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The 2017 New York Times Embraces some “Climatopolis” Optimism about Urban Climate Change Adaptation
The NY Times has written a very nice article about the challenge that China's cities will face due to climate change adaptation. Here is a direct quote from the piece;
“Prosperity will ultimately belong to cities and nations around the world that find ways to capitalize on strategies of resilience against the inevitable impact of climate change. Those cities will retool themselves for new technologies and global businesses whose employees, reflecting a growing worldwide generational shift, want to walk, ride bikes and take mass transit.”
Does that sound familiar? Compare that to my writing from 2010 regarding my Climatopolis book;
“My book stresses a fundamental irony. Urban economic growth has caused climate change (think of the billions of people who are achieving the “American Dream”) but it will also help us to adapt to climate change. My optimism about urbanites’ ability to continue to thrive in the face of climate change is based on our ability to migrate and innovate. Free markets play a central role here in determining new investment patterns that will help us to adapt.”
A major theme of Climatopolis is that as climate scientists continue to make progress with modelling climate change and as we individually learn about the day-to-day challenges climate change poses for different cities, their residents will take pro-active steps to adapt to changing circumstances. Yes, the Moscow heat wave was deadly but the “silver lining” of this shock is that the city learned that it is at risk and I predict that it will make costly investments now to lower the impact of the next heat wave. This basic logic is why I am optimistic about our urban future. We have the right incentives to learn and to adapt to our changing environmental conditions.
Source: http://greeneconomics.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-2017-new-york-times-embraces-some.html
