Pacifica: a poem on coastal resilience

Pacifica critiques “coastal resilience,” a term often used to describe efforts to protect coastal communities from sea-level rise and coastal hazards. The most common methods of achieving “coastal resilience” in the United States include hard armoring and beach nourishment, strategies that both come with cultural, economic, and environmental consequences (Griggs, 2022). Hard armoring, the construction of artificial structures like seawalls, uses concrete, boulders, or similar materials to install a barrier between the ocean and the land (McGuire, 2013). These barriers protect the coast in the short term but can have myriad, negative consequences, such as “coastal...