So first id like to respectfully that we here, San Francisco, are based in the alamo, which is the traditional unceded lands of the colonial people. And we pay respect to elders both past and, present. I want to thank robin as a veto Robin Mccloskey has a veto for hosting us tonight. Her grandfather, edward built this building in 1925. And weve been have had wonderful events up here that will continue this summer with a great party for the silent Film Festival which. Robin is a benefactor. Lets say that so Christina Gerhardt is with us who did this amazing book which i think some of you have already is associate professor, founder of the Environmental Humanities Initiative at the university of hawaii at, manoa, former bear and professor in environment and the at the high meadows Environment Institute at Princeton University and a permanent senior at the university of california, berkeley, and where she previously professor gerhart has been awarded fellowships by the fulbright commission. The National Endowment for the humanities, the Newberry Library and the Rachel Carson center. Shes held visiting appointments at columbia university, the Free University in berlin, and also at harvard. Shes an environmental journalist covering the annual u. N. Climate negotiations, domestic Renewable Energy legislation and Sea Level Rise, all with a focus on environmental justice. Shes been published under the name tina gerhart and grist story, the guardian, the nation and sierra, among other venues. Shes editor of Climate Change, hawaii and the pacific review with Duke University press. Right now. And shes the author of change atlas of islands a rising ocean. And its so fantastic. This book has come to fruition is finally here and its beautiful. And i hope you all will be able to spend a lot of time with this important book. I want to thank you, christina, and i want to thank you press for producing this important and beautiful book. We also want to welcome our guests tonight in conversation with professor gary hart. And thats christina hill, Program Director of the institute for urban and Regional Development and associate professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the university of california, berkeley. And also ezra david romero, who reports on climate for a key news. So without further ado, tina gerhart. Thank you, patrick. Follow your model in terms the microphone, use and sitting, which is not usually how i teach my classes. Here we go. Okay. Can you hear now try again. Try it again. Try it again. Try it again. Testing. Testing. I cannot hold it closer to my mouth because of this event. Is filmed by cspan and it will not work as is the short answer to that. Yeah, but thank you for the suggestion. So im Christina Gerhardt im going to be going which is the name thats on the on the book. Im going be going by tina tonight because the name i also go by is a bunch of, you know, and im going to try to avoid confusion with Kristina Hill by having these two separate names, our usages. Thank you, patrick for the generous introduction. The honor of being your last in person event at the mcgrath ski loft. Thank Robin Mccloskey acevedo for hosting us and for hosting events for the green arcade throughout. Its such an honor to be here this evening and to have this launch for seachange change take place here. Thank you, patrick, for your support of seachange throughout. Well, im to open with a lot of thanks. Theres a lot of people to thank know its always said that books are not created in isolation if it is i mean nothing as if its ever true of a book, then its definitely sea change. Im so very grateful to so many for the uplift of sea change as todays pub date approached, but also throughout my gratitude to the entire team at the university of california. I get emotional. Thanks cspan for documenting this for their support and the excellent and im going to embarrass you here. But i mean to celebrate you, i call your name. Please stand up to be recognize too. Kim robinson editorial. To my especially niels who prefers unwavering enthusiasm for a sea from the start to across finish line. To leah chandra for her excellent design work that makes the book look so, which so many have commented on. I believe may not be able to be here because she has two young ones to attend, but its its leah that makes the book look as good as it does tonight. Asher pulliam collins for pulling everything in the final rounds. For most. Congratulations to natasha on your so welldeserved appointment as a editor of environmental studies and geography. To julie van pelt, who is also not here because shes up the coast and amy smith bell who is contracted out to work as a copy editor. Ive had a copy editor this amazing if think copy editors are not in place anymore at presses go to u. S. Press with your next book. She did the most remarkable and they caught edits both big and and this is after i with my ocd compulsion for detail and im not going to go on like this throughout whole thing you went through it and my stepmother is also thanked in the acknowledgments and she has an eye for detail and she went through the entire book to. So thank you, julie. Thank you, amy. To alex dunne. Teresa fuller, jolene tah and the entire team. Jolene, are you here. To emily grand staff. Whos these are people on the east coast . Emily grand staff who is publicity director on the east coast, javier perez, contracted out for radio and martha, whos responsible for publicity. The uk, thank you for your work. Its been amazing to work with these three people over the last month to to anyone that you see press work not yet met and whose name i have not called thank you. See change is a collaboration about which in a moment i want to thank roy for the amazing maps and sea change. A lot of people have commented the beautiful maps and see change. Molly roys incredible first cartographer and i had the good fortune work with her. She couldnt be here today because she and her wife just had their second child fairly recently, and she allowed me to share about that. And the fact that she was carrying the child this time. Thank you. Zena directs me for the fabulous scientific illustrate missions included in seachange. Thank singer. Together. The maps and the illustrations help to visualize the science thats in the book. Ill talk more about the whole approach to the book later. Thank you. Travel trevor paglen, who is not here, whos also published by u. S. Press for me to reprint some of your maps and art in seachange. Thank you to all the colleagues who invited me to give dozens of guest lectures seachange including Lisa Ruth Elliot who brought me to shaping San Francisco. And to the editors who published related environmental journalism over the years. Thank you to my Solid Community here in San Francisco to people who not be here today. And that includes girls poppy burk, roxanna dunbar, artists and rebecca solnit. And thank you to those who are here fellow uc press author rachel baranski, whose atlas of the bay area should definitely check out if you havent and and you also to laura lent Patrick Marks missy neary gents sturgeon a. C. Thompson and who also couldnt be here and michelle vickovich. Thank you to all the islanders who gave generously of their time for and shared insights and expertise use on the islands in interviews. Thank you to the islander who generously granted permission reprint poems. Its almost anthology as much as it is a book that i authored. Its such a collaboration and thank you. Lastly, not least to the ocean and to the bay, does not get in. Applause. Its just a lot of fellow bay swimmers here go south and the lesser known but but more powerful sister to the dolphin club. Okay, you know who you. Sea change is a symphony. It weaves together maps, art poems, scientific and short essays to share islanders, histories and culture as well as the impacts of and solution to Sea Level Rise, sea change centers, the voices of islanders who are predominantly but not exclusively, black and indigenous. For this reason, i asked patrick to bring some of the writers with whom i was fortunate to spend a lot of my covid time in conversation and who i was reading i was thinking about. Ive asked patrick, bring out a lot of not only sea change, which is for but a lot of the other works that were very important, my thinking and sea change. So youll see that symphony of voices reflected on the on the books for sale in the table. Im happy talk more about the book but i did bring people to be in conversation, to be here tonight and im hoping through our joint conversation is that youre going to learn about level rise and its impacts on islands through the kinds of things that i will share that i put into book and through, because their expertise is really Sea Level Rise with a focus often, but not only on the bay area in california. I want to bring the voices of some of these islanders that i just mentioned. So lets hear inuit poet. I can aviana an indigenous martial. Islander. Kathy. Janelle kirshner. Share more about the impacts of glacier and land i smell in greenland, in the arctic ocean, and how it affects the Marshall Islands in the pacific ocean. I open the book with greenland because its the largest island in the smallest ocean and the land ice is melting. There is what is responsible for Sea Level Rise. Its one of two reasons for Sea Level Rise. The poem that youre going to hear follows the first chapter, which is about greenland. One of the points that im trying to make is that we are all connected and i know thats a cliche, i know it gets bandied a lot, but the melt that happens in greenland impacts the Marshall Islands. The things that we do, the global north where we are all the decisions that we make have those kinds of impacts too. So those are the kinds of threats that im hoping to bring out tonight. Patrick, im going to let you take it away with the tech. I do, too. Sister of ice and snow. Im coming to you from the land of my ancestors. From atolls sunk volcanoes, undersea descent of sleeping giants. Sister of ocean and sand. I welcome you to the land of my. To the land where they sacrificed their lives to meet my impossible to the land of survivor. Im coming to you from the land my ancestors chose by logging on Marshall Islands, a country more sea than land. I welcome to go destination greenland the biggest island on earth with me. I bring these shells that i picked from the shores of begin the atoll and bring a dome in my hand to hold rocks from the shores of the foundation of the land. I call my home. With these shells, i bring with me a story of long ago. Two sisters frozen in time on the island of william. One magically turned to stone, the other who chose that life to be rooted by her sisters. To this day, the two sisters can be seen by the edge of the reef, a lesson in permanence. With these rocks, i bring a story to countless times. A story about a swimmer and the mother of the sea who lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean. This is a story about the guardian of the sea. She sees the greed in our hearts, the disrespect act in our eyes, everywhere, every stream, every iceberg. Her children. When we disrespect them, she gives us what we deserve. A lesson. Respect. Do we deserve the melting ice . The hungry polar bears coming to our island on the colossal icebergs hitting these waters with rage. From one island to another i ask for solutions from one island to another. I ask for your problems. Let me show you the time coming for us faster than. We like to admit. Let me show you airports underwater bulldoze reefs blasted sands and plans to build a new atoll forcing land from an ancient sea, forcing us imagine turning ourselves to stone. Can you see a glacial. Screw . The weight of the worlds heat. Ill wait for you here on the land of my heart. Heavy with a continuous thirst for solutions. As it was, this land change while the world silent. Sister license. No. I come to you now. In grief, mourning landscape always wants to change. First to was inflicted understand their Nuclear Waste dumped in our waters on ice. And now this. System of ocean sand. I offer you these rocks the foundation of my home made the same Unshakable Foundation and connect us, make us stronger. These colonizing monsters distilled to this day devour our lives. The very same beast that now to say who should live and. Through ice and snow im honoring these shows and the story the two sisters as testament as that despite we are told we will not leave will choose stone we will choose be ruins in this dream forever from these we ask for solutions from. These island we ask, we demand at the wall sea beyond a cease. I see these two prepackaged convenience there slick dream for young and belief that tomorrow will never and this is merely a convenient truth. Let me bring my home to yours. Lets watch as miami, new york, shanghai absent dam london. Rio de janeiro and osaka try to breathe under. You think you have decades before your home province beneath tides we have years we have months for sacrificed us again before watch from your tv screen screens see we will still be breathing while you do nothing nothing. My sister and i also these rocks as a reminder that lives matter more than them power the life and demands the same respect we all do to make these issues will affect each. And every one of us. None of us is immune, and that each and every of us has to decide if we will rise. So a magic switcheroo is going to happen behind me, is going to be a stage shift happening here for act two. Today, im going to be joined in conversation about the impacts of Sea Level Rise by Kristina Hill and ezra romero. Kristina hill is associate of Landscape Architecture, Environmental Planning and urban design, uc berkeley and dispatch mentioned Program Director of the institute of urban and regional. Her Research Identifies unexpected impacts of Sea Level Rise in cities focusing on the impacts of rising coastal groundwater on underground infrastructure. Her research and consulting have shaped in the San Francisco bay area as well as in new orleans, denmark. In germany. Christina lectures intern nationally about Sea Level Rise adaptation and is working currently on a book that explains how to use landforms, not concrete as an urban adaptation approach. She received her ph. D. From harvard university. Ezra david romero is climate reporter for kqed news. He covers the absence and access of water in the bay area. Think sea rise, flooding and drought. For nearly a decade, hes covered how warming temperatures are altering lives of californians. His reported farmers worried that their pistachio trees arent getting enough sleep. Families desperate for water. Yeah, families desperate water. Scientists studying dying sequoias and alongside containing wildfires. His work appeared on local stations across california and nationally on public radio shows like morning edition here and now all Things Considered and science. I welcome them both to me on stage. Few. Like. So were going to start a question for the audience before we take from there. Who knows what the impact of Sea Level Rise with Sea Level Rise from like what is the source . Why do we Sea Level Rise . Anybody anybody . Shannon because the warmer water the were space. There you go. Warmer water up more space. And the other reason would be the one that was mentioned earlier right, the land ice melting on greenland right at the poles. Okay. I want to take it from there and just talk about some of the impacts of of Sea Level Rise. So on an island, tara toys which and this is discussed obviously in sea change and island territories i talk a bit about the impact of Sea Level Rise being the salinization or the saltwater content that comes the soil and also into the freshwater aquifers. So a lot of islands have subsistence and fisher folk. Theres and in the book sea change that have varying gdp is. But some of them are very wealthy but most them are really, you know, low gdp. And so instead of going to the grocery store, the people who are on these islands rely on what theyre fishing, what theyre farming. So when you have the saltwater in the salinity is upset, that means that their for their sustenance is upset they also rely on the rain falls from the sky for lot of their Drinking Water. So if you have low lying atolls, you dont have a lot of rivers linking through them, which is often a source of freshwater. And so one of the sources of their Drinking Water is the rainwater. They have rainwater catchment systems to catch that water and then they have freshwater aquifers. And again, if you have this saltwater inundation coming in that can really impact the amount of fresh Potable Water that