Most people today accept that changes to our climate are likely to occur in the future, and the city that we build today will be the city we, and our children's children, live in when we find ourselves needing to adapt to such changes. Anticipating what adaptation will be required in the future and planning for that today will greatly increase the success of adapting to climate change. To date, our attention to climate adaptation has been limited. Yet, almost every policy we adopt and place we create will be affected by the need for climate adaptation at some point in the future. An average temperature increase of 4 degrees, modest based on estimates as high as 9 degrees, will impact: our landscapes, health in hot spells, air quality, water demand, the viability of walking, outdoor athletics and labor, and of course energy use. More extreme storms could exceed current storm water systems flooding buildings and roads already built. Decreased precipitation could also change our landscapes, air quality, and of course impact our current water supplies.
Given this range of impacts, I would suggest some attention to climate adaptation with the City's general plan would be a prudent action. One action that the general plan could suggest is that an assessment of Phoenix' climate change vulnerability be initiated. Areas of risk to climate change could be identified and ranked. An inventory of existing City policies and programs that either are affected by or contribute to climate adaptation could be identified. For these policies and programs levels climate change that would result in critical impacts could be identified. The City could then begin to anticipate what adaptation actions would be required to mitigate such changes and explore how what actions today could begin to facilitate future such adaptation strategies. I am not suggesting this is a crisis, but understanding potential impacts and adaptation strategies now would be good foresight for the future.