Global action is not going to stop climate change. The world needs to look harder at how to live with it.

People will also have to contend with unpredictable shifts in weather patterns. New York might, in principle, protect itself against a hurricane-driven storm surge on top of a higher sea level with a much more massive set of barriers that could seal the Verrazano Narrows and the smaller spans of Throgs Neck, at the base of Long Island Sound, and the Arthur Kill, west of Staten Island. However, as Matthew Kahn, an economist at the University of California, Los Angeles, points out in his book, “Climatopolis”, the politics of such huge and hugely costly engineering might prove difficult. New Amsterdam does not have the attitudes of old Amsterdam.

To read the full article click here.

 

Published: Tuesday, November 30, 2010

  Write to Us

The UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability welcomes your comments.