The damage doesn’t stop at the front door. Roads, railways, water pipes, power lines, the reserves underground — the report says rising seas are already grinding away at all of it. Health pays a price too. Flooded sanitation carries disease, and the UN makes a point of the mental strain that living through this leaves behind. Where the sea gets in, wells and soil turn salty, and drinking water, farming, and irrigation all suffer for it. The scale is not small. Close to 770 million people — roughly one in ten of us — live within five metres of the high-tide line.
