Planning & Adapting to Climate Change
“It will not be cheap or easy” - Vicki Arroyo on Ted Conversations
Take ten minutes to get a global perspective on the implications of climate change, in TED Conversations with Vicki Arroyo, Executive Director at Georgetown-State Federal Climate Resource Center.
More frequent natural disasters, from tornados and hurricanes, to droughts and heat waves, are challenging families, businesses, insurance companies, military, and global economic markets.
Farmers face droughts from Asia, Africa, to the American Midwest. Fatalities from heat waves in Europe and Russia have numbered in the thousands. Investment in local farmers in developing countries, like Ethiopia, help build ways to conserve water and insurance for the droughts, in order to build credit, build business confidence, and build economies.
Energy-efficient, raised homes in New Orleans, were designed by Brad Pitt to withstand storms and hurricanes after the rebuilding effort. The Community Church is set to become the first Energystar church in the U.S., thanks to solar panels, reflective paint, and other sustainability innovations that will allow them to sell electricity back to the New Orleans grid.
Arroyo urges governments to look at existing legal policies that can accommodate change, such as retrofitting water treatment sea run-off in San Francisco, aesthetic raised subway ventilation grates in New York, or in Illinois, where the green roof of Chicago City Hall captures rainwater, saves energy (and money), keeps the building 71˚F cooler than other buildings, and reduces the emissions that accelerate climate change.
In closing, Arroyo leaves us with this: “Adaptation cannot be left to the experts…It’s up to us, to look at our homes and our communities, our vulnerabilities and exposures to risk…and it’s up to us to plan and to prepare and to call on our government leaders to do the same, even while they address the underlying causes of climate change. There are no quick fixes, there are no one-size-fits-all solutions we’re all learning by doing, but the operative word is doing.”
