Man oh, no woman the red cross says more than 600 people are now missing and that more than 200 have been killed after heavy rain caused a severe mudslide in the west african nation of sierra leoeone. [car horns honking] [insects chirping] amarasekaren oo oo oo whats happening . Whats happening . No big problem, huh . Ok. When w we get proble. Man whoa [men shouting] [indistinct conversation] narrator while freetown residents fight for acccountability, in San Francisco, Climate Change isnt debabated as mucuch as its mitigateded. Billions of dollars are pouring into the bay area, but is techdriven development prepared for a sea level thats rising . Scholl San Francisco is experiencing a tremendous building boom and has been for the last 5 years. Tam we have ucsf hospital. We have the warriors coming. We have a bunch of new apartment buildings. Scholl you have Corporate Headquarters of facebook, google, microsoft. Christensen we realize we live in such an amazing place with so much creativity and innovation. Im excited when i see the young people in the Tech Industry all overer town, allll over the e by area commuting backck and forth. Theres an energy here. Renteria in mission bay, everyone pretty much works in tech, working on the next startup. Woman i have 3 cappuccinos for here. Renteria ill do a coffee. Ok. Thanks. Im considered a millennial. We kind of are free spirits, and we dont believe so much in just fulltime gigs. I work in social media marketing, so its definitely a new industry. A lot of people dont quite understand it, but i run social for a living. The really cool thing about a job in social media or just tech is that you can work remotely. Coffee shops are free. Yes, San Francisco is really expensive. There is no other place like San Francisco where youre going to have access to the technology, to the communities, to just the people working in the industry. Its just one of a kind, and its totally worth it. I sold my car, and i pretty much walk everywhere now, and i got rid of a lot of stuff, and i live in a very small apartment , but its totally worth it just to have access to everything. Yay. Cheers. Cheers. Renteria i just learned abouout the sea level rising, ad i didnt know aboutut that before we moved herere. Does it cononcern me . Yes, because i eventually want to buy property here and have a family here, but i didnt know about that, and im not too informed,d, so its not something thatat im really too coconcerned about r right now. I am scared now, though, learning that thats a possssibility. Christensen people under 40 living here in the bay area today are very, very likely to see unprecedented annunual flooding around the bay in ththeir lifetimes. Jacob itts ining to be fantastiic in a city that t is so vital and known for its innovation that were gogoing to be able to build this great v venue her christensen a lot of these New Buildings by the end of the century, including the Golden State Warriors new arena, would have the ground floors at least potentially flooded or basement paparking flooded. The Warriors Arena is, you know, contemplating maybe someday putting in flood gates so that their garages dont flood. Theyre thinking of raising Pedestrian Access so that it would be out of the water. San francisco itself, you know, built a seawall in the late 1800s to protect itself and this new land that had been created. You know, right now, San Francisco is looking at spending 5 billion to repair and reinforce that seawall for another century. Scholl the areas that have been the leleast developed historicay are the marginal lands around the bay, some of which are salt flats. Others are abandoned piers, and theyre being rehabilitated because theres basically no place else in the bay area to build, and theyre being built upon as quickly as possssible by moststly megacorporations that are trying to maximize their value by building very expensive developments. To me, it feels like sort of climate denial light. We found in 2015 that about 21 billions worth of development was happening right in that coastal zone. There is a tremendous amount of money to be made to develop in those areas. By the year 2100, we found, theres a threat that Sea Level Rise could, on a really bad day, flood land all around the bay exactly where most of the Waterfront Development is happening, and then theyre going to have to figure out how to invest public dollars to protect what were building right now. Tam mission bay was once a bay. It was an inlet of the bay. It was marshy and brackish and kind of shallow. Mission bay is finally getting built after many, many years of planning and agreements around infrastructure. There are some really important institutions that are there now, new commercial buildings, as well. Its an area that is rapidly becoming a part of the urban fabric of San Francisco where it really was once seen as, like, a strange and unoccupied place, but, because we planned it in an era before we were thinking of Sea Level Rise, its also very lowlying, and its one of the citys more vulnerable places to future Sea Level Rise. Scholl the problem is that the land is so valuable because its now land. Development companies couldnt not build there. There were billions of dollars in real estate to be had, but they built it in probably one of the worst places they could have. It was a bay in the past, and it most likely will be a bay in the future. Tam we picked this part of the shoreline for a study around Design Concepts for future sea levelel rise because its the lowest lying area o on the eastern w waterfront. Its the place thats goingng to flood first, and so we e thought it was the right place to spark a conversation around what are design alternatives or choices that we can make in the future atat the mouthth of missioion ccreek near r at t park. K. Well have a a really bebeautifl public space that people might not even realize is designed for flood protection. Ideally, we would have wetland habitat and parks and a place where peoplple can accecess the. We want to have a lot of commercial activity in our city. We want more housing. We definitely need more Affordable Housing to solvee somme of the bay areas biggest challenges, but alongside that, we have to do something about future Sea Level Rise. Ideally, well have a lot of people enjoying the waterfroont, and during storm events, well have some kind of way of protecting people through some kind of barrier or just because we have shallowed the channel in some way that makes it no longer super threatening when theres a super high tide. Herrrera the science is undeniablele. Climamate change is altering our planet,t, placing many of our communities at risk. We must prepare for a future that directly confronts these changes. The defendants are chevron, exxon, bp, shell, and conoco phillips. These funds will be used to pay for seawalls and other infrastructure needed to deal with Sea Level Rise. We have some real risk thats going to require some billions and billions of dollllars of investment by San Francisco on infrastructure if werere gog to stop catastrophic loss, so thats what were lookingng at. A lot of our developments are occurring along the waterfront. Our lawsuit is a part of that. I want to have this abatementt fund that has beenen created now to ensure that we can fund the Infrastructure Improvements that were going to need to ensure that those developments go forward without the threat of Sea Level Rise. Scholl politics in San Francisco i is funny. There are a a lot of really enlightened views. On the other hand, its probably not enough to prevent the Business Community from making things even worse right on the waterfront. Christensen were going to have to adapt. Its going to take that creativity and energy and capital. The question of how do we balance that economic development, the investment in protecting it, with the needs of people and the environment is one that, you know, were going to find ourselves asking over and over again here in the bay area and around the world. Announcer now please join me in welcoming sally kohn and julie lythcotthaims. [cheering and applause] julie well, hello, everybody. Welcome to tonights program. Im julie lythcotthaims, as marissa said, author of real american and how to raise an adult. And tonight, it is my pleasure to be here in conversation with sally kohn. Sally comes from a life of activism and orgrganizing, and shes now a political commentator, currently on cnn and formerly on fox. Which we are gonna talk about that. Shes a columnist, the host of the podcast state of resistance, and most importantly for our present purposes, author of a brandnew,