To the editor: The Los Angeles Times recently portrayed the erosion of Pacifica’s city pier as a climate “reckoning,” with Bay Area leaders demanding tens of millions in federal and state emergency funds to address what the paper framed as the wages of human-caused climate change (“El Niño turns crumbling California pier into climate battleground over what to save — and who pays,” June 16).
There is a more honest story here, and it begins with geography.
Pacifica sits atop some of the most geologically unstable coastline in California. Its bluffs are soft, erodible and have been retreating for as long as anyone has been watching. The 1997-98 El Niño inflicted serious damage on this same stretch of coast. None of this is new, and none of it requires a climate narrative to explain.
El Niño is a natural oceanic and atmospheric oscillation that long predates industrialization. Attributing a single storm cycle — even a powerful one — primarily to greenhouse gas emissions requires rigorous attribution science, not a convenient news peg.
To be precise: Incrementally rising sea levels do raise the baseline from which storm surges operate, meaning a given El Niño strikes somewhat higher than it would have historically. That is real science. But it is a marginal amplifier of a preexisting problem rooted in geology and bad planning decisions — not the cause of it.
The story California has been avoiding for decades is this: State and local governments permitted development on geologically hazardous coastline, deferred maintenance on aging public infrastructure and now reach for federal emergency dollars to avoid accountability for those choices. Climate change is the framing that makes the funding seem politically viable and absolves the decision-makers who created the exposure.
Californians — and federal taxpayers — deserve better.
Drew Campbell, Dallas
