COVID-19 Economic Recovery Can Address Climate Change, Too
A climate disaster, on top of a biological disaster — like COVID-19 — would further overtax our communities’ emergency services, hospital, food supply, sewer system, fresh water, electrical service and local economy.
Our nation’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic offers an opportunity to strengthen our communities against both biological risk and climate risk. Here’s a three-part plan as an illustrated printable pdf. A printable version is below:
COVID-19 Economic Recovery Can Address Climate Change, Too
by Allen Kratz
While recently watching FEMA’s New England Coastal Resilience Workshop – online because COVID-19 kept us from meeting in Durham, NH -- Twitter distracted me with an odd tweet. Seemingly out of nowhere, speculation about the likelihood of post-earthquake tremors in Salt Lake City popped into view.
Why the sudden interest in aftershocks?
Quickly scrolling down my phone, I found the answer: a 5.7 earthquake had shaken Salt Lake City and knocked out power for tens of thousands of homes. Already coping with coronavirus, the community’s 1.2 million residents now had to seek safety outside, rather than shelter in place like most of us elsewhere.
How ironic! That exact morning – eight days into voluntary self-isolation in densely-populated Hoboken, N.J. – I awoke thinking how comparatively fortunate our flood-prone community is to be addressing only one crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic.
Facing a second crisis at this time, like a recurrence of Superstorm Sandy, would be catastrophic.
A climate disaster, on top of a biological disaster, would further overtax our emergency services, hospital, food supply, sewer system, fresh water, electrical service and local economy.
Two existential crises
Salt Lake City’s double jeopardy underscores an inevitable truth. As much as we must adopt wartime footing to end the COVID-19 pandemic and plan a national recovery, our country also must address a parallel existential crisis: climate change.
We’re working to flatten the curve in one crisis. The curve lines in the other keep going up. Climate change, like COVID-19, requires an unprecedented expenditure of funds and the highest levels of cooperation, collaboration and leadership across federal, state and local governments.
Fortunately, the economic stimulus packages that Congress and several state legislatures are considering constitute excellent vehicles for achieving two mutually beneficial outcomes: restoring our nation’s economy and fortifying our nation with climate-resilient public works.
Now is the time to fund and finance capital projects that strengthen our defenses against the rising ocean, increasingly frequent and intense rain in some parts of the country, increasingly frequent and intense droughts elsewhere, and increased temperatures everywhere.
Thanks to funding by key federal departments and agencies, including the Army Corps of Engineers, DOT, EDA, EPA, FEMA and HUD, plus corollary state, county and municipal programs, many communities across the nation have been addressing our changing climate. Numerous projects to resist climate change, or at least mitigate its effects, are on the drawing board, funded, under construction and even completed. Many more are needed.
3-Part COVID-19 Recovery
To address that need, I propose that Congress’s next coronavirus economic recovery plan fund three actions:
1. A nationwide assessment of climate risk and an estimate of what capital expenditures by government will be required to reduce that threat.
2. A national design competition that convenes multidisciplinary teams of experts and community members to identify climate-resilience projects that offer the greatest protection and social and economic resilience.
3. Full funding for the design, engineering, permitting, construction, operation and maintenance of projects selected in the design competition.
Skeptics may say that funding climate resilience will dilute assistance to those community members who need it most, i.e., small businesses, laid-off employees and low-income people.
The truth is that Congress already is creating emergency financial-aid packages. Fully sensitive to the overarching challenge of the pandemic, Congress also should take additional steps to spur the economy that address the environment.
Dual Benefits
Why? Because government investment in climate resilience will create jobs in multiple industry sectors, both blue collar and white collar. Communities that have reduced their vulnerability to climate change will attract private sector investment in homes, businesses, industry, education and cultural institutions. Communities that have created a resilience-strengthened tax base will be better able to afford higher levels of medical care, social services and civic amenities than those that have not adapted.
Our nation has the opportunity to address two pressing issues: public health and climate change. Our eventual resistance to the coronavirus and return to normal life will benefit to the extent that we create a built environment and natural environment that reduces the risks of climate change.
We can make America healthier – in both ways. COVID-19 is a crisis, so let’s benefit from it as much as we can.
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Allen Kratz, J.D., is the founder and president of Resilience Works, LLC, a consulting firm that helps communities identify funding and financing for coastal resilience infrastructure. At New York University’s Institute for Public Knowledge, he tracked the progress of seven HUD-funded post-Superstorm Sandy “Rebuild by Design” flood-mitigation projects in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. He serves on the comprehensive plan committee in Brooksville, Maine. His prior work experience includes project management at NJ Transit, AT&T, Lucent Technologies and Prudential Insurance and reporting for daily newspapers in Indiana and Pennsylvania. Mr. Kratz is a resident of Hoboken, N.J.