Cities, states work to minimize climate impacts
Posted on April 29th, 2008By Lauren Morello
Climatewire: Climate change could radically transform the streets of downtown Miami over the next century. Just 3 feet of sea level rise could swamp existing beaches and turn large swaths of the city into oceanfront property, according to an analysis released by a Miami-Dade County task force.
That is one reason the county — which stretches from Florida’s southeastern coast to Everglades National Park in the west — is among a handful of U.S. communities that are trying to prepare for the effects of global warming. With little precedent to guide them, they are developing plans to minimize emissions and to handle higher seas, changes in rain and snow patterns, more wildfires and potential influxes of “climate refugees.”
In Miami-Dade, that could include a broad swatch of actions ranging from converting the area’s taxi fleet to hybrid vehicles to limiting coastal development and setting strict new height rules for roads and buildings in likely future flood zones. Those steps were part of an initial plan approved earlier this month by county commissioners.
In King County, Wash. — home to Seattle — the focus on adaptation has translated to an aggressive 10-year effort to shore up levees on the Green, Snoqualmie and Cedar rivers. Scientists predict that over the next century, global warming could switch more of the area’s precipitation from snow to rain, increasing the potential for severe floods.
And in the tiny town of Keene, N.H., the local government is creating a new sustainable design and energy efficient building code to help reduce the town’s carbon footprint and reduce the chance of future structural damage from severe weather.
States are also taking action. Alaska, California, Florida, Maryland, Oregon and Washington are among the states developing adaptation plans, according to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
It is a dramatic shift from just a few years ago, when talk of adaptation was seen as slighting efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions, experts said.
“If we’d starting talking about adaptation in the early 1990s, it would have seemed like we were giving up,” said Kim Lundgren, northeast regional director of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, which runs one of several new programs to help communities plan for the changing climate.
Adaptation, once a ‘taboo’ subject, is getting political traction
“But unfortunately, we’ve gotten to a point where we just can’t talk about mitigation only,” Lundgren said.
Even as recently as 2006, adaptation was considered by some to be “a little bit taboo,” said Steve Winkelman, director of the transportation and adaptation programs at the Center for Clean Air Policy.
It can also be overwhelming for communities already grappling with energy efficiency and emissions reduction. “We had one city that said, ‘Wait a minute, I can’t get my hands around mitigation yet, now you want me to start doing adaptation?’” Winkelman recalled in a recent interview. “But this is about getting in front of the issue.”
Now, with interest growing in adaptation, a handful of nonprofit organizations and the federal government have begun developing blueprints to help guide communities that may be interested in the topic but are daunted by a lack of climate expertise or manpower.
“Even internationally, there’s only really a dozen solid examples of adaptation strategies at a local level,” Lundgren said.
Perhaps the most prominent entrant is a guidebook released in September by King County, Wash., that walks local officials through questions to determine how climate change will affect their water supplies, land use, transportation networks, public health, and economic development, among other areas.
ICLEI’s Climate Resilient Communities program is helping five other communities — Keene, N.H.; Fort Collins, Colo.; Miami-Dade County; and Homer and Fairbanks, Alaska, — to develop adaptation plans based on King County’s example.
And a set of larger metropolitan areas, including Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, King County, Miami-Dade County and Toronto, is doing similar planning through the Center for Clean Air Policy’s Urban Leaders Initiative. Last month, the program announced a $900,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.
The federal government is also getting involved. NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, located in Asheville, N.C., is working with the University of North Carolina to develop an adaptation guidebook aimed specifically at city planners.
It is an acknowledgement that “the battle for climate change is going to be won, to a large extent, at the local level,” said Scott Shuford, Asheville’s former city planner and the author of the new NOAA guide. About 50 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation and buildings, he noted — two things local planners grapple with daily.
At the same time, the new wave of guidebooks is important to help local officials consider those familiar topics through the lens of climate, Shuford said. “Their attention is divided among a variety of issues. Climate change is important, but anything we can do to help bring it to a higher priority and incorporate it into city planning programs is going to be helpful.”
States have ‘very coarse’ data to work from
Already, common themes have emerged.
One hurdle many communities face is finding climate models that project the future at a state or local scale, rather than nationally or globally.
“We urgently need an improved science base for decision-making,” said David Carter, coastal program manager for Delaware’s Department of Natural Resources. Carter, who is overseeing development of his state’s coastal climate change adaptation plan, said most states have “very coarse” data on coastal elevation and sea-level rise, for example. Meanwhile, federal agencies largely focus on national climate models.
In Miami-Dade County, planners solved the data problem by working closely with scientists at three nearby schools: the University of Miami, Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University. The city of Chicago took a different approach, hiring modelers to analyze its climate vulnerabilities.
Another difficulty can be convincing local officials that adaptation is something they know how to do, once they have scientific projections in hand.
“People say they don’t have any adaptation experience,” Winkelman said. “We say, ‘Sit down with your director of emergency management and ask what you’re going to do if floods come twice as often or twice as high. Plan that through.’”
And it still remains to be seen whether the adaptation plans will be an easy sell to city councils, county commissions and other elected bodies that control local purse strings.
‘What is the cost of not acting?’
In Miami, city commissioners approved initial recommendations for adaptation Tuesday night — but implementing those steps will require the commission to develop and approve separate bills to define new programs and set aside money.
That could be a tough sell, given the state’s overall budget difficulties, said Nichole Hefty, coordinator of Miami-Dade County’s climate change program. State lawmakers are considering a bill that would cap property taxes and revenue at all levels of government.
“The state is really under a terrible budget crunch, and that’s translating to the counties,” Hefty said. “Some of these [adaptation steps] are certainly going to require additional expenditures. You really have to point out the cost of inaction.”
Jim Lopez, deputy chief of staff to King County executive Ron Sims, agreed. “Part of the calculus is, what is the cost of not acting?” he said.
Shuford, the former Asheville, N.C., city planner, said he is trying to help local governments see adaptation as an “economic twofer.”
Steps such as identifying populations, including the elderly and homeless, that might have a harder time coping with extreme weather are “no regrets” actions, he said.
“Folks can continue to do ‘no regrets’ stuff and put it under the umbrella of climate change, and start figuring out where there community stands with regard to more aggressive action,” he said. “But no matter what mitigation efforts we institute today, no matter how exhaustive they might be, we are going to have climate change that is going to require action.”