Is Your Town Prepping For Climate Change?

Earth (NASA) Jeff Turrentine has some insights for us in today’s onEarth blog about the fate of cities during climate change. He takes a quick look at five cities around the world that are prepping for climate change… and five that are slacking, perhaps terminally.

Turrentine’s basic premise, and it resonates with me, is that climate change will touch every city on the planet in some way before too long. The changes won’t happen simultaneously, and they will be as diverse as the landforms and cultures found there–but we’re all in for it.

Strong, decisive action—prepping for climate change the sooner, the better, and many municipalities have already begun the work—may determine whether your city survives global warming or does not. For those not yet on the road to mitigation and adaptation, time’s definitely a wasting.

From the article:

“Typhoons and tsunamis don’t care whether your most recent bond measure has passed; droughts and heat waves can’t be expected to wait around for the results of referenda or other ballot initiatives. Any city that treats adaptation as something easily back-burnered is going to get, well, burned. Or flooded. Or, more likely, burned, flooded, and parched—quite possibly all at the same time.”

Here’s the author’s summary of cities that climate change is going to make almost wholly uninhabitable, and those most actively planning and working on adaptation.

Las Vegas NV (p.d., wiki)

If you live here, do something!

  • Phoenix
  • Las Vegas
  • Miami Beach
  • Mumbai (formerly Bombay)
  • Dhaka

Johannesburg SA (wiki)

If you live here, kudos, and don’t stop!

  • Rotterdam
  • New York City
  • Mexico City
  • Johannesburg
  • Melbourne

Read the whole article if you have the chance. Turrentine presents good (bad?) stats with a heaping dose of wit.

(All images from the public domain. Earth belongs to all of us!)

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