California Coast & Ocean

You might say that the lead story in this issue of Coast & Ocean is about unintended consequences. Farmers in Monterey County, pressed by buyers and distributors and alarmed by the sickness and death from Escherichia coli contamination of spinach a year ago, are undoing years of conservation work. Tearing out riparian habitat probably won't protect our food supply from contamination, but it will lead to much greater water pollution and loss of other benefits of sustainable farming.

It is difficult to work in government for any length of time without becoming aware of the law of unintended consequences. Well-meaning, carefully thought-out legislation is passed, regulations are promulgated, and all kinds of unexpected things happen. Of course, we are all living through perhaps the greatest episode of unintended consequences in human history: global climate change.

In the early days of the internal combustion engine there were scattered complaints about its air pollution, and even some gloomy long-term assessments. At the time, though, it seemed like a good deal. After all, unlike horses, cars don't randomly excrete fecal material all over the street. In cities before the automobile this was a major (and disgusting) pollution problem.

At the beginning of the 21st century, we are finally beginning to confront the long-predicted consequences of a civilization based on wanton burning of hydrocarbon fuels. The seas are rising, icecaps and glaciers are melting, the pace of species extinction is increasing, entire island nations will need to be abandoned in the next 50 years, and our oceans are becoming more acid, endangering the ecosystem that makes human life possible.

California faces two major challenges, with a host of associated "lesser" issues. The two big ones overshadow all others. First, we live on the coast: 80 percent of our population lives within 30 miles of the Pacific. An immense amount of critical infrastructure, not to mention people, is located on or near the coast. Already rapidly eroding and geologically active, large parts of our coastline will either be submerged outright or eroded away by the impact of higher water and stronger storms.

The second issue, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration is the first to grapple with seriously, is water. California's water system is designed to capture snowmelt from the Sierra, which falls largely in the north of the state, and move it south or out to the coast. The snowmelt is going to go away. California will experience increasingly warmer winters with less snow, higher snow lines, and earlier snow melts. We will have an ever-increasing risk of flooding in the Central Valley and in the Delta, and a water system that must be replumbed to continue to supply drinking water to a state that adds about 500,000 new residents each year.

Every part of state government that deals with resources in the environment is now engaged in either reducing the carbon emissions that cause global warming, planning for the adaptation we know will be necessary, or both. (If you're interested in reading about what we in state government are thinking about, point your web browser to http://www.climatechange.ca.gov/.) Here at the Coastal Conservancy and the Ocean Protection Council, we are launching major initiatives to figure out exactly how the coast will be affected by sea-level rise, what global warming means for our restoration and acquisition efforts, and how we can reduce our own carbon footprints. I expect these efforts to consume the rest of my professional life, as well as those of my colleagues who are 20 years younger than I. Hopefully we will all be mindful of the law of unintended consequences and carefully choose solutions that do not create their own new problems.