About Climate Resilience

Climate resilience is hard to explain. One way to think about it is to imagine that the climate crisis is a tiger that’s chasing us. It can hurt us in the form of hurricanes, heat waves, flooding, and other impacts.

Climate mitigation is how we can slow the tiger down, by cutting global warming emissions. Without doing that, we don’t stand a chance.

We also need climate adaptation— constructively dealing with the worsening problems that climate change is already causing (and thus moving us faster away from the tiger).

Creating a safe distance between us and the tiger is the work of climate resilience, which involves both mitigation and adaptation. We need to work to reach a point where we are addressing the root causes of climate change and prioritizing actions to protect people and communities most at risk. Here is a fun video from the Union of Concerned Scientists explaining all this.

 

Why Climate Resilience Is Like a Tiger Chase

So what is happening locally to move toward climate resilience? Gloucester has developed a Climate Action and Resilience Plan (CARP) to help identify the highest priority challenges and the most feasible solutions to put Gloucester on track to meet long-term energy, climate, and resiliency goals. So far, over 500 climate actions have been suggested by the public at community workshops, stakeholder meetings, and in surveys. This is a great model for Rockport to follow as well.

Sources and more info: Union of Concerned Scientists article, What is Climate Resilience?; Cape Ann Climate Coalition Nov. 1 newsletter; City of Gloucester Climate Action and Resilience Plan (CARP)