Ecowatch: The sea will not wait – and neither should we

An archive photo of the town of Pacifica, south of San Francisco, ground zero for the issue of coastal erosion in the United States. The combination of an ocean surge and a king tide caused high waves, and some homes and apartment buildings were lost to the forces of nature. — CAROLYN COLE/Los Angeles Times/Tribune News Service

FOR most of my working life, a sea-level rise has been spoken of in the future tense, a problem for our grandchildren. That language is dangerously out of date.

The water is already here. It is in the wells of villagers in coastal Kedah whose drinking water has turned salty. It is in the streets of Shah Alam and Taman Sri Muda in Selangor, where the December 2021 floods rose to 4m in places and displaced tens of thousands in days.