Don’t ignore climate change

This past week was a grim one in climate history. First, an international group of scientists released a long-anticipated report detailing in excruciating detail the extra damages we can expect unless we slam our foot on the fossil fuel brakes right now. A few days later, Hurricane Michael came barreling out of the Gulf of Mexico with a late-breaking intensification that transformed the Florida Panhandle into a landscape straight out of a horror movie.

We are exceptionally ill-prepared for the climate threats that are unfolding today, let alone those of the next decades. Rising seas caused by warming and rising oceans and melting ice are already bringing low-lying coastlines under threat from so-called “blue sky flooding.” And studies now show that there are plenty of reasons to think that hurricanes will get stronger and wetter as the ocean and the overlying atmosphere warm.

As the climate report indicates, we need to be preparing for things to get worse. Scientists can provide decision-makers with estimates of the rates of sea-level rise over the next decades. But we also need to consider how the natural and built environments may compound or mitigate flood risks to communities. And policymakers must decide how to allocate finite public resources to protecting lives and property.

The new climate report outlines a path for an aggressive drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels that would avoid some of the worst damages associated with climate change, and we must get started in earnest on a host of no-regrets actions toward this end. Federal action is long overdue.