Generation Hot

Yesterday I attended a SPUR lunchtime presentation on how to prepare our cities to inevitable climate change. Journalist Mark Hertsgaard discussed his book, HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth, which makes the point that "we have to live through global warming, even as we halt and reverse it."

One of the key items coming out of his book is that we, as a people of planet Earth, countries, but also cities and individuals, must think about the problem in a new way. While we try to reverse global warming, we must also install protections against its unavoidable impacts. That means deciding as regions, do we build levees around our airports, but where can we not afford to build protections. The best quote he mentioned crystalizes how to move forward, "avoid the unmanageable and manage the unavoidable." It comes from the title of the Sigma XI-United Nations the subtitle of the report "Confronting Climate Change" by the Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change. I think I have some report reading to do.