New book California Catastrophes challenges coastal communities to confront reality

It's no secret that Californians live with the reality of earthquakes, landslides, wildfires, and other natural disasters. This confronts those who choose to stay, and the many who move here, with the equally ominous question: What can we do about it?

UC Santa Cruz Professor Gary Griggs attempts to answer that question in his new book, California Catastrophes: The Natural Disaster History of the Golden State, which provides a comprehensive account of the state's many natural disasters and how it has affected its residents throughout history. But then, it goes on to explain how Californians can better prepare going forward—and in the final chapter, Griggs issues a call to action and challenges readers to envision a safer, more equitable, and sustainable future.

Griggs, a distinguished professor of Earth and planetary sciences, is frequently quoted in news coverage of coastal crises—like highway closures from landslides and even the changing climate behind them—because of his decades of expertise on coastal geology and oceanography.

He has written or co-authored 14 books on the topic, including one on natural disasters in the Monterey Bay region. Many of us may not want to hear what he has to say now. But often, the things we choose not to acknowledge or accept are exactly what we must pay attention to most. 

Something's going to have to give. This is what I call the “challenge at the edge”— sea level rise, extreme events on the California coast. 

We now know the climate across the Pacific and coastal California changes over several decades. We've named those “Pacific Decadal Oscillations.” The mid-1940s until 1978 was a calm, cool, not very threatening period, and that's exactly when California's population exploded. We built in places that looked safe at the time. And then in 1978, it flipped back to a stormier El Niño-dominated time. Now, we're oscillating back and forth now between those two patterns. 

We really don't have too many choices. I will say boldly, over the long run, there's absolutely nothing we can do to hold back the Pacific Ocean. We can build walls for a while, but it's not going to stop it. And we know now sea levels are rising at an accelerated rate. The warmer the Earth gets, the more ice melts. If we were to melt all the rest of the ice on the planet, we have the potential to raise sea level 216 feet. Along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts we can get storm surges of water washing up 10 to 15 feet high. 

So, can we continue development and deal with these hazards? I'd say there's a lot of places that just aren't going to be stable or safe over the long run. 

FEMA’s (Federal Emergency Management Agency) guideline is: You have to build back in the same place. That's ludicrous.

There'll be places we should try to hold on to as long as we can. But there’s a term for what we need to do: “managed retreat.” Some people call it stepping back gracefully or moving inland. But basically, if you look out 10 or 20 or 30 years, depending on the area, we can't hold that line any longer. The people who own those houses don't want to talk about it. But it's happening. 

I will say it's either going to be a managed retreat or unmanaged retreat. A number of cities and counties are thinking about managed retreat, but it's still not required yet. In the long run, that's going to be our only solution.

The real dilemma is sea-level rise. Sea-level rise may be the biggest challenge human civilization has ever had to face. We've never had sea-level rise until the present pace of development. COVID will eventually go away. So will Trump. But sea-level rise isn’t. We're going to have to deal with this. 

Right now, things are not equitable. There are places that are safe and not so safe. For example, the town of Pajaro got flooded for weeks and months. And finally, after years, we're beginning to build levees on the Pajaro River to protect them. But it's taken forever. I think it's just because it hasn't been the squeaky wheel. Low-income, disadvantaged people often end up in these places that aren't particularly safe. 

So how do we deal with that? I think a starting point is better policies. Kamala Harris is coming out with a plan to provide $25,000 in down payments for low-income people to buy their first house. She's also proposing raising the taxes on people who make millions of dollars a year. Is this equitable for people like Jeff Bezos and some of these billionaires—do they need two hundred billion dollars? No. Are they paying their fair share? Probably not. So, I think one way is to change the whole tax code.

We also have to make sure low-income people are represented in our government structure. Normally, they're working two jobs and trying to raise their kids. They don't have time to sit on the planning commission. We've got to have other people looking after them to make those decisions.

That's my view. It certainly isn't going to happen instantly, but at least right now we have two different candidates with very different views about it that could make things better or could make things worse for low-income people.

Certainly, some things are going to get worse. I think we need to be aware of these things before we invest our life savings in something that's not safe. 

I want to give people some perspective. If I asked you: what is your biggest fear? Some people might say: a shark, or a tsunami, or an earthquake. Those are minor risks compared to, say, riding a bike and texting.

There are these things in our everyday life we have to be careful of, but we have more power than we think. California is the fifth largest economy in the world and the center of many important industries. We also have more geologic hazards per square mile than any other state. So we have this sort of trade-off. It's paradise, but paradise at some peril. 

The big message is there's safe places to build; yes, there's many things to worry about, but we can also make wise decisions about where we build and what we do.