Although football and fall are in the air, it’s worth the time to reflect back to President Obama’s two trips he took just before Labor Day to New Orleans and Alaska. The locations are thousands of miles apart and the weather could not be more different, but the visits had one common theme: the impacts of climate change.
As an academic and as a former director of the Navy’s Task Force Climate Change, I understand the many aspects of risk related to climate change. Obama’s trip emphasized for me the importance of adapting to the components of climate change that are already inevitable. An analysis of the trip also highlights the costs of adapting – or responding – that we are paying today and will pay tomorrow.
I can boil down what we’ve learned from the presidential trips to three climate takeaways: it’s all about the water; we need to respond now; and, alas, it won’t be cheap.
Happening Now
From New Orleans to Alaska, the focus was on climate impacts relating to water. Along the Gulf Coast and in the Arctic, rising sea levels and associated higher storm surges were a focal point of each visit.
Each coastal location, though, deals with its own specific water challenges. For the Gulf Coast, an increase in hurricane intensity, when combined with rising sea levels, means already dangerous storm surges become even more destructive and lethal. Along the Bering Strait and in the Arctic Ocean the issue is not hurricanes but rather the significant loss of sea ice. This lack of ice means there is more open water. Open waters in turn allow bigger and more powerful waves to form during storms and erode the soft beaches, endangering long-standing small towns and settlements.
In Alaska, thinning and melting of sea ice, melting of glaciers and disappearance of permafrost will cause fundamental changes in both ecosystems and the very lifestyles of indigenous peoples. Native people’s water supplies, critical transportation venues and even their physical communities are all under threat.
Climate impacts in the north are not limited to ice, though. Alaska is dealing with ever more ferocious wildfires, caused by rising temperatures drying out the formerly cool, damp forests. These fires impact air quality and any buildings that might be in their path, and even contribute to permafrost melt.
Meanwhile, along the Gulf Coast temperatures continue to rise, stressing people, animals and crops. When it rains, the rainfall is more intense, leading to more flash flooding, while coastal freshwater supplies are threatened by saltwater seeping in from an ever-higher ocean.
Unfortunately, there are few cheap solutions to dealing with the above-listed impacts. The post-Katrina New Orleans levees cost US$14.6 billion to date – and there are already reports that sea levels are rising at a rate that will force another redesign of the system in a few decades. The costs in Alaska are similarly stunning: relocating the dozens of small coastal villages may cost around $100 million per village.
The dramatic changes in the Arctic are also forcing the United States to consider seriously its investment in overall Arctic capabilities. The president promised to expedite building a new icebreaker for the Coast Guard, to take advantage of opening shipping lanes in the melting Arctic and provide a year-round US presence on Arctic waters. While very welcome news, it’s only the tip of the, well, you know.
Ports and other improvements to ensure the safety of shipping in the far north such as better navigation charts and weather forecasts will add much more to the budget. These costs do not even consider the potential increased costs for any Arctic security posture we may be required to invest in, depending on the actions of Russia or other adventurous countries.
The bottom line is we have yet to make even our initial down payment funding the most basic adaptations to the changing climate.
Costs Adding Up
The president stated correctly that the climate is changing faster than we are adapting to it. To adapt to the changing climate, to rising seas, to bigger floods and to increased heat stress and drought will cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming years.
