost sure to be reached because of the anthropocentric warming that’s already occurred, would be enough to submerge almost every beach in the world. Kiss them goodbye.
This sad prospect has haunted me for a long time. Beaches saved my suburban youth. Many people love them, as I do, for their ease and beauty. They contribute to a big part of the world’s tourist economy, and they mean even more to the people who depend on them for their livelihood. The coastal life is an ancient one, which still feeds and supports millions.
And, of course, every coastal city is built right to sea level. So the coming rise, even in its earliest phases, will devastate a major part of human civilization. Why this oncoming disaster isn’t discussed more is a mystery to me. Possibly it’s because people feel it’s too far in the future to worry about or too sad to contemplate. Maybe it’s because we think there’s nothing to be done about it.
For me it’s been like a recurring nightmare, portrayed again and again in my science fiction over almost three decades. I first had a volcano erupt under the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet, causing it to break up and float away. A billionaire near the end of Green Mars looks down from a space plane on the disintegration: “That’s it for every beach in the world,” he says. Fictional engineers in another book, as a stopgap measure, try to pump water back up onto Antarctica so it will refreeze there. In 2312, published in 2012, planners of the future are building dams to save glaciers in Greenland. I’ve also depicted restorations in the aftermath of lost glaciers, such as sucking sand out of the shallows to rebuild the beaches on higher ground, or figuring out how to coexist with ocean water sloshing over most of Lower Manhattan.
Leave a Reply