Hold on — let me pull this marine layer back over Santa Monica... OK, cool.
What was I saying? I forget. Fog brain. You lose track of details when you’ve been hanging out between the Pacific plate and the North American plate for a few geological epochs. Is this August? Or May gray? Does time even exist when you’re pounding shale into sand?
Now I remember: I’m taking a quick break from slowly eroding Big Sur. It’s because people have been talking about me lately, and not always nicely. The occasion seems to be that the people of California and I have hit a big milestone: 50 years of the California Coastal Act.
Fifty years, dude! For a state law, that’s ancient. For me? A blink. But honestly? It’s been the best half-century of my life. (Well, at least
since the pre-human Mesozoic era).
Before 1976, as California’s post-war population boomed, everyone was carving me up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Gated communities, private beaches, industrial hellscapes, seawalls that starve my surf ... it was so un-chill. Then the people of California — bless your sun-drenched, hearts — passed Prop. 20 in 1972. The state legislature made the Coastal Act and the Coastal Commission permanent in 1976.
If you want to know how that miracle happened, watch Todd Holmes’ terrific documentary, “To Save Our Coast.” Holmes — a super-cool surfer and UC Berkeley historian who collects oral histories from environmentalists and cannabis growers — shows how coastal protection was propelled by college kids in Birkenstocks, and local conservationists working phone tree. Holmes’ film should remind you that my history is defined by what you don't see — the eyesores that were never built because folks gave a damn.
For 50 years, that law has had my back — and yours. It’s why you can surf Trestles, hike the Marin Headlands, and eat fish on Moonstone Beach without paying a toll to a hedge fund.
The secret of the act’s success is the Coastal Commission, which doesn't care if you’re a rock god or an oligarch. When The Edge from U2 spent years trying to build a massive five-mansion compound on top of my fragile Malibu bluffs, the commission said nope. When Bob Dylan tried to fence off his Malibu spread, they stepped in. Even Elon Musk had to learn that blasting massive SpaceX rockets out of Vandenberg Space Force Base still requires respecting my fragile ecosystems.
So, you can imagine my annoyance when MAGA politicians and their oil exec buddies try to tear the whole system down.
Case in point: Texas-based Sable Offshore just restarted that oil pipeline west of Goleta in Santa Barbara County. Back in 2015, when it was owned by Plains All American, it ruptured near Refugio State Beach, spilling over 100,000 gallons of crude over my beaches, tidepools, and kelp forests. To help Sable get away with this, the company’s Epstein-adjacent friends Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have launched a federal investigation into the Coastal Commission and, by extension, the supposed “environmental extremism” of you, my fellow Californians. They’re trying to bypass our state’s authority so energy companies can befoul me.
How am I handling all this? Honey, I’m bedrock. I’ve survived tectonic shifts, ice ages and millions of years of pounding surf. You think D.C. fascists in suits scare me?
Sure, Trump and his ilk build whatever they want over Florida’s Atlantic coast. But me and my West Coast brothers? We straight gangsta. (OK — jagged gangsta, but you get my continental drift.) We got rocks. We got cliffs. We got an empowered public fighting for every inch of sand. So, this old coast is gonna stay the sexiest thing in California, no matter what.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, the tide’s coming in, and I've got salt spray to fling around. Catch you on the flip side.
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: California's coast doesn't fear Trump | Mathews
