To gauge the enormity of the task confronting California’s local governments, Blueprint concentrated on just one: Long Beach. The state’s forests already are suffering, droughts are a recurring plague and, of course, California’s coastline - anchor of its fishing industry, draw for tourists, central to the state’s sense of itself - is being radically altered by the rising sea. Caribbean islands brace for wind and storm surge that accompany increasingly strong hurricanes Central Valley farmers pray for rain or Sierra snowpack.Ĭalifornia cities and towns are squarely at the center of those challenges, because this state is both a leader in responding to climate change and particularly vulnerable to its impacts. Each area faces different tests - snowfall accumulation may be the focus of a rural Canadian outpost, while blinding heat may plague an African city. That’s the case in community after community, in the United States and across the world. It has moved beyond discussion and debate action is what is required. It is about the priorities of hospitals, the difficulties of drought, the effects of sea-level rise, even the dearth of shade. It is about increased heat stroke and more frequent fires. For others, climate change is an intellectual, or even spiritual, challenge, a reckoning with humanity’s presence on the Earth and its implications for the very chemistry of the atmosphere.įor city planners, however, climate change is a discrete set of specific imperatives. FOR SOME, CLIMATE CHANGE IS A MATTER OF POLITICS, a debate over how seriously to regard the issue, how to exploit it for advantage, how to protect the economy while fully recognizing the gravity of the problem.
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