It’s time to consider how we make planning decisions that incorporate climate change hazards. - Monterey County Weekly

It’s time to consider how we make planning decisions that incorporate climate change hazards. | Monterey County NOW Intro | montereycountyweekly.com

Sara Rubin here. After the Pajaro River levee breached in the middle of the night, the response was swift and urgent. Firefighters and law enforcement officers were on the scene with high-water rescue vehicles, then with boats. SPCA staff scrambled to get puppies and parakeets to safety. Protecting life and safety comes first.

The floodwaters have receded and evacuation orders have been lifted. But for Pajaro residents, the crisis is still in its early stages. Many returned to discover their homes are uninhabitable. Some are filing insurance claims, others are not covered by insurance at all and are sorting through the wreckage of destroyed furniture and appliances and clothes. Some are considering moving, staff writer Celia Jiménez has reported.

The fact that Pajaro was subject to this flood to begin with is a function of relative poverty— as staff writer Dave Schmalz has reported, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers used a formula to determine it wasn’t worth it to invest in infrastructure to shore up the levee, because property values weren’t high enough to justify the expense.

We know events like this—floods, rising sea levels impacting coastal communities, increased frequency of fires and more severe droughts—are going to be more common as the climate continues changing. While Pajaro residents were hauling destroyed refrigerators en masse to the curb, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on March 20 released a report that gets at the crux of the big, existential issues about how humans will continue to live in a world where weather events have life-altering impacts.

“Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health,” the report states, offering very high confidence in that conclusion. “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all (very high confidence). Climate resilient development integrates adaptation and mitigation to advance sustainable development for all, and is enabled by increased international cooperation including improved access to adequate financial resources, particularly for vulnerable regions, sectors and groups, and inclusive governance and coordinated policies (high confidence). The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years (high confidence).”

The IPCC’s report focuses largely on the urgent need to curb greenhouse gas emissions to stave off catastrophe. The report also recommends we move, and fast, on adaptation strategies—and that we apply those strategies equitably, instead of letting relatively poorer people suffer the worst consequences of climate change and reserving resilience and preparedness strategies for the wealthy.

Pajaro residents for years have said that if they were a wealthier community, the levee would have long since been worked on. That’s true. There's an even deeper layer to that concern about inequity: If they were a wealthier community, the town might not have been built there, in a floodplain on a riverbank, at all.

It’s not entirely true that places at higher risk of weather and climate disasters are more affordable. Look at Big Sur, Carmel Valley, the River Road corridor, Del Monte Forest on the Monterey Peninsula—plenty of more affluent neighborhoods are at risk of increasingly fierce wildfires. As nature takes its course, our disaster response systems react: Insurance claims are filed, county building inspectors clear people to move back in, fundraising efforts help families get their lives back on track. And for many, life continues on the same track—again, in a disaster-prone place.

Meanwhile, it’s largely insurance companies that are driving planning decisions that incorporate climate change hazards. Flood insurance long ago became untenable, prompting FEMA to step in where private insurance wouldn’t. Homeowner’s insurance is starting to take fires and development in the wildland-urban interface into account, and simply dropping clients.

We can leave it to insurance companies to guide decisions about where we do and don’t develop, but I think it’s a wiser idea to plan collaboratively—and make sure that communities like Pajaro don’t get left behind again, just because they can’t afford to be ahead.