Breakthrough

Like Hurricane Katrina before them, the wildfires that raged across Southern California gave Americans a terrifying look at what life on a hotter planet is going to look like. While it is impossible to lay the blame for any specific fire on global warming -- just as it is impossible to blame global warming for any given hurricane -- we know that higher temperatures lead to drier forests and more intense and more frequent forest fires, just as higher ocean temperatures lead to more intense hurricanes.

The time has come to take the need to prepare for the impacts of global warming in the present as seriously as we take the need slow the pace of warming for future generations. Even if we were to radically reduce our emissions tomorrow, planetary temperatures would continue to rise for many decades, and perhaps centuries, due to the several decade lag time between when we emit carbon into the atmosphere and when warming occurs.

Just a few years ago, arguing for a strategy of adaptation to global warming was viewed by most environmental leaders as defeatist – perhaps because the only people arguing for adaptation were the same people who argued against preventing it. But now, everyone from the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations Panel on Climate Change to last year's seminal Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change commissioned by the British government have joined the insurance industry, which will pay out over $1 billion for the California fires, in acknowledging the need for an aggressive strategy of global warming preparedness.

Every U.S. city and state should immediately undertake a comprehensive review of the likely impacts of global warming on their region, evaluating potential risks from things such as worsening natural disasters and reduced water supplies. Emergency planners should evaluate preparedness to respond to disasters. Regional planners should evaluate zoning and other regulations with an eye to keeping housing and other development out of harm's way. Every American should have access to maps detailing the likely impacts of a changing climate. And ultimately, disclosure of global warming risk should be a required part of many major financial transactions.

Internationally, we should also be evaluating the coming risk. Pentagon studies already predict resource wars over water supplies as a likely result of global warming, but the impacts of global warming will affect everything from international trade to efforts to eradicate disease to efforts to alleviate poverty.

With its long history preparing for disasters such as droughts, earthquakes, floods and fires, California could be a global leader in this regard. But even here we have much to do, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature should take action immediately to better prepare for future crises.

While the impacts of global warming, even with a successful effort to deeply cut greenhouse gas emissions, will be significant, we can prepare for them if we act with urgency and foresight. America remains a wealthy nation, and we live in an increasingly wealthy world. We have more than enough resources to both adapt to the impacts of global warming that are now unavoidable and make the transition to a global clean energy economy over the next century in order to avoid even more catastrophic impacts that will result should we fail to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

These investments in our civic and economic infrastructure will not only allow us avoid the worst impacts of climate change, they will have many other benefits as well. We are already too vulnerable to natural disasters of all kinds, even ignoring the likelihood that those disasters are intensifying. Investing in our ability to respond to those disasters and demanding better planning to minimize their impacts would make sense even were the impacts of climate change not as severe as anticipated.

Investing in the clean energy economy will have benefits for Americans comparable to those that have resulted from the enormous growth of the high-tech information economy over the last 20 years. In some cases, investments in energy infrastructure such as more secure transmission lines would serve to both advance clean energy deployment and prepare us for future disasters.

Preparing for global warming, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, can bring us many benefits well beyond avoiding the nightmare that is severe global warming. But to realize the dream of a prosperous, safe and secure world and prosperous, safe, and secure communities, we must take action today to prepare for the fire to come.