Speaker 1
These include lawyers, engineers, architects, city planners, and finance professionals. John, in particular, says architects must lead since they can create a built environment that is aesthetically pleasing while functional in our new reality.
Speaker 2
Okay. And so, Scott, I think that leads us well to our next point, which is what can we do to adapt to the coming sea level rise? So planning ahead for sea level rise will enhance or undermine future economies depending on how communities approach the issue. Those that think strategically and engage in robust long-term planning will almost certainly be rewarded at the expense of those
Speaker 1
that think short-term and narrowly. At the macro level, John says we need to do two things, slow the warming, and intelligently adapt to rising sea levels. In his book, he distinguishes four separate categories of climate and environmental effort that we can take to reduce the impact of SLR. One is reduce CO2 emissions to slow the warming, the melting ice, and rising sea. This has to be done at a large scale, right, because it's a global problem. And we must do this to reduce the severity of sea level rise and other climate change impacts. But of course, we have to recognize what we said earlier, that the existing excess heat in the ocean is going to result in significant sea level rise and adapt accordingly. So it's not like cut off the CO2 emissions and this problem goes away.
Speaker 2
Very important to note.
Speaker 1
And the second thing is prepare for the more frequent flood events that are already occurring by being more resilient. So one way to prepare is building infrastructure that can still function in the new reality of SLR. Right. And Scott,
Speaker 2
shout out here to the architects we just highlighted. So in the Netherlands, public parks like Rotterdam's Bentham Plain have been developed as attractive, useful, quote, water squares or places that can function during good weather as community gathering places with recreational facilities. But thanks to their clever design, they actually become short-term water storage during deluge rain or flooding, which diverts the extra water from flooding the streets and homes, which is, I think, super cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1
and John's got a bunch of examples like this in his book. But we also want to mention that don't think that preparing for more frequent flood events means we just need more water pumps. Because for one, pumps can be very energy intensive. And in some places, pumps are useless because of the geography. Consider our cities like Miami are built on porous limestone, which means the water will literally rise up to the ground, making the pumps pretty useless. And Jay, this is another one where I'm just like, oh my God, I hadn't thought about the kind of geology that's under cities and how that can change dynamics here. So at a certain point as well, Jay, it may make sense to move to higher ground. John in his book talks about how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is now looking at if protecting New Orleans from a 100-year storm is technically possible, as well as economically At a certain point, you've got to think, is this worth it? Right. And this review is after the Army Corps spent $14 billion fortifying the levies. So it concluded that the system it had just put in is not going to provide the required risk reduction as early as 2023. So that's just how quickly the guideposts are moving here, where, you know, we spent all this money, we put something in that we thought would help the city, and it does to an extent. But given how quickly things are changing, we're going to need more. And do we want to keep investing like that?
Speaker 2
Exactly. It's the question of, is this money better put to other types of uses, perhaps, in a way that we haven't necessarily thought about?
Speaker 1
Like moving people. I mean, it's tough and you don't want to do that. Right.
Speaker 2
So, okay, we're talking about things we can do to adapt to coming sea level rise. We've talked about, number one, reducing CO2 emissions to slow the warming. Number two, preparing for more frequent flood events. Number three, prepare for long-term sea level rise by changing building and zoning codes and recognizing the durability of buildings and infrastructure. So we must plan for the rapid and potentially abrupt acceleration of sea level rise in the coming decades. So of course, places may not want to admit they have a problem, but they should start now and truly reap the rewards later.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Jay, I feel like we asked John, you know, for examples of places that have kind of done this, like we have a problem, we're going to do this bold action. And he had an example or two, of course, but it's not like, you know, there's a lot of people dragging their feet. Right.
Speaker 2
And Scott, it's hilarious. about to go to an example from 1889 here. Yeah. Nice. You know, we need more contemporary examples here. So this this example from from history that we ought to draw upon comes from Seattle. And it's a crazy stat. So back in 1889, Seattle committed to rebuilding its entire city in some places, raising streets by a whopping 22 feet after a great fire destroyed the area. Seattle had faced flooding for years and with great foresight, the city took advantage of that disaster as an opportunity to fix the flooding streets. You
Speaker 1
can actually do tours of the city that used to exist because some of it's still there and some, apparently there's even like a coffee shop or two that is existing in the old city. Wow.
Speaker 2
That's actually fascinating. And I haven't done that. That sounds right up my alley. More recently, and here we go, Scott, here's something more recent. Indonesia announced that it is spending millions of dollars to move its capital to a newly built city, in large part because Jakarta is actively sinking due to subsidence. We also need to build with long-term sea level rise in mind and factor that in when building bridges and such. We can't plan and build based on historical patterns. Right,
Speaker 1
because the guideposts have changed like we were talking about. And sadly, much of our existing infrastructure doesn't account for the new reality. Consider that the United States has 29,000 miles of levees that are helping protect against flooding. And these have an average age of more than 50 years old. And so they were built without present flood risks in mind. Okay.
