Category: Climate Change Effects
New Jersey Shells Out for Retreat
New Jersey’s Blue Acres program buys homes in flood-prone areas and converts them to open space. This not only moves frontline residents out of danger, but also protects neighbors.
How Rivers in the Sky Travel Across the Ocean
In California, our fate swings from drought to floods, depending largely on whether or not we get rainstorms called atmospheric rivers.
Retreat By Any Other Name
“Retreat can conjure failure, and nobody wants to be managed,” explained the study’s lead author Amanda Stolz at the California Social Coast Forum this March. Part of the problem is the term itself. One Pacifica resident quoted in the study commented, “Managed retreat’ is a code word for give up — on our homes and the town itself.”

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High Schoolers Propose Green Solution to Oakland’s Road Blight
Take a drive from the Oakland Airport to the Coliseum, and it’s impossible not to feel the consequences of urban decay: potholes. Luckily, a trio of high school sophomores are proposing an unlikely solution: tree sap.
New Jersey Shells Out for Retreat
New Jersey’s Blue Acres program buys homes in flood-prone areas and converts them to open space. This not only moves frontline residents out of danger, but also protects neighbors.
How Rivers in the Sky Travel Across the Ocean
In California, our fate swings from drought to floods, depending largely on whether or not we get rainstorms called atmospheric rivers.
Retreat By Any Other Name
“Retreat can conjure failure, and nobody wants to be managed,” explained the study’s lead author Amanda Stolz at the California Social Coast Forum this March. Part of the problem is the term itself. One Pacifica resident quoted in the study commented, “Managed retreat’ is a code word for give up — on our homes and the town itself.”
A Day On The Bayview’s Shifting Shore
I set out for Heron’s Head Park on an early March morning. To my surprise, I had never heard of, nor visited, this site on the southeastern bayshore in my 20-plus years growing up and living as a visual artist in San Francisco.
Planting the Edgy Bits of Giant Marsh
Two days on the ground filming and talking with work crews planting new zones of the Giant Marsh Living Shoreline. “We need habitat to mature enough to function fast,” says Jeanne Hammond.
Can Cooler Blocks Prevail in Los Angeles?
The “Cool Cities Challenge” launched this January in SoCal’s LA and Irvine, and the North Bay’s Petaluma. The program is designed to kick start climate action at the micro level.
Less Sea Level Rise for Left Coast
Scientists are now more confident we should plan for up to a foot of sea-level rise on the Pacific Coast by 2050 than they were the last time they did the math.
Burns for the Birds
Scientists examined islands of near-total deforestation after fires and found new landscapes born from the scorched earth. They also found birds hunting for seeds and insects in these new open areas…
Not Just Any Wall Anywhere
Maladaptation, and failing to adapt in time, can be almost as dangerous as climate change.
Climate Adaptation: The Basics
Resilient sweet potatoes and stilts on houses remind us how adaptable human beings can be. This graphic guide samples our earliest and most recent history of adaptation.
What’s in the New Climate Report in Under 3 Minutes
An international climate report has big updates for the world — but it’s thousands of pages long and downright terrifying. So they turned it into a three-minute movie trailer.
