Global Warming

More from a short story I am working on now:

By the time the keys to the family kingdom had passed to me, our family had simplified things, focusing more on local sustainable efforts and had sold off many of its properties. We owned a few small businesses and residences in higher elevation regions in Cascadia. The region had become a desirable location, which kept property values high, and what property was sold had been for a premium, returning significantly more than it had originally cost us. The housing market had crashed for the last time when I was a kid, making California more affordable to live, but the rising sea level had reduced the homes available on the market, which, combined with the migration from the dust states had maintained high housing costs. 

People generally lost faith in the state and had withdrawn their support, leaving shells of the former institutions. Some held out, and a surprising return to statesmanship saw the role of government evolve into an institution of social guidance rather than one of force and coercion. 

Climate Change

From a short story I am currently writing:

My great great-grandfather purchased and managed the Brisbane Marina after the city sold it when it went bankrupt. It eventually became a huge revenue generating investment, one that gave our family a security most never know. Most slips were vacant for years before the local economy recovered from the crash, but rates were lower than when the city managed it, so more people could afford the expense and eventually it was nearly full. The marina sat in the shadow of San Bruno mountain facing east and my grandfather told me that it was a beautiful place to to play as a kid, running up and down the docks, exploring the abandoned boats. He loved the sea, but became wary of it as it encroached upon civilization.  

When I was little, he took me to Brisbane to show me where the marina once was. Getting to the area became difficult by four meters, because much of the 101 was under water. We could still get across the Golden Gate bridge, but had to go south around San Bruno.  

That part of the coast was barely above sea level by the middle of the twenty-first century, and grandfather saw the writing on the wall. He had watched the sea creep ever so slowly closer to the land over the years. We sold the marina at a good profit when construction began on the great San Francisco Seawall, parallel and just to the west of the Golden Gate bridge. By plus one, many of the low-lying beaches within the Bay area had already begun to disappear, with almost a meter lost by 2060. Despite a near cessation of emissions from combustion and public policy finally leaned toward renewables during the early twenty-first century, at massive cost to economic growth, the climate had continued to gradually warm, with the polar ice caps and glaciers melting and causing the sea to reclaim land it had surrendered millennia ago. By my 90s, the bay had expanded all the way to Sacramento. The only constant is change.