The startling scenes of urban devastation in Texas following Hurricane Harvey and in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina following Hurricane Irma are a microcosm of what climate change holds for major cities throughout the world—and a wake-up call for the United States that it is time to get serious about climate adaptation both at home and abroad.
The horrendous impacts of Harvey on Houston, Beaumont, Port Arthur and other Texas communities and of Irma on the Florida Keys, Tampa, St. Petersburg on the west, Miami on the east and Charleston on the north have revealed in the starkest terms the need for both short and long-term adaptation to climate change in urban areas. The short-term recovery cost alone for Texas is likely to cost well over the $80 billion that Sandy required in the New York area, and long-term relocation of critical roads, water treatment facilities, power plants, industrial facilities, and entire neighborhoods will almost certainly bring the total cost closer to $200 billion. Recovery in Florida, which was better prepared because of lessons learned from previous hurricanes, will surely run to tens of billions as well. Fortunately, Texas, Florida and the U.S. Congress have, collectively, the financial resources, technical skills and public and private institutions to carry out both near-term recovery and longer-term resiliency planning (whether they will do so is another matter). But what of the many small and large cities in the world—especially in developing countries—that are already experience equally or greater climate-related destruction but do not have access to any significant resources to help their residents survive floods, droughts, heat waves and loss of basic services like water, electricity, hospitals, transportation and police?
