High Tide on Main Street

First published in 2012, High Tide on Main Street blazed a new trail in understanding the driving forces behind climate change and its most profound, unstoppable, and least-understood effect, Sea Level Rise (SLR).


In easy-to-understand language, oceanographer and explorer John Englander explains how SLR will become the most permanent effect of climate change. By focusing on sea level, he also provides excellent insights into greenhouse gas emissions — the forces that drive climate change.

One reviewer said: «the most understandable book on climate change I have read to date…»

While we are already feeling the effects of disastrous climate change in the form of forest fires, extreme weather, droughts, and floods — we are just beginning to feel the effects of SLR.
Sea level rise, unlike weather events, is permanent, and the science is clear. SLR is increasing faster than at any time in recorded history. And is increasing at an increasing rate. We could see several feet of SLR by 2050, and 5–10 feet (1.5 to 3m) by 2100.

The science is also clear that due to excess heat already stored in our oceans, the sea will continue to rise for hundreds and hundreds of years. Coastal property will go underwater. First, financially, and then, literally.

High Tide On Main Street not only explores the science, but also investigates the devastating economic impacts almost every industry will suffer.

But, far from being a “doom and gloom” vision of the future, Englander introduces five points of “intelligent adaptation”; in effect a blueprint for accepting what is to come and a comprehensive plan for dealing with the inevitable coastal crises.

John's second book on the same topic, Moving to Higher Ground, Rising Sea Level and the Path Forward, was published in 2021.