Santa Barbara is one of the most beautiful places in the world, largely because of its stunning coastline. As our planet warms, our coastline will present an ever increasing threat to our way of life.
Aware of this, the City of Santa Barbara, in 2021, adopted a Sea-Level Rise Adaptation Plan. The plan predicts that at the Earth’s current rate of warming the city will experience increased flooding and erosion hazards along its shoreline.
Landslides at Shoreline Park, and more beach erosion at Leadbetter Beach were predicted. Cabrillo Boulevard, Shoreline Drive, Cliff Drive and Highway 101would be affected by storm flooding. Sandy beaches along the coastal bluffs would be lost from beach erosion.
The El Estero Water Resource Center would experience storm flooding, impacting wastewater and recycled water services. The Charles E. Meyer Desalination Plant would flood, impacting freshwater supplies for the city.
Blufftop housing would be threatened, along with neighborhoods on both the lower East and West sides. The cumulative economic impacts to the city could be as much as $4.1 billion.
The plan suggests “adaptations” i.e., mitigation measures like berms, floodwalls, relocating infrastructure and new flood-conscious building codes. It does not address how to deal with climate change, the cause of sea-level rise.
This year the National Oceanic Atmospheric and Administration released its report on sea-level rise. The report warns that it’s not just our home by the sea that is threatened, but the entire planet.
NOAA concludes that sea levels, because of global warming, are rising at the fastest rate in 3,000 years and will have an impact on every location along U.S. coastlines.
The agency says that over the next 30 years we will experience as much sea-level rise (10-12 inches along the U.S. coast by 2050) as we experienced over the entire last century. This will cause coastal flooding and storm surges 10 times more than we are currently experiencing, not to mention contamination of drinking water aquifers and coastal wetlands, and destruction of sewer systems.
Climate change is a game changer. We can no longer just live in Santa Barbara as if it were removed from the rest of the world.
Greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) here, like those around the planet, have an impact on a global atmosphere. Science has for years been warning that these emissions, unless stopped, will cause a 1.5C (2.7F) rise in global temperatures by midcentury, which in turn will create a tipping point. After that, the Earth, including Santa Barbara, will experience more severe flooding, wildfires, storms, droughts and ecosystem destruction.
The NOAA report is a dire warning about what GHG emissions are doing to our oceans. Oceans cover more than 70% of the planet. As rising global temperatures continue to melt glaciers, rising sea levels will continue to claim more of the land.
According to NOAA, as the oceans rise, the Maldives, the world’s lowest-lying country, will disappear. North Jakarta, Indonesia, will be submerged. Mumbai, India, could be submerged by 2050. Alexandria, Egypt, will be submerged. Parts of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam will be swallowed by the sea.
In the United States, one in eight properties in Miami will be underwater. Sea levels in New York City, by 2100, could be 6 feet higher. By 2050, sea levels in Virginia Beach, Virginia, will rise by 11.8 feet, submerging the city. New Orleans will sink eight feet farther below sea level.
Here in California, by the end of the century, NOAA projects sea-level rise of one to seven feet. This will not only exceed the destruction called out in the city’s adaptation plan, it will put 60% of California’s beaches at risk; negatively impact 600,000 people; and cost the state $150 billion in lost revenues.
None of this can be stopped by “adaptations.” What can stop it is reducing the amount of greenhouse gases we are putting into the atmosphere.
Climate change is teaching us that we are now living a global existence. Unless we reduce GHG emissions worldwide, we will, as the earth warms, increasingly experience the destructive impacts of climate change, which includes sea-level rise.
Future local environmental reports should acknowledge global warming as a planetary threat, and include solutions as well as mitigation measures.
— Environmental lawyer Robert Sulnick represented the community of Casmalia in litigation against the Casmalia Resources Hazardous Waste Landfill, co-founded the American Oceans Campaign with Ted Danson, and is a partner in the Santa Barbara environmental consulting firm Environmental Problem Solving Enterprises. Click here for previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.