Eleven years to save San Francisco Bay

SFEI scientist Julie Beagle and SPUR-based collaborator Laura Tam co-authored an article featured in the SF Chronicle:

The impacts of climate change used to be considered future threats — ones that paled in comparison to the multitude of daily challenges we face as a society. But in the past few years, we Californians have experienced direct repercussions of our world’s inability to stop the climate crisis. From catastrophic fires in Santa Rosa and Paradise that filled the Bay Area’s skies with smoke, to flooding along Highway 37 and San Jose’s Coyote Creek, we’ve tragically lost people, homes, workplaces, and temporary access to schools, jobs and hospitals. The climate crisis is the current crisis — and it is unfolding far more rapidly than we once expected. And sea level rise, once considered a relatively slow-moving disaster, is also accelerating.

A few years ago, an important scientific consensus emerged about the future of San Francisco Bay, in light of this acceleration: we have only until about 2030 to ready the region’s coastal wetlands for climate change. That is 11 years from now. After this time, if not set up for success, these ecologically rich habitats — already decimated more than 90% from their original extent in the Bay — will not survive.

Learn more about the urgency of the situation we face in the Bay Area...