At this week’s annual C40 Mayors Summit in Mexico City, a coalition of 90 cities at the forefront of the fight against climate change detailed everything cities have to accomplish in order to meet the agreement’s long-term goals. Their report, written with the engineering firm Arup, lays out an action plan to deliver on the promise of limiting the rise of global temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius, and critical progress must be made by 2020.Really??? Local politicians beginning in 2017 are going to save the world from climate change?
I guess people shun learning history because it's a bummer. For instance...
In 1976, after joining the United States House of Representatives, Al Gore held the "first congressional hearings on the climate change, and co-sponsor[ed] hearings on toxic waste and global warming."
Kids, that was 40 years ago, before he invented the internet.
Yes, I know despite decades of media mirth-making about the supposed statement, former vice president Al Gore never claimed he "invented the Internet."
But on climate policy 40 years ago, he..., well, kids..., my generation failed him and you.
Simply it's past time for the nation-states to try to prevent significant climate change, and it may be past time to prevent the worst projected climate change.
Most importantly, it's nearly past time for starting to implement climate change adaption plans at the state and local level (of course I'm only talking about in those states and localities that have plans).
In truth only one federal governmental agency in the United States isactively and adequately adjusting its mission and methodology in response to the fact that Climate Change is occurring, the Department of Defense (DOD) - you know, the military. You can read a summary report they presented to Congress last year National Security Implications of Climate-Related Risks and a Changing Climate which only let's you see the tip of their iceberg (yes, that's intentional dark humor).
This is being expanded by the American Security Project's Resilience in the Face of Rising Seas proposal. As explained on the American Security Project's web site:
While coastal cities around the country, from New York to Charleston, Miami to New Orleans, have begun planning for rising seas, this is one of the first efforts that would directly tax residents to pay for resilience measures. This new tax would cost residents $12 a year for the next 20 years. If it passes, it would raise $500 million dollars that would be earmarked for new flood control measures like wetlands or other adaptation measures.The DOD, of course, cannot ignore what's going on around the world. Consider the implications of this information:
In 2008, 20 million persons have been displaced by extreme weather events, compared to 4.6 million internally displaced by conflict and violence over the same period. Gradual changes in the environment tend to have an even greater impact on the movement of people than extreme events. For instance, over the last thirty years, twice as many people have been affected by droughts as by storms (1.6 billion compared with approx 718 million).California, as the worlds 6th-to-8th largest economy (depending on the year), does have its own cap-and-trade program and other year 1990 cutting-edge environmental regulations in place. The fact is in 2008, our last Republican (!) Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued Executive Order S-13-08 which directed the California Natural Resources Agency, in coordination with other state agencies, to complete the first California Sea Level Rise Assessment Report, develop a state Climate Adaptation Strategy, and coordinate with the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) to provide land use planning guidance related to climate change impacts.
That same year the Legislature established the 9-county San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority. On on June 7, 2016, Measure AA was approved by 69% of the voters establishing a tax funding the Authority's marshland restoration program and projects "to use natural habitats to protect communities along the Bay's shoreline from the risks of severe coastal flooding caused by storms and high water levels." It's a good first step towards living with the impact of climate change.
So it's definitely time for the "more-local" governments to start helping their residents, both current and future, to adapt to the what we know is inevitable - and that means at least a 15 foot sea level rise, hotter weather, and more severe storms.
Without implementing adaptation programs over the next 10-40 years we will fail those who in 2050-2070 find themselves in severe impact areas, for instance areas where about 1.3+ million Northern Californian's and a similar number of Southern Californian's currently live, work and play. (Southern California is tougher to project, because while we can figure sea level rise impacts, heat and drought impacts haven't been adequately projected though we do already understand the wildfire problem resulting from drought.)
Note that without implementing adaptation programs over the next 10-40 years, we will be failing Americans in areas where about 2.5 million New York state residents, 7.8 million Floridian's, and over 600,000 Texans, 500,000 Georgians, and 315,000 Pennsylvanians currently live, work and play.
It is the next ten years that are critical - planning based on what we understand now should already have been completed. And it isn't just in the states that have ocean coastlines.
The initial wildfire impacts from prolonged drought are being experienced this year in the Southeast United States. States like Tennessee, which has a climate change denial law, have seen both increased flooding and wildfires. Over a decade it will get worse, much like the Southwest and West Coast states have experienced.
But climate change is a slow process, even when in geological time what's happening now seems at bullet train speed to scientists. What's happening today was irreversibly set in motion while Al Gore, ironically from Tennessee, was holding his first hearings. The choice, of course, is to plan and implement adaptation with tax money or pray for the very survival of your great-grandchildren.
Praying is cheaper. And if we can successfully pray for a large number of future huge volcanic eruptions in the same decade plus a meteor strike or two, climate change as predicted won't happen.
