Download 1 The Look of Climate Adaptation. Will Travis, Senior Advisor, Bay

The Look of Climate Adaptation.
Will Travis, Senior Advisor, Bay Area Joint Policy Committee
A Capstone Team Presentation for Energy-Efficient Adaptive Aqueous Barriers: 10/31/12
I know you’ve met with Brad McCrea,
who gave you some background on BCDC
and its work on sea level rise.
I’d be happy to talk with you at length about BCDC
because it’s a truly wonderful government agency
where I was privileged to spend so much of my professional career.
But let’s leave that conversation for later.
Right now what I’d like to discuss the design issue with you:
What will effective climate adaptation look like?
The answer might seem to be:
it will look like whatever works best
from a scientific or engineering perspective.
But for reasons I’ll explain,
I don’t think we can expect science or engineering
to answer this design question.
The New Yorker.
I got interested in climate change in 2005
when I read Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Yorker articles
called “The Climate of Man.”
Kolbert described climate impacts around the world.
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Travis & Bay.
At the time, I was the head of BCDC,
which had been created to prevent land reclamation projects
from making San Francisco Bay smaller.
Kolbert’s articles got me wondering
about the impact of sea level rise on the bay.
Hot.
Mark Hertzgaard has written a sensational book
about climate change called,
“Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth.”
Mark contends that in order for someone to become personally inspired
to deal with climate change,
the person has to experience what Mark calls an “oh shit moment.”
Sea Level Rise.
My “oh shit moment” was realizing that I was in charge
of keeping San Francisco Bay from getting smaller,
but accelerated sea level rise would in all likelihood make the Bay bigger.
Oh What To Do.
I faced three choices.
First, declaring bureaucratic victory and saying,
“We won; the Bay won’t get smaller.”
Second, acknowledging I was in charge of a government agency
that had become irrelevant.
And third, figuring out what to do about these changing circumstances.
I chose the third alternative and informed the public
that even though BCDC wasn’t mandated to deal with sea level rise
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and even though we had no authority to do anything about the problem,
there was nothing in the law that legally prohibited us from thinking.
So think we did,
and over the next six years BCDC
became one of the nation’s leaders in formulating regional strategies
for adapting to sea level rise.
Scientist.
I tell you all this as my way of warning you
that I have no academic qualifications
to engage in a discussion with you on science or engineering
and don’t know yet whether the management scheme I put in place
will actually work.
Proof of Global Warming.
To firmly establish that I have no scientific credentials,
I want to show you the slide I use to prove that there’s a clear correlation
between human behavior and global warming.
You will note that the most recent data on this graph is from 2006.
I’ve seen the data for last year. It’s nasty.
Fat Person in SUV.
It’s frustrating for engineers and scientists
to provide technical information to the public
only to see it ignored or misused.
Case in point: medical research indicates that we would be much healthier
if we consumed fewer empty calories, lost weight and exercised more.
The public’s reaction is to ask for larger cup holders in their new SUVs.
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San Francisco.
So the design question for us is
what will successful climate adaptation look like?
This isn’t unlike the question I dealt with for a quarter century
when I was working for an agency that was created to “save the bay.”
The question was, “How do we know when we’re done?”
The answer we always used was,
“The bay is never “saved”; saving the bay is an ongoing process.”
Ladder.
I guess we could say the same thing about climate adaptation.
“It’s never done; climate adaptation is an ongoing process.”
It’s an endless ladder to forever climb.
I don’t think this answer is satisfactory
so let’s probe a bit and look at some of the climate impacts
we’re going to have to face.
Polar Bear.
As you know, Congress hasn’t been able
to enact comprehensive climate change legislation.
But someone did slip a rider into a bill
that requires whenever a government employee
talks about climate change,
said employee must show a picture of a polar bear.
I have hereby complied with that law using this photo to make a point.
As much as we try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the Bay Area,
we know that it will take a long time
and lots of other places around the world
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will have to match our commitment
to rescue this poor guy from his dilemma.
Temperature Increases.
Even if we shut down all our power plants,
turn off all our lights
and park all our cars,
everywhere on Earth right now,
there’s so much greenhouse gas in the atmosphere,
it will continue to get warmer for decades.
Future Sea Level Rise.
This means that that water levels in San Francisco Bay will rise ever faster.
The exact sea level rise in the future
will always be a subject of debate by climate scientists.
My own empirical conclusions are:
1. Whatever future sea level you plan for, you will be wrong, but…
2. if you choose a level that’s too high
all you have to do is wait and you’ll eventually be right.
Bay Aerial.
To understand why future sea level rise
will be such a big deal in the Bay Area,
we need to take a look at the past.
This is what San Francisco Bay looks like today.
1850 Map.
But if we go back to the California’s early days
we find that the Bay was quite a bit bigger.
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The yellow areas on this map
show the extent of the Bay and surrounding wetlands
at the time of the California Gold Rush.
Bay Fill Co.
By the 1950s, a third of that water area was gone
because the Bay is shallow.
Two thirds of it was less than 12 feet deep.
So it was easy to fill,
and large parts of the Bay
were reclaimed for real estate development.
Oakland Waterfront.
Today the Bay is surrounded
by 240 square miles of filled land––
land that was filled just high enough to get it above sea levels of the past.
1850 & 2100.
This legacy of filling in the Bay in the past
is a great predictor of what sea level rise
will do to our region in the future.
Here are two maps,
one showing how what the Bay looked in 1849
and the other showing how it might look in 2100
with 55 inches of sea level rise.
They look pretty much the same.
At first blush, it’s tempting to think that this might be good news.
All the area that was reclaimed in the past century
will once again become part of our beautiful Bay.
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Downtown San Francisco.
The bad news is that we’ve built all kinds of very expensive stuff
on this filled land,
including stuff that’s essential to civilization as we know it.
Let me show you a few examples.
SFO.
This is San Francisco International Airport.
Unless protected,
the light blue area will be inundated by mid century
and by 2100 almost the entire airport may be underwater.
OAK.
The situation is much the same at Oakland International Airport.
Silicon Valley.
And this is Silicon Valley, which faces double jeopardy.
This area used to be called the Valley of Heart’s Delight.
It was covered with fruit orchards, which were irrigated with well water.
As the water was withdrawn, the ground levels sank.
South Bay & Sea Level Rise.
The result, as you can see,
is that many geeks may join a lot of suburban homeowners
in being underwater.
Flooded House.
Over the next century,
the average level of the Bay will slowly rise.
But shoreline areas will likely face flooding from storms
before they go underwater at high tide.
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A storm surge is what we get when a heavy rain falls during a high tide
and wind pushes the water across the Bay onto the shoreline.
Increased Storm Activity.
You scientists tell us that the kind of intense storms
that have occurred once a century in the past
will occur ten times more often or once every ten years in the future.
100-Year Flood & High Tide.
This map shows both the areas currently within
the 100-year flood plain
and the areas that will be vulnerable to flooding in mid-century.
You can see that the two areas are pretty much the same.
What this means is that low-lying lands
where there is currently a one percent chance of flooding
in any one year
will face the possibility of a 100 percent chance of flooding
during high tides in just four decades.
Frank’s Tract.
Around the Bay over 280 square miles of low-lying land
is in danger of being flooded by mid-century
and over 330 square miles is vulnerable by 2100.
Flooded Development.
The homes of over a quarter million residents,
major highways, rail lines, airports and businesses
worth over 60 billions dollars
are located in these low-lying areas.
Wildfire.
At the same time sea level is rising
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higher temperatures will also bring us extended droughts
that will spawn more wildfires.
California Water System.
California relies on a massive plumbing system
to move water from where if falls as rain and snow,
mostly in the northern and eastern parts of the state,
to where most of the people live
along the coast and in Southern California.
Sierra Snowpack.
Much of this water is stored in the form of snow
in the Sierra Nevada.
As the snow melts in the spring,
we store the runoff in reservoirs
and use it during the dry summer and fall months.
While the overall precipitation levels in California may not change much,
more precipitation will fall as rain and less as snow,
causing a marked reduction
in the size of the Sierra snowpack.
Bay-Delta Salinity.
The rain will run from the mountains into the Bay in the winter,
but there will be less outflow in the summer.
Without this pulse of freshwater,
salt water will move much farther into the Delta
than it does now.
And the Delta is where the large pumps are located
that draw the drinking water used by 23 million Californians.
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Climate Impacts.
We’ll also likely suffer from energy shortages
during periods of extreme heat,
fresh water shortages during droughts,
river flooding during more intense storms,
hotter and more frequent extreme heat days,
poorer air quality,
and ecosystem deterioration.
Let’s look at a few ways we might adapt to some of these impacts.
Tidal Barriers.
We could build some sort of barrier across the Golden Gate.
House on Stilts.
We could build shoreline development on stilts.
Venice.
Maybe we could adapt San Francisco to look more like Venice.
Floating City.
Or maybe we could build whole new cities that float.
Pontoon Plane.
If the airports flood, we could adapt the design of airplanes.
Delta Canal.
Maybe we’ll come up with all new plumbing system
to collect, store and move fresh water around the state.
Airstream & Bike.
As for wildfires, we could prohibit permanent development
and allow only temporary housing
that can be quickly moved out of harm’s way.
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Galloping House.
In places that might flood or might burn or might be OK for a while,
but not forever,
maybe we can come up with some truly innovative type of structure.
Frankenfish.
And perhaps we can genetically engineer a species of fish
that can tolerate warmer, more acidic water,
pose a challenge for sports fishermen,
and taste just like chicken.
Obviously, some of these adaptation ideas are silly.
Some of them may turn out to be plausible.
Movie Theater.
The question for you is which adaptation approaches
will have the best chance of being successfully deployed
and how will you know that you have succeeded.
To answer these questions let’s look at how our society
uses scientific and technical information in making decisions. Left
Brain/Right Brain.
Scientific analysis takes place in the left side of the brain,
which handles logical, analytical and objective matters,
while a lot of society’s decisions, which are intuitive, thoughtful, subjective,
are made in the brain’s right side.
To some degree, from a scientific perspective,
this must make it seem like humans are really quite irrational creatures.
And we are. Let me give you an example.
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Coastal Damage.
A right-brained scientist could logically conclude
that coastlines are inherently foolish places to live.
Our coasts are threatened by hurricanes, high waves,
erosion, mudslides, rising seas, and, in many places, earthquakes.
And when tragedy strikes, you can only escape in one direction.
U.S. Population Distribution.
Yet over half the nation’s population lives along the coast,
and the migration from inland areas to our coastlines
has left counties in the Midwest with population densities so low
they would qualify to be designated wilderness areas.
Why are Americans making this choice?
Coastal House.
Because the right-brained public
places more value on the beauty of the coast
and the romance of living in a seafront community
than on the risks described by the left-brained experts.
As a coastal manager, I realized that my job
wasn’t to help people make rational decisions;
it was to help them live as best they could
in the face of their somewhat irrational choices.
In many ways my job was like running an assisted living facility
for people who suffered from a lifetime of bad choices.
Scientists.
Scientists might decry this situation
and try to convince Californians it’s in their own best interest
to move to inland states
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in the same way that you might conclude
that an effective sea level rise adaptation strategy
would be the abandonment of coastal communities.
However, using scientific information to change individual behavior
is seldom as effective as intervening at a more systemic level.
Let me give you an example of this.
Car Accident.
Seat belts alone are far more effective than air bags by themselves
in preventing serious injury and death from auto accidents.
But seat belts work only if individuals use them.
There were some efforts to employ technology to make drivers buckle-up,
but they didn’t always work, and car owners hated them.
A comprehensive and effective nationwide law enforcement program
to make everybody buckle-up would be expensive
and involve far more unwanted interactions between the police and drivers
than either the cops or the public want.
Air Bags.
So Congress turned to the option of air bags.
Though less effective,
they could be employed uniformly
through requirements on auto manufacturers.
And their use is passive.
The driver doesn’t have to do anything to make them work.
Air Bags.
The result is that instead of being strapped in
and able to walk away from a car that can be repaired after an accident,
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a driver is cushioned by pillows
but his vehicle may be “totaled” by the explosions that inflate the air bags.
Thus, society chose the option that was easier to implement
over the option that worked better.
iPhone with Ad.
The lesson for experts: a climate adaptation measure
that requires large numbers of people
to change their individual behaviors
will likely look like an adaptation measure that doesn’t work.
This isn’t to say that it’s impossible to change human behavior.
It’s just that advertisers are better at doing it
than are scientists and engineers.
Let’s use another example from the auto industry.
Tiny Car.
One of the things consumers most dislike in small cars
is the tiny backseats.
It’s possible to address this problem through adaptive design.
Build a big back seat and then wrap a small car around it.
Quasimodo.
Unfortunately, the result looks something like a hunchback.
But advertisers have learned that consumers will embrace a design
that’s unattractive if it makes a fashion statement.
Fashion Jeans.
If you don’t believe me you haven’t seen the jeans
that are pre-washed, pre-faded, pre-torn
and sold a premium prices.
We also choose our vehicles as much as fashion statements
as modes of transportation.
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Celebrity with Prius.
So when Toyota introduced a new type of vehicle
with a hybrid gas-electric engine,
many of the earliest purchasers were people
who wanted to use the car as a fashion statement
to tell the world the owners were environmentalists.
The fact that the Prius looked quite different,
and not particularly attractive from a traditional design perspective,
made it stand out as a fashion statement.
Honda Civic.
Honda took the opposite approach.
They offered a Civic with a hybrid engine.
It looked just like every other Civic.
And it didn’t sell very well.
Prius.
The Toyota Prius has led the way
in helping us move toward our climate change mitigation goals.
But that’s not why Toyota built the Prius.
Cash.
They built it to make money,
which leads me to my next observation on effective climate adaptation.
Look for adaptation measures whose implementation
can either make someone in the private sector a bundle of cash
or can save a company a lot of money.
This isn’t as hard as it sounds
because in the Bay Area
climate change isn’t primarily an environmental issue.
It’s an economic imperative.
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International Currency
The Bay Area is in competition
with the rest of the world
to attract investment capital to our region.
International capital will continue to flow to those places
that have recognized the reality of climate change
and are taking concrete steps to adapt to its impacts.
On the other hand,
insurers are already abandoning places where risks remain too high.
Rotterdam.
Other regions across the nation and around the world
are already formulating climate strategies.
Rotterdam, already the largest port in Europe,
dreams of becoming Europe’s Silicon Valley
by “climate proofing” the city within ten years.
Well, we already have the world’s Silicon Valley in our region.
We can’t afford to lose it either to Europe or to sea level rise.
Insurance.
In the world of climate adaptation,
I believe the companies that have most at stake are the insurers.
They’re the ones who will have to pay off
when homes are flooded or destroyed by wildfires.
They’re the ones that will bear the costs of business disruptions
from energy brownouts.
Treasure Island.
They have the capacity to decide what gets built where
more than government does.
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It’s of little value if you get a government permit for a development project
if you can’t get financing to build it.
And typically you can’t get financing if you can’t get insurance.
Insurance Policy.
By working with insurers, we can craft adaptation measures
that can be incorporated into insurance policies.
Doing the right thing can bring profit to the insurance company
and save money for the insured.
But we have to be cautious when dealing with insurance.
Fire and Wetlands.
We want to make it more expensive to build in specific areas
that will face climate impacts,
areas like the urban/wildland interface
and low-lying vacant property around the bay.
But we don’t want to create economic injustice
by penalizing people who already live in such areas.
Wetland.
The toughest adaptation measures to implement
will be those dealing with natural ecosystems.
Scientists understand the economic value of ecosystem services.
Unfortunately, we’ve not yet been effective
in incorporating those values into our private capital allocation system.
Until we do, it will be difficult to use our private enterprise system
to allocate the costs and benefits of ecosystem services
to the true beneficiaries of the system.
New Urbanist Communities.
In the final analysis,
the most effective climate adaptation measures
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will be largely invisible
because they’ll be fully integrated into other decisions our society makes.
We won’t think about climate adaptation
when we decide which community we live in,
which house we buy,
or how we live our day-to-day lives.
Palo Alto.
As we do now, we’ll look for communities
that are safe, attractive,
and have easy access to good schools, our jobs and shopping.
We’ll choose houses we can be proud of
that are affordable and easy-to-maintain.
And we’ll live our lives making the same sort of day-to-day decisions
we do now.
Fruitvale Village.
It’s just that effective climate adaptation
will be integrated into our value system without us noticing it.
If we demand the public to do something they would otherwise not do
simply because it’s good for climate adaptation,
we’ll know we’ve failed
because the look of successful climate adaptation
will be that nobody notices it.
Chronicle Headline.
We’ll know we’ve succeeded if a headline like this
appears in the San Francisco Chronicle at mid-century.
This is the look of successful climate adaptation.