Building a Resilient Tomorrow How to Prepare for the Coming Climate Disruption

by Hill, Alice C.; Martinez-Diaz, Leonardo

• ISBN13: 9780190909345
• ISBN10: 019090934X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2019-11-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Climate change impacts-more heat, drought, extreme rainfall, and stronger storms-have already harmed communities around the globe. Even if the world could cut its carbon emissions to zero tomorrow, further significant global climate change is now inevitable. Although we cannot tell with certainty how much average global temperatures will rise, we do know that the warming we have experienced to date has caused significant losses, and that the failure to prepare for the consequences of further warming may prove to be staggering.

Building a Resilient Tomorrow does not dwell on overhyped descriptions of apocalyptic climate scenarios, nor does it travel down well-trodden paths surrounding the politics of reducing carbon emissions. Instead, it starts with two central facts: climate impacts will continue to occur, and we can make changes now to mitigate their effects. While squarely confronting the scale of the risks we face, this pragmatic guide focuses on solutions-some gradual and some more revolutionary-currently being deployed around the globe. Each chapter presents a thematic lesson for decision-makers and engaged citizens to consider, outlining replicable successes and identifying provocative recommendations to strengthen climate resilience. Between animated discussions of ideas as wide-ranging as managed retreat from coastal hot-zones to biological approaches for resurgent climate-related disease threats, Alice Hill and Leonardo Martinez-Diaz draw on their personal experiences as senior officials in the Obama Administration to tell behind-the-scenes stories of what it really takes to advance progress on these issues. The narrative is dotted with tales of on-the-ground citizenry, from small-town mayors and bankers to generals and engineers, who are chipping away at financial disincentives and bureaucratic hurdles to prepare for life on a warmer planet. For readers exhausted by today's paralyzing debates on yearly "fluke" storms or the existence of climate change, Building a Resilient Tomorrow offers better ways to manage the risks in a warming planet, even as we work to limit global temperature rise.

Author Biography

Alice Hill is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. She previously served at the White House as Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and Senior Director for Resilience Policy on the National Security Council. Hill served on Obama's Climate Team and led the creation of national policy regarding catastrophic risk, including the impacts of climate change.
Hill previously served as Senior Counselor to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and as an ex officio member of the Third National Climate Assessment. Hill has also served as a supervising judge on the Los Angeles Superior Court and as chief of the white-collar crime unit in the Los Angeles US Attorney's Office.

Leonardo Martinez-Diaz is the Global Director of the Sustainable Finance Center at the World Resources Institute. He leads WRI's engagement with governments, development finance organizations, and private financial institutions to accelerate the shift to sustainable finance. Before joining WRI, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy and Environment at the U.S. Department of the Treasury and represented the United States on the board of the Green Climate Fund. He is the author or co-editor of many books, including Globalizing in Hard Times: The Politics of Banking-Sector Opening in the Emerging World (Cornell, 2009) and, with Ngaire Woods, of Networks of Influence? Developing Countries in a Networked Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2009).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Building a Resilient Tomorrow

PART I: SYSTEMS FOR LARGE-SCALE CHANGE
1. Rethink Where and How We Build
2. Lawyer Up
3. Make Markets Work for Resilience

PART II: TOOLS FOR THE DECISION-MAKER
4. Find Better Ways to Pay for Resilience
5. Get the Data and Make Them Usable
6. Work with Human Nature

PART III: THE UPENDERS
7. Harden the Health Care System, and Make It Smarter
8. Buffer Growing Inequality
9. Relocate People to Safer Ground
10. Reconceive National Security

Conclusion: Silo-Breakers, Translators, and Communicators