WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE — Floods. They've been on my mind this week as water poured through New York City's subway system, left a trail of detritus and death in Western Germany, and submerged passengers in the trains of Zhengzhou, China, writes Nightly's Renuka Rayasam. It's a sign — along with wildfires and droughts — that even if the U.S. and other countries around the world do everything they can to zero out emissions in the future, we have to learn to live with climate disasters today. The Biden administration has touted a provision tucked into the bipartisan infrastructure package that would allocate about $47 billion to climate resiliency. The details aren't totally defined, but the money would probably include things like hardening roads and bridges against extreme weather, erosion prevention measures in lakes and rivers, help for coastal communities dealing with rising sea levels and protecting transit systems from storms. When heavy rain hits, for example, it needs somewhere to go to prevent flooding. Channeling that water somewhere else counts as climate resiliency. But there's a divide among climate change experts about whether fortifying infrastructure against the impact of climate change detracts from the larger fight: stopping climate change. Much of our current infrastructure is already past its prime and should be repaired so that it can withstand extreme weather, said Constantine Samaras, director of Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Engineering and Resilience for Climate Adaptation. When aging roads and bridges get washed out in a flood, rebuilding them amounts to a sort of climate tax. It's better to upgrade things ahead of time, he said. Even if lawmakers and the administration don't want to admit it, much of the spending on roads and bridges and transit and waterways is a climate bill in disguise, he said. "The infrastructure we have right now was generally designed for the weather and climate of the 20th century," Samaras said. Take New York City's subway system. It's long since had a water problem — even on days when it doesn't rain, 14 million gallons are pumped out. Making even basic repairs would better equip the system to deal with the likelihood of more frequent downpours. After Hurricane Sandy nearly a decade ago, the city spent nearly $3 billion on fortifying subway openings against flooding. But those repairs weren't enough when heavy rain hit the city earlier this month. That's why Deborah Gordon, a climate researcher at Brown University, believes that with the limited resources — and limited Congressional attention span — the most urgent focus is preventing climate change, not accommodating it. Her fear that too much investment in resilience could be wasted. It would be nearly impossible to plan for the type of flash floods that submerged entire European villages this week — a bridge could never be raised high enough. One Belgium official said, "It's an illusion that we can prepare or plan for everything." She also worries that such preparations could backfire by giving people a false sense of security. Having back up generators on hand, for example, can mitigate the impact of weather-related power outages like the one that occurred when Texas' electrical grid froze. "But that doesn't help climate change," Gordon said. There are infrastructure projects that have little to do with resiliency but could have a major impact in lowering carbon emissions, like preventing methane from leaking from a pipeline. Another, more radical idea: give people incentives to relocate. Maybe people shouldn't live in fire or flood prone areas at all. Samaras thinks we don't have much of a choice right now. Extreme weather is here. We have to fix and raise bridges, create better drainage and more parks to prevent road flooding, plan evacuation routes in coastal communities and fortify levees and dams. "Infrastructure is boring when it's working," Samaras said. "But people died this week. It's like an infrastructure week siren going off all the time." Samaras and Gordon agree that in an ideal world Congress should focus on both hedging against climate disasters and preventing them. We do not live in such a world.
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