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By century's end, hundreds of millions of people will be retreating from the world's shores. Nuclear reactors will be decommissioned. The greatest cities in human history, abandoned. This is the story of our rising seas.
In a shocking cover story for Rolling Stone, Jeff Goodell predicted that within the lifetime of many of the readers of The Water Will Come, Miami as we know it today will vanish.
This is not a reckless hypothesis. From island nations to the world's major metropolises, our coasts will drown in the rising waters, which will soon inundate and transform our landscapes. There is no simple way to protect ourselves from this fate – no barriers to erect, no walls to build – to prevent the iconic cities of our time from becoming modern Atlantises.
The Water Will Come is the definitive account of why this will happen, how this will happen, and what it will mean. Grounded in fact, science, and on-the-ground reporting, it will tell the story of the coming great drowning, in the vein of environmental classics in this mode, like The World Without Us.
Jeff Goodell is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and the author of five books, including How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate, which won the 2011 Grantham Prize Award of Special Merit. Goodell's previous books include Sunnyvale, a memoir about growing up in Silicon Valley, which was a New York Times Notable Book, and Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future.
"Jeff Goodell's latest contribution to the environmental cause paints an eye-opening portrait of humankind's dilemma as temperatures – and sea levels – continue to rise. The Water Will Come brings together compelling anecdotes from all over the globe and shocking expert assessments that should make the world's few remaining skeptics reconsider. Read this book for a reminder of the stakes – right now, today – and why we have to work harder, faster, to address the climate challenge."
– John F. Kerry
"Jeff Goodell has taken on some of the most important issues of our time, from coal mining to geoengineering. In The Water Will Come, he explains the threat of sea level rise with characteristic rigor and intelligence. The result is at once deeply persuasive and deeply unsettling."
– Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of The Sixth Extinction
"Sea level rise is coming. We know this as clearly as we know thermometer measurements, the melting point of ice, and the law of thermal expansion. Jeff Goodell's book cuts through the fossil-fuel lies, and is a warning I hope we heed while there's still time."
– Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
"Even if we could halt further growth in greenhouse gas emissions today, we would remain locked into several centuries of sea level rise ahead. Jeff Goodell's The Water Will Come shows us how this stark truth will unfold, right down to individual human experiences."
– Laurence C. Smith, author of The World in 2050
