Rosanna Xia’s award winning new book, “California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline” takes a detailed look at how California is coping with the juxtaposition of a rising sea, an overcrowded coast and a constant demand for beach real estate along its 1,200 miles of coast. The aging infrastructure of coastal highways, bridges and roads also now demand our attention with frequently recurring collapses and closures.
“Rosanna Xia asks: As climate chaos threatens the places we love so fiercely, will we finally grasp our collective capacity for change?”—Heyday Books
Addressing a complicated and controversial set of issues with a lesser writer, this book might have been subtitled “bad news on climate-change.” Xia, however, transforms the topic by bringing history and humanity into focus in each chapter, taking special care to look at solutions and stories of those on the ground engaged in cultivating positive change as well as a pragmatic view of challenges.
“California Against the Coast” is organized into sections that look at history, options, unsolved issues and unexpected positive outcomes in its 13 chapters. Case studies include examples from the Sonoma Coast to Imperial Beach by the Mexican border, with stops in Los Angeles, Pacifica, Marin City, Bodega Bay, and San Francisco.
Protect at What Cost?
Starting with where we are, Xia looks at what the coast was some fifty years ago and the decisions that brought us here, including our evolving understanding of conservation. This includes political scrimmages, personal vendettas and social change.
Xia’s interviews are informative, hopeful and deeply human. In discussing Laguna Beach with long-time resident Penny Elia, who first experienced Laguna Beach in the early Sixties, Elia notes that the tide pools have not just shrunk, but are gone and with them the many insects, shorebirds and critters that made the beach so alive. “The whales used to come right up to the surf, matted with golden kelp that glistened in the sun as they breached the water….”it just knocked your eyes out. We would just stand there with our mouths hanging open, it was so spectacular.”
With seawalls protecting homes and destroying beaches, Xia asks the question: “is this the future we want for our coast?” She brings to light the increasing pressure between protecting valuable real estate or saving a beach for the people, along with those who took steps to protect California’s irreplaceable coast. Poignantly, losing the coastal beaches is a sacrifice many don’t even know they are making.
Community-Shaped Specific Solutions
In discussions with individuals from places as diverse as Oakland, Bodega Bay, Manhattan Beach, and Marina, readers get a chance to see how it is for residents living with the cost of California’s love of the coast. Human stories bring hope. We tend to support what we love. Will it be enough, in enough time? It is clear that we are living with a fragile time-sensitive equation, and perhaps each one of us is part of the solution, and this solution may well be one we have yet to discover.
Available from Heyday and your local bookseller.
California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline by Rosanna Xia
Out in paperback, August 2024 5.5 x 8.25, 344 pages
ISBN: 9781597146586
About the Author
Rosanna Xia is an environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times, where she specializes in stories about the coast and ocean. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2020 for explanatory reporting, and her work has been anthologized in the Best American Science and Nature Writing series.
This book has been recognized with these notable awards:
• A 2024 Great Read from Great Places, selected by the Library of Congress
• 2023 California Book Award Winner
• A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year
• 2024 Nautilus Book Award Winner, Restorative Earth Practice
• 2023 Golden Poppy Award Winner (voted on by California booksellers)
REVIEWS
“What happens if, as the world warms and the Pacific Ocean rises, California’s coast and beaches drown? That’s the crisis that Los Angeles Times environmental reporter Rosanna Xia investigates in her thoughtful, balanced, deeply researched and reported California Against the Sea.”—Peter Fish, San Francisco Chronicle
“Few people are more qualified to explain and analyze this landscape. Xia’s reporting on this topic earned her a spot as a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting in 2020. In this, her first nonfiction book, she breathes exquisite detail and dialogue into a rich narrative held up by years of beat reporting.” —Clare Fieseler, Science Magazine
“A beautifully written, highly relevant book about not just our relationship with and how we think about the natural world, but also how we relate to each other.” —Jaime Herndon, Book Riot