Environment

How Designers Are Responding to Rising Sea Levels

A haunting photo exhibit shows the steps people are taking to adapt to the angry ocean.
A woman walks along a new sea wall in Sendai, Japan, after a tsunami crushed the region in 2011.Paula Bronstein/Annenberg Space for Photography

As the global climate continues to warm, sea levels around the world are growing higher and higher. How will the millions who live on coastlines respond to this grave threat: Tax breaks for boat owners? Everybody moving to Nebraska? The spontaneous growth of dorsal fins?

With damaging floods and steamrolling storm surges, we're already getting a taste of what the havoc that swollen oceans can bring. And in a great-looking exhibit at L.A.'s Annenberg Space for Photography, we can see some of the unique, crafty, and sometimes frantic things that civilization is doing to cope with the looming waterworld.