Beyond the seawall: a changing climate calls for dynamic solutions

On the face of it, it’s difficult to see similarities between the San Francisco Bay Area and Christchurch, New Zealand. The former is a major hub for one of the largest economies in the world with a population of over 7.5 million people, and home to tech giants like Apple, Google and Facebook. The latter is a gateway to Antarctica, historically a market town and port that services an agricultural hinterland, and home to just under 400,000 people. However, when landscape architect and UC Berkeley Professor Kristina Hill examines the two places through the bi-focal lenses of geology and landscape, unexpected parallels emerge.

Christchurch's 2011 earthquake shifted the city's water
table, leading to structures sinking into the Avon estuary.

Both places face similar challenges: how to adapt their coastal and estuarine environments to sea level rise, how to live with a high and rising groundwater table, how to factor increasing salt and freshwater flooding into planning their urban environments and infrastructure while surviving, and preferably thriving, in highly active seismic zones.

Read the Foreground story - “Beyond the seawall: a changing climate calls for dynamic solutions.”

We Can’t Close Our Eyes to Climate Change

Contrary to a common perception, ignoring climate change won't make it disappear. Global research going back to 1824 in fields ranging through physics, oceanography, biology and geology have confirmed human activity—mainly burning fossil fuels, raising livestock and destroying carbon sinks like forests and wetlands—is increasing greenhouse gas emissions and causing global temperatures to rise rapidly, putting humanity at risk. Every legitimate scientific academy and institution and every government, except the current U.S. administration, agrees.

Yet the disconnect between that reality and government action to confront the greatest crisis humanity faces is astounding. Nowhere is that disconnect more profound than in the U.S., where the attitude is "out of sight, out of mind.”

Read the EcoWatch story - “We Can’t Close Our Eyes to Climate Change.”