Cities can plan ahead for global warming

According to Jack Fellows, cities have more than one incentive to plan ahead for global warming.

Jack Fellows: They’re going to gain knowledge on how to deal with climate change. And that knowledge is going to be exportable to other areas and to other countries.

Fellows, who spoke with EarthSky at a science meeting, is a leading expert on climate change and public policy. He works with The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Jack Fellows: It’s critically important for communities not to plan for current climate, but for a climate that might be two to four degrees warmer than it is today.

Fellows suggested that cities around the world will have to cope with sea level rise, droughts, and floods. He thinks that if cities plan ahead, they might be able to sell their adaptive knowledge and technologies – technologies affecting things like water infrastructure, bridges, wind farms, and solar farms.

Jack Fellows: You know, where are you going to put those? How are you going to build them? I don’t think we even really know all the opportunities that are going to exist. But just right now, there’s a pretty good sense that it’s going to be substantial, billions of dollars.

Join EarthSky in celebrating The International Year of Planet Earth. Thanks to the National Science Foundation and US Geological Survey.

Our thanks to:
Jack Fellows
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Boulder, Colorado