Pirate's Cove

Can you guess what’s coming?

How cities can adapt to climate change without starting over

Local governments make infrastructure decisions all the time – rebuilding roads, expanding housing, and updating public services. A new proposal argues those everyday choices could also become some of the most effective climate actions communities have.

Instead of treating climate adaptation and emissions cuts as separate goals, the approach urges cities to link them.

By “urge” they mean force

The pitch starts with a reality check. Many cities aren’t planning for climate change as a distant possibility. They’re already responding to it.

They’re dealing with storms, flooding, heat, and shifting population patterns that force practical decisions about where people live and what infrastructure can handle.

“Local governments are already dealing with the impacts of climate change,” said Christopher Galik, a professor of public administration at NC State.

“There are more extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and flooding, which force municipalities to make decisions about how, where, and – in some cases – whether to rebuild.”

First, there aren’t more. However, because of expansion with poor planning it looks like more. Streets, sewers, etc, that are not set up for the number of buildings and cars. Instead of putting in some single family homes they build massive apartment and townhouse complexes. There is no way for the normal rain to run-off correctly, so, you get flooding. Clearcut properties, all the concrete and paving instead of ground. Tiny young trees replacing old growth. Giant factories, storehouses, and so forth, all jammed in. Limited roads. We have a big problem in the South with this where growth radiates out from the center in a circle, limiting primary and secondary roads. It’s the problem of land use. I’ve seen floods where I never saw them before because of new apartment complexes. Anyhow

The power of forced decisions
Municipal change is rarely easy, even when it’s clearly needed. Updating zoning or construction requirements can trigger fierce debates, and it often costs money up front.

The paper argues that climate disruption, ironically, can create windows where change becomes more realistic because the alternative is rebuilding the same vulnerabilities again.

“Instituting new policies and regulations that govern zoning, construction requirements, and so on, can be expensive and politically challenging,” Sanchez said.

“But if communities are already having to build or rebuild in response to climate change, implementing compound resilience policies may be more feasible.”

In other words, you will comply, Comrades. Like it or not, you will comply. It all sounds so non-authoritative, but, that is what they want: total governmental control.

Read: Say, How Can Cities Adapt To The Climate Crisis (scam)? »

Hmm, there’s something interesting here

Capitalists Want You to Stop Worrying About Climate Change

Andreas Malm and Wim Carton have an enemy, and it’s not “climate deniers.” These authors acknowledge that the original Big Oil brand of climate denialism — which rejected the scientific fact that through the burning of fossil fuels humans emit carbon dioxide, which in turn warms the planet — is now less prevalent than a newer denialist argument, asserting that “climate change exists but it is not much of a problem.”

Nor is their enemy as broad or systemic as “capitalism,” although the authors have half-jokingly described their book as a sort of “readable IPCC report of a Marxist nature” and advocate goals like the “infliction of serious material costs on fossil capital.”

For these professors at Lund University in Sweden, the authors of the new book The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late, the enemies du jour are the “rationalist-optimists.”

Um, they wrote a book, with the intention of making money via a capitalist system, right? Let’s skip through all the cult propaganda to the end

There is no path to net-zero emissions without discomfort, without the stranding of assets, without people and corporations losing money. While there’s certainly a role for CDR, and perhaps maybe even SRM one day, we must cut emissions above all else. With decarbonization at the fore, we can then — as a report from researchers at American University puts it — focus on how much CDR we can do well.

Doing CDR well means building CDR as a public good, marshaling massive public investment and policy — perhaps via a federal carbon authority — to deliver removals outside some make-believe free market. We need to ensure removals are publicly monitored and verified, set removal targets that complement but don’t replace emissions cuts, and sharply curb the use of CDR for enhanced oil recovery.

Unsurprisingly, tons of government. The article is in Jacobin, which is a seriously far left Socialist (really, far far right, because Modern Socialism is authoritarian) website. Anyhow, pushing ‘climate change’ sure seems like a Modern Socialist thing if it’s not a capitalist thing, eh?

Read: Bummer: Capitalists Want You To Stop Worrying About Climate Doom »