When Sea Levels Rise, Who Should Pay?

Short Wave

NPR

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4.7 • 6.5K Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2021

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

Facebook's campus on the shoreline of San Francisco Bay is at risk from rising sea levels. So is a nearby low-income community. That's raising questions about who should be paying for climate change. Taxpayers or private landowners (in this case, some of the world's largest tech companies) with waterfront property? NPR climate correspondent Lauren Sommer explains in the first of two episodes.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.9	Maddie Sify here with NPR Climate Correspondent Lauren Summer.
0:09.3	Hey Lauren.
0:10.3	Hey Maddie.
0:11.3	So where are we starting today?
0:12.3	Okay.
0:13.3	Today we're beginning with a giant pile of dirt.
0:16.3	Okay I'll go with it.
0:17.6	I'll go with it.
0:18.6	Okay it's not just any pile of dirt.
0:20.6	It happens to be right outside of Facebook's campus in the San Francisco Bay area.
0:25.5	What we're standing right now is the outboard levy of the Facebook campus in the middle
0:30.0	park.
0:31.0	That's Kevin Murray.
0:32.0	He works for the San Francisco Creek Joint Powers Authority, which is an agency that
0:35.9	works on flood protection in the area.
0:38.1	We're walking on top of that levy which surrounds the tech companies, you know, brightly
0:42.0	colored buildings.
0:43.4	So why does Facebook need a levy?
0:45.7	Well, the company's headquarters is right on the shoreline of San Francisco Bay and over
0:50.4	the last decade they've built huge state-of-the-art buildings on the waterfront.
0:54.9	So the levy is protection from the bay.
	...

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