I’m grateful to everyone at Little, Brown for working so hard to launch this book into the world. Thanks to my editor, John Parsley, who believed in my work from the beginning, shaped it with patience and insight, and guided the book almost to the end. Thanks to Reagan Arthur for all her support and enthusiasm, to Michael Noon for pulling everything together, to Barbara Perris for her thoughtful copyediting, and to Gabriella Mongelli for her good-humored replies to even my crankiest emails. I’m grateful to Lauren Velasquez, Carrie Neill, and Elizabeth Garriga for making sure this book wasn’t swamped by the media tides.
Heather Schroder, my agent of many years, understood even before I did that this was a book I needed to write. Every writer should be so lucky to have someone like Heather guiding their professional lives.
As a journalist, I’m also lucky to have had a home for the past two decades at Rolling Stone. I’m grateful to Jann Wenner for many things, but especially for his unwavering belief that climate change is the biggest story of our time. For their editorial wisdom (and sweat), thanks to Jason Fine, Sean Woods, and Will Dana, who wrote the headline for the first story I ever published at the late, great Manhattan weekly 7 Days, and who sent me on so many great journalistic adventures over the years. I’m grateful to Alison Weinflash for always being there when I needed her and to Elisabeth Garber-Paul and Coco McPherson for helping me keep my facts straight.
While writing this book, I spent two years as a Fellow at New America, where I benefited greatly from workshops and exchanges with other Fellows. For a journalist like me, being a Fellow at New America is like being adopted by an extended family where everyone works in the fields all day and feasts on big ideas at night. I’m especially grateful to Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kati Marton, and Peter Bergen for their support and friendship.
This book would not have been possible without the help of many scientists who gave me far more time and showed me far more patience than I had any right to expect. I’m deeply indebted to the late Peter Harlem, a Vietnam War veteran and dedicated scientist who shared his LiDAR elevation maps of South Florida with me and drove me around Miami in his MINI Cooper while narrating the story of sea-level rise, past, present, and future. Thanks to Hal Wanless for introducing me to Peter, for taking me into the mangroves, for all those meals at Burger Bob’s in Coral Gables, for sharing his deep knowledge of Florida geology, and for having the courage to articulate what’s at stake, even when it would have been much easier to keep quiet. I owe a special debt to Andrea Dutton, who gave me an insightful tour of coral fossils in the Florida Keys and helped me with many questions about ancient ice and seas. Thanks to Jason Box for taking me to Greenland, where I saw not just melting ice sheets and calving glaciers, but a passionate scientist at work. Brian McNoldy, Keren Prize Bolter, Donald McNeill, Erin Lipp, Philip Orton, Jochen Hinkel, Ben Strauss, Richard Kopp, Richard Alley, Peter Clark, Rob DeConto, and James Hansen were all generous with their time.
Many people helped me in big and small ways during the three years I worked on this book. It’s impossible to name them all, but I would like to single out Sheryl Gold, Roni Avissar, Philip Stoddard, Albert Slap, Wayne Pathman, David Martin, Bruce Mowry, Alastair Gordon, Barbara De Vries, John Stuart, Richard Saltrick, Michael Gerrard, Karen O’Neil, Susannah Drake, Manuel Rosa da Silva, Dan Zarrilli, Nancy Kete, Jo da Silva, Henk Ovink, Richard Jorissen, Miranda Mens, Peter Persoon, Thom Woodroofe, Dean Bialek, Megan Chapman, Andrew Maki, Brian Deese, Jon Finer, and David Keith. And a special thanks to Brian Palmateer, Pat Palmateer, and Jeff Kelleher for the music of hammers and saws that inspired me to keep typing when I really wanted to go to the beach.
I owe an especially big debt to Reinaldo Borges for sharing his infectious love of Miami; to Dan Dudek for his friendship and his wisdom about climate policy; to Kevin Knobloch and Nicole St. Clair Knobloch for their wit and whiskey; and to Jim and Karen Shepard for reminding me, at a particularly difficult moment, that writing is supposed to be fun.
This book is dedicated to Milo, Georgia, and Grace, who proved yet again that putting up with a distracted and work-worn father is no barrier to growing up to become remarkable human beings.
Finally, I owe a great deal more than a thank-you to Pernille. While I was writing this book, she rode all the big waves with me and helped me avoid the sea monsters below. I am grateful for the countless lunches, her editorial insight, the long walks around Lisbon and Porto, and her appreciation of the beauty of the world we live in—and the beauty of the world that is yet to come.