Cities are on the front-line of climate change. They must adapt or die

Cities are the anchors of human civilization. By 2050, roughly three quarters of humanity will live in one. While offering extraordinary opportunities for prosperity, creativity and wellbeing, cities of tomorrow will also confront monumental challenges associated with poverty, inequality and fragility. Decisions made by urban leaders in the next decade will determine the livability – even the survival – of cities across the planet.

One factor uniting cities is that all of them will suffer the effects of climate change. Most will experience rising levels of flood exposure, water shortages, storms and heat stress. The severity of risk will be mediated by their location – whether on the littoral or inland – but also the extent of their preparedness. Governments, businesses and civil society groups have an opportunity now to design-in resilience to our cities, but no city is immune to the coming storm.

In fact, most cities are already on the front-line of climate change. At least 70% of them are currently dealing with sudden onset disasters and long-term environmental stress. They are confronting a host of related challenges ranging from health pandemics to population displacement. The massive concentration of people in cities over the coming decades – especially in Africa and Asia – will almost certainly exacerbate traffic congestion, worsen air quality and increase amounts of waste.

Read the World Economic Forum story - “Cities are on the front-line of climate change.They must adapt or die.”

Solve climate change and avoid catastrophic collapse

The resolutions of factors responsible for climate change are the key also to rescuing humanity from reaching a rather catastrophic conclusion.

NASA has funded a study that
suggests humanity is headed
toward the collapse of
industrial civilization.

We simply need to use less and therefore consume less energy and within that use fewer of the earth’s irreplaceable resources.

Sounds simple enough, but it is not.

Market driven consumer economy that pervades the world has a momentum, and a grip on the human psyche that is taking us irresistibly toward collapse.

The inequality of wealth distribution worsens every day and further weakens the understanding the elite have of the fragility of humanity.

The idea of the collapse of global industrial civilization within the coming decades is discussed in a story published by The Guardian headed: “NASA-funded study: industrial civilization headed for ’irreversible collapse’?”.

The story says: “The NASA-funded HANDY model offers a highly credible wake-up call to governments, corporations and business - and consumers - to recognize that 'business as usual' cannot be sustained, and that policy and structural changes are required immediately”.

Beneath the Wisteria convener, Robert McLean, believes are only hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change and the collapse the Guardian story discusses is to be found in structural and systemic changes to how we presently live.

“We need to immediately implement understood renewable energy technologies to power the human society; change our voracious appetite for energy and resource-rich consumer goods; understand that contentment arises from contemplation rather than the brutality of action aimed only at acquisition of goods; and in everything we do work toward making this a more equitable society,” Robert said.

He said that if we were able to mitigate causes of climate change, we might have some hope of avoiding the irreversible collapse of the modern civilized industrial civilization.