Warning to readers: This is not my usual single-focus essay.\nIt is a collage of news from two coastal states with an assortment of serious natural\nhazards challenges\u2014Florida and California. In recent years, their politics has\ntended to diverge widely, but perhaps we are seeing a welcome convergence to\nsome degree around climate issues. It is about time: Both face severe and\nunrelenting challenges, and there is little time to waste in identifying and\nimplementing effective solutions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s start with Florida. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For starters, they are getting significant help from The Nature Conservancy<\/a> (TNC), an\norganization that has long performed great work in preserving open space and\nresearching the values of green infrastructure. For years, I have heard about\nthe merits of coastal mangroves in mitigating hazards such as storm surge and\ncoastal erosion. Recently, TNC employed an insurance industry catastrophe model\nto quantity the economic benefits of mangrove forests for\nreducing coastal storm damages in Collier County<\/a>, and from Hurricane Irma<\/a>, which struck\nparts of Florida in 2017. For those unfamiliar with the area, Collier County is\nin southwest Florida running from Naples on the Gulf of Mexico coast east into\nthe Big Cypress Nature Preserve<\/a>,\nwhich lies just north of Everglades\nNational Park<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To quote the TNC website, \u201cMany areas in the county received over $1 million in benefits every year\nin flood damage reduction benefits due to the mangroves in front of them.\u201d\nMoreover, \u201cMangroves averted $1.5 billion in storm damages, amounting to a 25%\nsavings in counties that have mangroves. They also protected more than 626,000\npeople across Florida.\u201d You can access the full report, Valuing the\nFlood Risk Reduction Benefits of Florida\u2019s Mangroves<\/em>, here<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n While TNC could be expected to take\nclimate change and natural hazards seriously, Florida Republican officials are\nanother matter. It is thus heartwarming to learn in\na new Associated Press article<\/a> that first-term Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a> has helped turn the page,\nalong with some Republican lawmakers, on the climate denial that prevailed under\nhis predecessor and now current U.S. Senator, Rick Scott<\/a>. It also appears\nthat Sen. Marco Rubio<\/a> has\njoined a bipartisan Senate\nClimate Solutions Caucus<\/a> launched in October. While one should not expect\nthe sort of wholehearted embrace of climate issues that one sees among progressive\nDemocrats, that is not necessary for one to appreciate the value of a return to\na bipartisan approach to an issue where Republican support (and connection to\nreality) has in recent years been woefully lacking, especially under President Trump.\nShifting public perceptions have driven political change in both California and\nFlorida, and it is about time. Southern Florida has been awash in nuisance flooding\ndriven by sea level rise<\/a>, and pollution has threatened the environmental\nviability of the Everglades. If Republicans are finding a need to appeal to\nvoters through climate action, that is, on balance, a far better thing for the\npolitical system than a hyper-partisan battle of acceptance of reality versus\ndenial. It is also not surprising that two highly vulnerable states with major\nnatural hazard threats would be in the forefront. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, California under former Gov. Jerry Brown<\/a> went all\nin on confronting climate change, in part because of the motivating impact of\nincreasingly frequent and violent wildfires and lengthening wildfire seasons.\nIf anything, current Gov. Gavin Newsom<\/a>\nmay be picking up the pace, but it is worth nothing that even former Republican\nGov. Arnold\nSchwarzenegger<\/a> has long acknowledged climate change and advocated effective\nstate and federal action in response. But let me keep this post short and to the\npoint. I recently taped some introductory material for new additions to the\nAmerican Planning Association\u2019s Resilience Roundtable<\/a>\npodcast series, for which I will soon be moderating several new installments to\nbe released in the coming year. But two new podcasts involve interviews by Prof. William\nSiembieda<\/a> of California Polytechnic\nState University<\/a> in San Luis Obispo, with planners from Butte County<\/a>. The\nfirst is already available<\/a>, in which he discusses the impact and recovery\nfrom the Camp Fire<\/a>,\nwhich destroyed much of the city of Paradise<\/a>, with senior planner\nDan Breedon<\/a>. The second interview will appear on the Resilience Roundtable\npage soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jim Schwab<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Warning to readers: This is not my usual single-focus essay. It is a collage of news from two coastal states with an assortment of serious natural hazards challenges\u2014Florida and California. In recent years, their politics has tended to diverge widely, but perhaps we are seeing a welcome convergence to some degree around climate issues. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[179,81,14,366,109,555,609,520,563,358,120,222,357,395],"tags":[1452,1447,174,1446,24,1448,1449,282,1451,680,1445,1146,1450,1453,153],"class_list":["post-1390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-2","category-disaster-2","category-disasters","category-economics","category-environment","category-floodplain-management-2","category-natural-hazards","category-parks","category-politics","category-public-policy","category-public-safety","category-resilience-2","category-water","category-wildfire","tag-bipartisan","tag-butte-county","tag-california","tag-camp-fire","tag-climate","tag-collier-county","tag-desantis","tag-florida","tag-mangrove","tag-nature-conservancy","tag-nuisance-flooding","tag-resilience-roundtable","tag-senate-climate-solutions-caucus","tag-siembieda","tag-wildfire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1391,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1390\/revisions\/1391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}