Is the john a riley clinical of law at harvard law school. She previously was obamas assistant to the president for science and innovation policy and coled the fcc transition between his and the bush administration. As an academic, she teaches courses about Climate Adaptation and leadership. Crawford is the of several books, including captive audience, the Telecom Industry and monopoly power in the gilded and fiber coming Tech Revolution and why america might miss it. Joining her tonight is randall kennedy, the Michael Klein professor of law at harvard law school. He received degrees from princeton, yale and Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and is a former clerk to Supreme CourtJustice Thurgood marshall. He is the author of race, crime and the law a winner of the Robert F Kennedy book award and the persistence of the color line, racial politics and the obama presidency, among others. Tonight will discuss susans new book charleston race. Water the coming storm, which Publishers Weekly that crawford persuasively links the precarious position of the citys black neighborhoods to the other legacies of slavery and racism, including schools and the lack of Affordable Housing for low and middle income families. While david goodrich, author of on freedom road, that this is an important and pressing present book, presenting a clear eyed view of the inevitable track of Sea Level Rise, and how it intersects with the prius, with the historic and present issues of race in charleston. And it is a powerful portrait of the coast, the cost of climate denial coming due. Please join me in welcoming. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. Its wonderful. Be here and i guess, first and foremost, i want to congratulate on your wonderful book. Thank you so. So lets start off by. Why dont you tell everybody what your book is about . Describe your book. Happy to do it. Well, first of all, thanks to the harvard bookstore. Love harvard bookstore. Thanks to all of you for coming. Students, friends and family. Im so happy to be with you. And also, a really special to randall kennedy. This is a very generous thing for professor kennedy to do, and im truly grateful. So theres a story here. Wanted to go down to charleston, interview mayor joe riley, whod been married for 40 years in charleston and was known as americas favorite mayor. He really changed the city over those decades. And i got ready for that interview by talking. A longtime essayist and, journalist named jack hitt and jack is a wonderful man. And jack said, ask him about the water. And said the water. So i go down to talk to mayor rileys a guy. Beautiful khaki suit, little bow tie, very charming. And i ask him about water and he clammed up. He didnt want to talk about it. All he would say, its going to be very expensive. So that started me on a quest that seemed like a question that needed be tracked down. And over the course of the next four years i came the following conclusion its confederate disneyland and its about to be seaworld. So not to be too glib. The tagline really does capture a lot about this place and as if i hope do you do you read the book youll see that ive done my best to center voices of black residents of and what its like to be them, what like to live there, try to pull in all the science about whats to happen to charleston and talk the message. The takeaway from the book we really should be planning at every level of government. Charleston isnt doing it. Theyre focused on 2050. They will look any farther than that. And our government has no plan. So thats the takeaway. And im hopeful that by the end of all my jabbering about the book, someone in the biden ministration will wake up and start planning. That. There was a rave review of your book yesterday in the times and among the compliments that the reviewer gave was the following. Crawford excels at writing political cowardice. What give . What are some examples of political cowardice that you know is helping to push charleston toward disaster . As you see it . Thats interesting. Well, charleston, like many places in america, is a place of denial and boosterism and a media, a little story that captures that real political cowardice in our cities, that there was a 120 foot tall statue, john calhoun looming the city for a long time when actually you got to read about john calhoun. Hes a very important figure in the history of our country. He really felt that slavery was a positive, good for country. Charleston was so of him. They renamed their major street street in his honor after his coffin was carried down the street. Anyway he he looks he looked to me, really, when i first saw that statue, just a totem, White Supremacy that he was ghastly, horrifying. Standing up. And the mayor, current mayor john glenn burke, had all the Legal Authority he needed to have that statue down. And there were lots of cries for that over decades, but only when he felt he had no at all did he have that statue taken down. Im not one for putting everything into symbols. But that was just cowardice. He could have decades ago. Also, as they look at the waters coming, i have learned that joe riley often talked to the engineers, the army corps of engineers in eighties and nineties who were warning about Sea Level Rise and really refused to talk about it in public and to do about anything about it in public for a long until almost the end of his time in office. So those are two small examples of political that tie together. What can he do and what some interventions that would be effective in turning the tide so speak. Well let me tell you whats going on in charleston. It flooded 89 times in 2019 and 70 times in 2022. It used to flood maybe four times a year when people like jack was a kid. Water rising very quickly. Look at the Washington Post yesterday. Big piece about that. Water is rising at twice as quickly as the rest of the global along the southeast and the gulf coast. In very short order, there will be three additional feet of sea level slopping up on charleston, which is unbelievably low. Most the land in right next to the city is at ten feet above sea level or, less so a high tide plus, maybe a little wind blows that water up, up the low country. So what could they do . They could be planning now to be very public about the risks facing. Everybody in this region and planning now to with other cities and in the area to be building places high and dry and places affordable, places for people to live in the future. Thats difficult for charleston as a region even to do because the incentives and all programs from the federal level down to the state level, on the local level are headed in exactly the other direction. Theyre all aimed at recovering from disaster, not planning ahead. But the first thing to do would be to acknowledge the risks and be very public about the need for federal assistance. Federal money to help rescue the citizens of this place, particularly lower income and black residents of charleston who cant afford on own to make what is going to be a grief transition to, another place. Lets intervention. Well went to visit my mom today at cadbury, where she is not very far from here. She just nightie and when you are at least 65 medicare pays for Hospice Services shes in hospice that involves a huge network of people that come and visit her do Different Things for her theres nurse theres a social worker theres a spiritual advisor. It just feels like all helping hands helping both my mom and our family through a period of very difficult transition. Well we could doing the same thing for coastal residents all around the country we could have a huge spray a very wellcoordinated wellplanned programs that would help in what is going to be a very painful transition over the next decades. It would take a lot of planning. The only country thats thinking about this right now is the netherlands. They are willing to say that its likely that theyll see 6 to 8 feet by 20, 100 and that their existing very expensive walls and other infrastructure wont make it to beyond 2050 or so. And that time not to waste money by planning ahead for people to germany. Thats the tagline for them. Lets move to germany. But but at least to not get in their own way by paying for very expensive infrastructure thats in the place that will create path dependencies that are painful. So at least we could be doing that, but they really stand alone in the world right now for doing that kind of planning. Oh, it shout out to my assistant caleb quinn, who is here, raise your hand, caleb. Who would double check that fact for me recently . So i talked him if if i got that wrong the subtitle of your book is race water and the coming storm. I want to focus on the first word in your subtitle so, you know, your book charleston race, water and the coming storm i want to race now in your remarks thus far race has come up and your book i mean its race consciousness is is very strong i mean from your title to your identification of various characters in the book and in your analysis a very strong emphasis on race question question why are you so race conscious in your analysis seems to me that you cannot talk about charleston in the south without talking about race and in particular, the role everything i teach is my students here know has something to do with whats government good for and its very clear that from the beginning, in lots of ways, government and the rule of law in this region has aimed at either keeping black residents in place or actively making it difficult for them to lead Thriving Lives. So that plays out over centuries, as youll see in the book. Lets just think a few just a few examples. South carolina was alone among the british colonies began with enslaved people from the beginning. Charlestons entire economy was on the backs of enslaved labor. Very, you know, maybe cheap for them to make a ton of money, cotton and indigo and other crops. The gold people who were freed after, the war and Promised Land theyd come from west africa have been enslaved in charleston and then the experts on rice and indigo thought that they would be owning land after the civil war. Well, in fact, the land was taken back from them. Reconstruction was destroyed, and now being further displaced by Economic Growth and development. Look at the city of charleston. Whipped slaves on behalf of their owners when the owners didnt the stomach to do it themselves and literally poured salt in their wounds. So the civil war began in charleston because. The secessionists found it more sympathetic place in charleston. They did in columbia. And the food was better food and hotels were better. Civil war. Joe. But which is true also. So race is entangled everywhere. And its also tied very tightly to the question infrastructure back to what is government good for sewage services, electricity, clean water reached black settlements, charleston or didnt reach them for a long. Places on the peninsula that were drained tended to be the white areas of the city. The city even brought in planters in the thirties to talk to them about where black areas should be very clearly designated on maps and white areas and systematically underfunded. The black areas in all kinds of ways and that these same patterns are playing out today when it comes to protection from Sea Level Rise so and our whole government this way frankly that because everythings done on a cost benefit analysis and the white areas tend be better off they get protection that black areas wont get. And so you know there are lots of ways that race plays an important role. And it struck me that what had been a majority black city as recently as the seventies, when riley came to be mayor, had flipped to be a tourist paradise. Thats the disneyland part. Theres 7 Million People who visit every year, mostly white people really enjoying the food and not thinking very hard about where the money came from or what the whole thing represents. And theres been a kind of antebellum Industrial Complex going on in charleston for a long time, tourism focused was an entire White Society singing spirituals the thirties for fdr, to his great delight. So anyway, theres a lot of entanglements between charleston and race that continue today and deeply underlie what the city is even willing to talk about when it comes to stories. I want to push back a bit and you know your book as you know weve i mean, pow, pow pow, pow palmetto tie. Im from South Carolina. No question. But that race and racism and racial, you know, is large in the history of South Carolina. My question, though, is if were thinking about ecological. Policies now, if were thinking about ecology called disaster now, you were the way you put it makes it seem as though we have policies ongoing right now that are fairly described as racially discriminatory. Thats what i think somebody would infer from what youre saying. Is that what you mean . And if thats true, tell me, what are some of those policies . Thats terrific. Well, because of history, School Practices like redlining black neighborhoods for, you know, investment by banks and mortgages and not allowing black communities build wealth and housing and underfunding things like drainage and, you know, other things that relate to Sea Level Rise. It turns out that we know that people of color disproportionately suffer from the ravages of Climate Change. And in this flooding question is stark that often black residents settled in lower areas. So theyre not were not starting from a level Playing Field at all. So theres a heightened discriminatory effect of what we might view as an even handed policy. Lets just protect the places that are worth war. Well, the effect of that to leave behind huge swaths, the population and this is my point about whats government good for. I did a lot of this with internet access. Everybody with a belly button should have internet access. Everybody with a belly button should be able to live in a thriving, protected, safe place. And yet we dont take that approach. Seem to think that only the most valuable residents be protected or get to by what should be basic infrastructure. So this book is all about what basic for human life and what do people need to thrive and . It is apparent to me that we are not treating that question with sufficient seriousness when it comes to level rise. Okay, i want to stay the race issue again, so i know, you know, you youre a doer. Yeah. You you want to effect change . Mm hmm. Question does talking so much as you do in the book i mean, you know, does talking so much about race get in the way of your reformist, you know, impulse i mean, after all. You could frame it the way frame it. On the other hand, you could frame it differently. And does does the the race question bring in a level of contentiousness that works against reform . Thats been my question. Yeah, its a good question. I think that. Ultimately what im what im most focused on is that we are failing to plan for everybody. And in charleston, the voices that arent heard are black voices. And so its not me talking about race in book. Its people who live there talking about what its like to be them and is apparent that theres a theres a of a smooth, blind, uncaring approach tightly tied to whiteness frankly and also to a feeling of complacency that needs to be disrupted. So i am actually happy to have this be a contentious and difficult conversation. It should be. We have left a lot of people behind historically continues to happen and. What we need to be doing as a country is acting much more as a collective. And when people are in in danger or harmed, we are capable of enormous empathy and compassion. Remember. Right after katrina, the reaction to katrina was not based on identity, was based on concern for the human beings that were left there. Most of them happened to be black. Right. And that actually brought attention to this issue. So i think its essential to talk about race with this subject and i am proud bring in bringing such a contentious story to light. The theres lots of. You know, reading your book book. You you bring to the fore a lot of disturbing facts and a lot of disturbing, you know, omissions. Yeah. But you also have in your book, you you profile people who are trying to like, say, early turn the tide. Right. Who are of those people . Because you you talk about people and you obviously admire them who name a few. Somebody i admire deeply is reverend joseph darby, who is an amy in charleston. And often quoted in the national press. He a wise, calm, smart, funny guy who spent hours with me. I had the great privilege of profiling him in this book. And he is a leader for lot of people in charleston and is softer voiced leader. I think, who is able with and agility to penetrate almost any room. Actually, if i could read to you a little bit from reverend darbys statements, i actually brought the book to i got to talk to you about it. He he shed so much light for on on things here is talking about what happened after the mother massacre. He says that black people in charleston order to survive and go on with their lives gotten used to simply waving unfeeling and astonishing behavior on the parts of the whites around them. The forgiveness expressed by black in Mother Emanuel Ame Church following the 2015 massacre was completely misunderstood by so many. Forgiveness doesnt mean everything is, okay, darby says. It means youve got people whose faith was nurtured in slavery, people whose ancestors were slaves, people who, for the most part, unless they could escape, had to endure a life that was filled with brutality with rape, with division of family, with. How do you ensure that and not strangle the person whos doing that and know that youre going to get in return. You learn to say, im going to leave you in gods hands and you move on. What the people at mother emanuel were saying. They were not saying just i forgive. They were saying, im to leave you in gods hands. And let god deal with you. Thats, you know, i want you all to meet reverend darby is a remarkable man. Okay. There was a another person in the in book, i think in the aclu, lawyer helped tell folks about this person. Michel mapp. Mm hmm. Michel, when i met her, she was leading the South CarolinaCommunity Loan fund. She was, in effect, arranging for all kinds of grants for new businesses and housing across the state, running a huge business. She left that business to go to law school at the age of 50 because she was noticing that there were so many unfair structures in South Carolina. And couldnt work on them without, she felt having a law degree. And so she just with great humility she began law school and so i was talking to her all the way through law school. Michel mapp should be mayor of. Shes this again determined soft voice, very conscious person who sees again with humor the ridiculousness of the structures around and his doing your best right now, working on eviction patterns. The aclu notice that Matthew Desmond wrote that North Charleston separate city, where a lot of the black residents, charleston, were pushed out when gentrification happened in charleston. North charleston has the highest rate of addiction in the nation. And Michelle Mapp is working on that. But meanwhile, she helps this narrative by talking about what its to navigate the different portions of charleston in own skin. Mm hmm. In just one moment, were going to go to questions with the audience. But one last question from me. Okay. So you you in your book on, an equivocal note. On the one hand, you write at page 294, when the bubble bursts and the crash and the wealthier of charleston pick and leave, it is the poor residents who will be stuck there with increased, inadequate and unsupported infrastructure. Increasingly salty drinking water, increasingly fetid and disease streets. There are cholera spores. The water around charleston. Thats on page 294, on page 295. You say this. We now have the capacity to ensure that the transition to a healthier, more Sustainable Future is deliberate and thoughtful. My question. Are you realistically hopeful about the prospects for charleston and the rest of the coastal cities, the world . Well, i to quote michelle map here. She said, if charleston can change, south can change. And if the south can change, america can change. We have to be that our country is capable of great, that were capable of planning ahead. You know, we built the hoover dam. We were capable of thinking about railroads stretching across country. We went to war. We are collectively capable of great action. We forgot what its like to actually to act as a collective. Were stuck this individualistic, you know, profit seeking world, but we this is really an economic story and a survival story. Its not a climate story. And we saw with the 28 crash and with covid, what its like to try to struggle crises without planning. We know this one is coming. We have the to plan for it. The science is strong. We have all the money in the world. We have the best scientists. We have the best political people. If they wanted to risk their political necks by working on this. The point of this book is to give people the courage to act on what is already known about the world and what is changing alarmingly rapidly, especially the east coast, the southeastern coast and the gulf of mexico. Great questions, comments, objections. Yeah, i was my student here. Ill call. Hi, professor crawford. Professor kennedy had both of you in the last couple of months. So great to thank you so much for doing the event. My question, professor crawford, about whether you think the lack of action is more due to not understanding or wanting to understand Climate Change or is it more about how slow its which has been like a big part. I think dont know if you would object to that, but like, you know, covid happened and, everybody reacted right. Like climate is happening. You know more slowly over a matter of years. And its hard to attribute sometimes, though some scientists believe its very easy to trivia night take that position. Im just wondering if the lack Political Movement is due to just like political refusal because of it being moving than other phenomenon where, we have taken greater action. Thanks for that question. I really appreciate it. So humans are capable of enormous selfdeception, and i think that notwithstanding how strong the science is i spoke recently, the emergency manager of a big state on the eastern seaboard who told me that he goes to all of his towns, shows them to science, the pictures of their downtowns with five feet of water in them shows them what was about to happen in a matter of a couple of decades. We see not very far away. They say, oh, my god, we got to do something in the meeting. He goes back, comes again. Two months later, they say, oh, my goodness, in the next meeting they cannot act. Because even between meetings, its a sunny day, kind of forget about it. And just say, well, that must have been an anomaly, though. Theyre theyre rational mind. Knows that it isnt. I think it take a series of sustained for United States to take this more seriously just as we we knew that covid was going to happen, Something Like it was going to happen and. Yet we didnt do the planning in advance that we could have. So here we have a chance to do it. But i dont think denialism is actually shrinking. Its only denialism in your financial interest that continues to stay in place. There you go. Yeah, lady. There very much. Thank you so much. Im from North Carolina originally. And my question is about racial disparities, fema Disaster Relief. So one of the responses to that is to redistrict and create maps that are more updated about where is biggest risk of flooding, but also the product of that is that home values also increased for folks live in marginalized areas. So how do you approach that as a policy . You know, not trying to push people out of communities because the home values rise but also realistically represent the risk they face . Well, we just dont know about this. And you like humor. Fema maps are hilarious because theyre really out of date. Theyre often not updated. They dont for climate in the future. They dont account for rainfall all. Theyre done in a sort of ad way as far as we can tell. So they are not great for something. 50 of the houses that should be listed in the flood are not. So a big problem. Theres a Company Called first street foundation, a nonprofit that actually that is putting out quite accurate maps, individual homeowners. So you can figure it out. But many states dont. Disclosure laws about the reality of Flooding Risk and that most people dont know what the real risks are. Heres my take on this entire question. It should be up to individual homeowners to try to assess risk or how long it makes sense for them. In particular are to stay. We as a country need be planning to decommission areas while supporting financially the people who live now to make this transition. Thats the way to do it. To say were, going to pay you back. We have we have the money. Do whatever we care about. Were going to pay you over, you know, this much but youve got you should take this offer because the amount will go down. You wait longer and. Were not going to be providing water and Sewer Service after x of years, but have it be very deliberate well stated. So that the people who are in place right now are not wiped out by this. I agree with you, its very complex, but lots of things are complex and. This one involves the safety. Millions of americans and we right now were leaving it all to the mad max kind of future no thought about it at all. What can i call . Yeah, over there. Do it and can get the boom there. Thank you so much. This is fantastic. I actually have two questions. And my first one is that typically, as you mentioned right in this case, government is putting into tackling issues as they arise, but not planning ahead. And governments are often slow to plan ahead except in areas where they are. Particular incentives, maybe economic incentives. I work in tech and a classic example is the semiconductor industry, where government is investing in the future and in this case, what would be your example of how we can get some incentive, particularly in this instance, where that on maybe the demographic groups that, the government particularly is paying attention to, to respond with the right policy options. So can we learn from any examples where we have been able to mobilize the right policy responses, the future, because we know they can it. But whats the incentive . And the second question is, i guess is one instance, charleston is one case across many cities across, america, that will have similar issues. And i read this really fantastic article in the times about migration due to climate and coastal migration and people moving more inland in the states. What do you think will be the wider, i guess, impact as people do migrate into potentially other cities and . Also, is there an opportunity, charleston, to find allyship in similar communities that will have the same issues when sort of making that case to government . Apparently about two or three questions. You know, thats great. And i want to mention the article you read. Theres a wonderful book out right now that you must read called the great displacement by jake biddle and who i recently met. We were on a panel is talking about this vast climate migration, which is going to happen voluntary or involuntary and again and i like maybe im just feeling like planner these days so im going to start with the migration question. The Developers Already know this. Theyre buying a much more accurate data so they can figure out where to build in advance to, make money in the places where people are going to go. So why couldnt we actually say it will be a matter of, you know, government policy and support to help places in minnesota, wisconsin and western mass get ready for the kind of infrastructure theyre going to need to support these new populations. Theyre going to need, you know, energy, water electricity, Affordable Housing. And that takes lot of, i think, government intervention. For me, this is just basic infrastructural thinking and semiconductor theres are like infrastructure. You need that for absolutely. We needed the internet. Absolutely everything we funded that. And now theres a lot of money to be made. Everybody with private industry and and adequately incentivized and plan with government. So for its like getting ready for a war. But the war is instead building safe, dry and not too hot places for people to live. So i think theres a lot of opportunity there actually. This really is an story because did you know that about 200 billion in coastal real estate is overvalued right now and that there are all these people bet on the big short who are betting on the collapse of that market as, the banks and the insurers and fannie mae all get their act together because right now the banks are saying not our problem, the risk we shove it onto fannie. Fannie mae Just Announced sort of last week that they were going to assess climate risk in their portfolio. You know, so its not being taken into account. The insurers just quietly leave so they dont have to be involved or becomes wildly expensive. So no part. Our Financial System at the moment is pricing in risk but they are all going to get it suddenly and that will have like covid lots of infecting effects on our entire economy and im afraid the global economy. So if we want to avoid weve got lots of incentives do a better job in planning ahead for places for people to live as a matter of infrastructure and our own economic survival. And if, you know, if Everything Else goes south just, say we want to do better than china because theyre going to have shanghais in big trouble. Lots of coastal cities are in trouble. And so far they are also theyre talking about river flooding and avoiding that. But not so much about these places exposed to the sea. So id love to talk to you more afterwards. These are all Great Questions and i see these the tech questions which i spent many years working on as very aligned with Sea Level Rise issues, actually. As joint student. So thank you so much, professor kennedy and professor crawford, for for doing this. Im really looking forward to reading the book. I had one question, you know, like you said one of your big focuses on what can government do well and unfortunately you know, at least as an outside observer, it seems like a lot of these policies are sort of in the environmental space in particular are sort of january 21st policies. They began, you know, on january 21st of one administration, they end very quickly in the next administration. So i was just wondering, you know, what are things you what policies are there, if they exist, that can be sort of implemented now soon that will be administration brief. Thats a great and actually randi was asking me whether theres any redemptive moment in this book and i think there is its when that person in the Biden Administration wakes up and says, im going to work on this every day, and to make that position open, someone who coordinates the agencies, theyre not just doing reactive Disaster Relief on which we waste billions of dollars is often misspent. But in fact, thinking about planning ahead and have that position and that staff and that function stay in place, that that would make a big difference any individual policy. But the sense that this is a whole of government issue and not relegated to some Climate Bureau but instead what is the countrys future kind of. I know that sounds so large and abstract as to be untenable, but we we are capable, again, of doing doing projects. And this is a particularly big one. We know mean just. Were back to charleston for a second. We know that beginning in 2050 or so, theres going to be a very sharp uptick, Sea Level Rise there and along the rest of the east, 3 to 4 times faster, the velocity of change is going to be really rapid than the rest of the globe. So we actually have an opportunity, look ahead and try to manage, change and help people make the transition through it and will be demonstrating that to the rest of world. So of it as like clean green energy, the whole industry, were going to get off the ground. Suddenly, all at once, but instead planning for careful transitions with this sort of hospice like approach, i got a question, a little compare to charleston. To boston. Oh well, there are lots of similarities. Its not on the well. Okay. Both cities a lot of feel built on trash and rubble and nature wants your land back much more as a for you know protective measures could be taken boston has boston has really been a leader with its climate ready. However its, dorchester plan is separate from rest of its climate ready boston plan, which always strikes me as just what do you what are you guys doing there . Whats that all about . And enormous focus and need for property tax. Thats a commonality between the two. So the seaport. Why do we have a seaport in boston . It we need the property tax all the both cities rely almost entirely on property. Its not their fault. The state set it up this way and so just as recently finished the seaport area no Public Transit and right exposed to water so to charleston my voice goes up in incredulity is planning for an Enormous Development on a former pier on the east side of the peninsula the whole Development Plot used to be in the cooper river and now theyre saying its going to be 1200 apartments in hotel rooms and new condos. Theyre doing as quickly as possible because need to get it on the on the books fast for their tax rolls also for a sense of growth to develop. Theres their commonalities and their i think that boston is really aware of these Equity Climate fairness issues in a way that charleston doesnt even give lip service to really they. Yeah. Thanks so much to both of you and my question concerns the human side of this my understanding of the political issue is partly its not an especially politically go to politicians say hey i have an idea im going to help people move away from their homes that they love and they cherish now. Of course, thats not to say its good policy. Seems to me a real kind of morally questionable policy. We have fema, national, the federal government ensuring and basically subsidizing people in places are not safe for them to live when wont. But i think at the root of that is a human opposition to leaving peoples homes where their families have been generations where they have memories and relationships and cherished lives. And so my question is whether you have insight and just to reflect on conversations youve had with residents of charleston as they grapple. On the one hand the real threat to their lives and an ability to stay in this place a recognition that that is a very serious pressing problem and its not getting any better. Its going a lot worse with the fact that they really have ties there and may not want to leave. Yeah, i really appreciate the question and i, i often frame this in terms of grieving the attachment is so profound and so deep but there was never a solid land, solid line between us and what couldnt say. Im firmly on on ground and it will always be ground is going to change things. Change. This is changing really rapidly. And so it might take that string of disasters to get everybody to start thinking about it differently. But its actually very risky to keep things exactly they are. And that attachment may extend so far that people will want to stay in places that have been basically abandoned by their municipalities. The streets are are flooded. There isnt electricity. They may just want to hang on there. And i, i am hopeful that we make it so attractive if somehow to find a community, not move alone, but move with the community elsewhere, that that eventually happens. But youre right it is it is a deep human attachment. I think that theres a theres a Tipping Point that you get to eventually, even with a place youre attached to if all of your neighbors are gone and if its just flooding all the time, you might be might be willing to leave. But right. Still said i see a lot of recognition of this. It is full of grief. And to take this as a merely technocratic challenge would be a huge mistake. Which is why i like to bring in the hospice, of course, much more like guiding and assisting, helping and nudging and talking and listening and and thinking of things in terms of big network of community and life, not just a house. Just ill give you a second question, but if theres somebody else has one, anyone else have one . Maybe you do a second question. Okay. Sorry, i cut you off. Go right ahead. I was just going to say that, i think in terms of grief one of the things that seems difficult to me is that to the extent that poor and africanamerican people have to bear the brunt of this, that they then are bearing the brunt of kind of the emotional toll adapting which seems to me kind of a really cruel extension of these inequalities. So you have someone who speaks beautifully about this, call it patient battle, who visited the Kennedy School recently and is actually from lower louisiana where she had to watch land getting whittled away at and their whole family has to pick up and move and it is horrifying. And also if you dont have flood insurance, you get very little from fema and its never enough rebuild and. It takes forever to get a buy out of your house. It could take between five and eight years for somebody to actually buy up. And then the amounts are really. So its the broken programs and the way they treat people without means are horrifying. But again, for me to treat this as only a story of immoral activity would not be enough, has to also be an economic story that we have an opportunity to keep a thriving country doing a lot better. 40 of our population lives along the coast in the United States, something almost half of our gdp is created. Our coasts. So it should be in our interest to be very careful about the next that we take discuss. The discussion thus far has been almost its been very focused the east coast. Yeah is it any different on the west coast . Its bad to but and actually weve seen in california enormous resistance to any kind of use of the word managed or treatment. Were reading about this. They dont want to hear it. Whats the word . Hope the buzz word could be manage. I prefer to talk about strategic relocation, not just to be funny, because retreat seems as if youre giving up, but actually you with your community should have a place to go. And there has been in California Property owners have they dont want to talk about leaving but if a imposes lets say a rolling easement saying if the bluff decays, youve got to move way back, Property Owners have to comply with that so they are complying with in california but level of Sea Level Rise is less on the quite a bit less on the west coast, but it is on the east coast. So its different are there any places you compared boston and charleston and bostons doing in terms of planning . I would say in terms of are there places that are doing better than boston . Well you might say venice did its best, but you guys saw the article about the very, very expensive that they built that costs so much to raise and lower that theyre not sure they can keep it going or that its going to be tall enough after a few years to keep Sea Level Rise at bay. And if its up all the time, my god, then you turn st marks square into this sort of fetid lagoon. So wouldnt be great for the city. So they did a lot of planning, but perhaps their planning was insufficiently courageous because they werent actually trying to look far ahead enough to what was going to happen and i think ultimately were all going to learn around the world that building a wall doesnt do it . Because you never can protect your entire coastline. Never, ever, ever. And the wall in order to make it high enough to protect you, life becomes very unpleasant behind it. And you have to pump out all the water thats on you over that wall. So it just becomes and like people 8500 years ago who had to walk away from the north sea once land. Right. They all had to walk. They found comfortable on the what is now the coast england and built big houses and had lots of friends. It might be time for to do something similar. Were just we feel as if or permanent and were locked in to where we are but thats thats just not the case and it hasnt been the case other humans who werent as attracted to condos. We are so. Yeah. Yes. Are there any sense of dramatic here proposal youre suggesting anywhere in the country is anybody working in these terms. Well would say weve had some relocations. Very small communities, indigenous communities that have over decade it takes way too long to do it but they have and they do take this holistic approach of talking to the entire figuring out where to go, making sure that everybody moves or at least feels the opportunity to move. But those have been very small scale. What needs to happen. Is something much bigger. But we know we do have successes to build on on the east coast, on the east coast and also there have been some river someplace, soldiers grove, wisconsin i think comes to mind. They took a whole town next to a river and up because, again, this isnt a completely coastal story. Most of the story is coastal, but river. Flooding is also a tremendous problem in the midwest and other places so so. Oh, one question. No, marianne, no. Go. Please. Wait, wait, wait, wait wait, wait. Here comes the boom. I thank you so much. Thank you both so much. I just thinking about the word relocation and how that has been used throughout u. S. History and how much. Loss there is in relocation. This is kind of building on desire as question as well im wondering from your conversations with Community Leaders of whom were cultural leaders as well, how they are thinking about moving their traditions and their Community Practices and, history with them as they leave the literal place they inhabit now . Well, the first step for especially the the gold geechee communities that talked to along the coast would be to make sure the really rich white people have to leave to that, theres not going to be that they leave and then their land is redeveloped by billion Dollar Development and more tourists. So part of it is a feeling of fair treatment, but with a lot of sadness they can imagine living elsewhere. They would lose a lot of the traditions, many of which to do with water are torn away. So but in the end, their grandchild will have a safe place to live. I that when at our best thats how we think about this that the trappings of life the stuff doesnt matter as much as the Thriving Lives of the generations that will come after us and we just give you a disturbing quote to end all. I recently heard quite famous english climate climatologists talk about the arctic circle, which is its already at three degrees above preindustrial levels. You know, we keep talking about one and a half. Its already three degrees above. He said he has a big plan to clouds and cool everything down. But he said our civilization has been here for the the one we think of ourselves and now its been here for about 5000 years. We have to be able to think beyond 100 or 200 years now because if we dont, we really this is the end and that that couldnt be right. We cant imagine that our civilization to keep going, but in order to do that, were going to have to take very seriously the lives of everybody around and not just our stuff. Okay. Thank you very much. If you ever. And on behalf of great grandchildren, thank you all for joining us tonight. What a great crowd. And thank both so much. Really appreciate you. Can give him another round of delighted to see you here. A conversation with peter glick, host on three pages of water and very exciting taking the stage here the first time in San Francisco as my cohost around a brochure. So im really excited about. Were in the San Francisco bay