About 150 steps from John Imperato's Southern California home, pavement gives way to an ever-shrinking stretch of soft sand. Imperato lives in Del Mar, a small, affluent town just north of San Diego. He spent his life savings to live here. He wanted to raise his son like he grew up, withing walking distance of the sea. Del Mar is a picturesque place; its name means "of the sea," in Spanish. That's becoming increasingly true. Del Mar is one of countless coastal communities in California and across the U.S. that is seeing the impacts of climate change and preparing for worse to come. By midcentury, tens of millions of U.S. homes and billions of dollars of property are likely to be destroyed or made unusable by increased flooding from rising seas and storms, according to a recent climate report by the U.S. government. "Sea level rise and storm surge could completely erode two-thirds of southern California beaches by 2100," the report warns. That leaves residents of seaside towns like Del
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