If you haven’t yet had a look, reading through the Climate Change Impacts in the United States report from the White House’s Global Change Research Program (GCRP) should definitely find its way onto your to do list.
This report was released in June 2009 and acts as a definitive leap of the US federal government to take a stand on the issue of climate change, particularly in addressing the severity of climate impacts and adaptation initiatives necessary to prepare for them. With the use of plain language and simple graphics, the report tells a very legible, poignant, and scary yet empowering tale about the impacts of climate change.
My interests in this document are particularly sparked by the prominence of the issue of climate change adaptation, a subject that is of keen importance to me as it relates to my current research work at the Urban Land Institute (ULI) as well as to my graduate thesis work in urban planning at Virginia Tech.
Over recent years adaptation has gotten much less press and general attention than mitigation in the US, but that trend might now be changing. To make sure the difference of these two categories of response to climate change are clear, the GCRP defines them as follows:
· Mitigation – efforts to reduce climate change
· Adaptation – efforts to cope with or avoid the harmful impacts of climate change
I will let the GCRP report outline the critical points and figures about climate change impacts, but it is important to point out that climate change adaptation is much more than preparing for sea level rise. The long list of global impacts also includes:
- intensified storm surges
- increased intensity tropical storms
- increased coastal erosion
- intensified drought and heavy rains
- impacts to marine and terrestrial ecosystems
- increased intensity and frequency of wildfire
- dramatic shifts in rainfall and temperature
These projected impacts are more than just plot material for next summer’s blockbuster movies – this stuff is real!
The GCRP is fairly conservative in its projections, but they do quote the IPCC data that by the end of the century “global average temperature is projected to rise by 2 to 11.5%” and the world’s oceans “from 8 inches to 2 feet.” The implications of these projections will span all of the above points, with severities depending on which end of the range temperatures rise. Either way, this is a major wake up call to kick our country’s mitigation efforts into gear and become global leaders rather than followers in our adaptation responses.
As was pointed out in a forum I attended at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) conference in early October, the overall feeling is that the US sees climate change impacts as a problem – whereas Europe (and much of the rest of developed nations) sees them as a catastrophe. Having lived in Australia for 3 years and working for the Queensland Environmental Projection Agency during that time, I can say with certainly that Australia too sees the urgency in climate change adaptation.
Australia, like many other island nations in the Pacific are not only looking at the projected impacts of climate change, they are looking at impacts happening today. Australia is suffering from the longest and most intense drought in recorded history, with horrific wildfires that make California’s look modest and recent dust storms that push dust from the Outback as far as New Zealand!
With more than 80% of Australians living within 100 km of the coast, they are also extremely clued-in to coastal impacts. Coastal impacts also get more press in Australia due to the fact that they are highly involved with international aid projects with Pacific neighbors such as Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, and Tuvalu (potentially the first country to be lost to sea level rise – http://www.acfnewsource.org/environment/Tuvalu.html.)
The US can learn a lot from Australia in regards to adaptation, both governmentally and socially. The following are a couple of interesting Australian projects to check out for more information and inspiration on the subject:
· Climate Adaptation Flagship – federal government case study initiatives.
· National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility – nation-wide collaborative that is hosting the 2010 International Climate Change Adaptation Conference.
The GCRP report is a great start, but it is time to get adaptation into the mainstream and overhauling our preparation for the impacts of climate change before it is too late. Mitigation needs to remain important, and it too needs more attention – in many instances these two responses can and must be done synergistically to achieve the necessary results. Looking to countries like Australia and the UK and their adaptation initiatives will be a helpful. However, the US needs to step above what is being done elsewhere by tapping into the innovation and ingenuity that defines our nation and taking the lead in combating this looming global catastrophe.
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