 My name is Duke Ryder. I am the Executive Director of the Tentacross Initiative at Arizona State University and welcome everyone, panelists and audience. For those of you don't know, Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America and Arizona State University that explores emerging technologies and their impact on society. I'd like to thank my colleague Andres Martinez, Future Tense's editorial director for allowing us to leverage this platform for today's conversation. This event is also another kind of partnership. It involves New America's resource security program and the Tentacross Initiative. And I've enjoyed my relationship with Sharon Burke who heads up that program and Wyatt Scott. It's been a real pleasure to work with them and we have conducted interviews with folks in cities across the ITEM geography that's part of our project. And everyone has made extraordinary contributions to what we've understood about the role of government, climate change, etc. For those of you who may not know much about the security program and its interest in the large-scale understanding of what security means, it's not surprising they would look at climate change. And as Sharon and Wyatt see climate change, it involves of course environmental issues, transportation issues, but also equity and fairness, energy, water, land, you name it. They called on us because they knew we were looking at an area that we have described being on the front lines of environmental, economic, and social change. And if you look at the Tentacross quarter running from Los Angeles, we're delighted to have Mayor Villargoza with us today, all the way to Jacksonville, we believe that all the issues of our time are shown in their highest relief in this quarter. So this coming together of these two organizations and their common interests made perfect sense. The structure of today's session is that I'm going to ask each of our five panelists, and I understand that's quite a few, to put some issues on the table. The second half of the session will probably more conversational. You'll be invited to serve a dinner party with the six of us. And we'll be inviting questions from the audience and I'll be able to see those. And if I see one that really seems relevant to something that was just said by one of our panelists, I'll try to weave that in. Finally, a very short introductions because I want the panelists really to do some self introducing shortly. We have of course Mayor Antonio Villargoza with us he's the 41st Mayor of Los Angeles but of course a lot more than that as you will hear. Excuse me, Abana Jatayo, who's the Director of Housing and Community Resilience in Tallahassee, Florida, another time across city. Abraam West Garden, the author and senior reporter for ProPublica, Nicole Farini, the Chief Resilience Officer and Director of Community and Human Development in the City of El Paso. And last but not least Van Newkirk, New America 11th hour fellow and senior editor of the Atlantic. So if you look at this cross section people, it's an interesting mix of those who write and observe and with really close attention to detail. And also those are on the front lines of actually doing things in the city. So I want to start with Van, who if you have not heard his floodlines podcast you really should. He and I have a common shared interest in Hurricane Katrina as aftermath, and how it government and a variety of situations really of individual lives that it comes through vividly in his podcast. So Van, let's turn over to you to describe that project and your interest in those kinds of situations. Okay, well I think I'll start with the interest because I think it helps explain the podcast. For years I was a reporter doing mostly work on climate change on environmental justice on the ways that government failed or helped people in times of disaster and need. And the ways that all those things sort of mesh together with any quality in our existing social issues in America. So when I come back from doing that type of reporting in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, it really became clear that one way to really take a big bite at this and get people's eyes on environmental injustice on the intersection of government and disaster was to go and talk about Hurricane Katrina, which was a big national turning point on all those issues. Now so floodlines is our is the Atlantic's first narrative podcast. It was our effort at understanding exactly what happened in that disaster, not just a hurricane but the levees breaking those are you know nationally built and funded levees by the Army Corps of Engineers and what happened in the aftermath to people who were there who lived through it, who were forced across the country, and many who came back to New Orleans and the surrounding areas and found that maybe their homes weren't destroyed. But then they got caught up in a round of development and redevelopment and rebuilding that didn't include all the people. So floodlines and a part podcast it follows people who went through it on multiple different levels. And we end with a long conversation with former director FEMA Michael Brown. And we talk about all the different ways levels of government failed, who it failed, and how it kind of reinforced the existing policy failures in America to protect poor people, people of color, people who live in certain housing and cities, and how disasters are not necessarily things that come out of nowhere, but more so punctuation marks at the end of sentences, and those sentences are a long history of policy in America. If you haven't heard fans interview with Michael Brown, who's famous for the you're doing an incredible job running by the former president. It's stunning and if there was ever an intersection of government being discussed and its role and responsibility and the expectations of the public serve people in need, especially at the time of need like that. And I think you drew some things out of him that no one else has. Thank you. So I hope others get a chance to listen to that and we'll come back to the role of government. I Nicole I'd like to turn to you, and it's great to see you as a slightly late arrival but we're delighted to have you. Obviously, you are actively engaged in the life of a city in this case a binational city really between El Paso and see that war is. And you may not have had your Katrina but you've had plenty of things to deal with. You had a terrible mass shooting last year. Occasionally the flashpoint for discussions about immigration. And unfortunately, I see your city on the television a lot with regard to how co bad is COVID is impacting you. So, your definitions of resilience surely have expanded in the course of your tenure and I think they're even reflected in your job title and I think that's true of it as well. Tell us about your role, what you're doing there and how government is, is doing its level best to humiliate some of these situations. Yeah, absolutely do can and thank you for having me and thank you to the whole tent across team for always being such great partners to the city of El Paso and always privileged to be part of this fantastic network and so just to do a little bit of an discussion what I'll say when I start to speak about networks. I think that my time with the city of El Paso really began as we became part of the 100 resilient cities network back in 2013. I became the city's first chief resilience officer in December of 2014 so actually it's interesting today is my six year anniversary with the city of El Paso, and doing this work which I think for all of us that have been in the space of dealing with all of these challenges that feels like about 600 years, instead of just six. But what's interesting is that as I came on board as resilience officer I think there was a lot of emphasis around environment we I think we thought that we were just going to be dealing with water and heat and it was going to be a purely, you know, an environmental issue. And what we really learned to your point was an evolving definition of what resilience was going to mean for the city of El Paso. And so my work in the realm of climate change, especially in the context of resilience practice really begins and ends with people. El Paso's greatest asset has always been is today and will always be her people. Right and our people are multicultural we're by national. We are the largest by national by cultural bilingual Metroplex in the world. That's something that folks don't know about us I think they tend to think about a dusty West Texas city. But as such, the conversation and resulting policy, whether it be urban heat or air quality water energy is really driven by its impact on people. It's very easy to get wrapped up in the technical aspects of our work and forget really why we're doing it right so we start to talk about well maybe we should create more shade so we can address urban heat but will why. It's really because of the people that live there and so understanding equity and inclusivity at a really deep level, and not just a superficial level is really really important we have to constantly ask ourselves I think three big questions. How do our actions change people's lives. Are they focused on deep long term results for community, or are we what are we doing what I call hashtag solutions that are basically only an inch deep. And then finally, are we giving our people and the communities that we're living in. First of all that we really understand who that is. And second, are we giving them the tools they need to really drive this journey right alongside us and so I'll just end by saying that this entire journey for us in terms of what resilience means for El Paso is about embedding equity and inclusivity as a foundational pillar. Climate is one of those pieces, but as you've heard me say, Duke on many many occasions. Resilience sustainability equity these are not siloed concepts these are inextricably linked from family right. And so I really think that I'm, I'm excited that we're starting to see that discussion more broadly across cities in government, we're hearing the words spoken. But what I'm really hoping is that that discussion really translates into action that's meaningful for people. And in that space I think we'll really start to see progress in terms of the things that are really important to our society. And I think you're going to hear those notions echoed by all of the panelists, and I look forward to following up on that when we get back to you in the second round here so thank you for that Nicole. I want to turn to you. And for those of you who don't know about you should Brahms recent cover articles in New York Times magazine about the role that climate change is playing on issues of migration and various populations whether they're country or internationally, having to move elsewhere because of issues related to heat or it could be later because of water and other things they're extraordinary. So I'd love to explain how you got to this point of writing these essays what came out of them what you learned in the process, and how it might relate to especially practitioners like Nicole and Abba and the mayor who are in cities. What do you think that the effect of your work can be on their situations. Yeah, thank you Duke and it's fantastic to be part of this group again, really an honor to be among the rest of you in this conversation. So, just to back up the the articles that Duke mentioned it began with a realization that one of the most dynamic and impactful effects of climate change globally is going to be this movement of great populations and so the first article in this series of migrants, globally looking at approximately a billion to three billion people that should be displaced or likely to find themselves outside of sort of the ideal climate niche around the world and beginning to consider what the implications are for the movement of such a large number of people towards the American border into Europe, perhaps moving north from South Asia on the Asian continent as well. And the second part in the series is really an examination of what that means for the United States and the United States is not going to be as impacted as say Guatemala or North Africa in terms of the physical effects of climate change but it is going to be severely affected. And so when we look at the displacement of populations not just from storms and catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina, but the slow onset displacement of coping with the economic change and the food insecurity that comes with rising heat or increasing floods and so forth. We begin to see a picture of the United States that could be dramatically transformed and so just from a data perspective, some of the numbers that we crunch looking at the United States suggests that about 160 million Americans or about half of the country will again find themselves outside of this this kind of climate niche and that's a that's defined by researchers who recently published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences kind of identifying the ideal temperature zone for and precipitation zone for life on this planet. Of those we we tried to zero in on what the particular threats are and to map those threats across the country and we often talk about threats of fire wildfire or heat as specific things in specific places but what we really could see is that if you look at wildfires across the west and extreme heat across the south and a decline in crop fields across the Midwest and the encroachment of sea level rise on the coast and particularly on the Gulf Coast in the southeast. Now when you look at all of these together you begin to see a United States with the walls closing in that's going to affect at least 10 to 15 million people. So we're on the order most likely those difficult to estimate of, you know, 80 to 100 million Americans so, you know, again, between a quarter and a half of the country can make to be severely physically impacted by these they live in, you know, possible the things that they are today so the projects and part of the second story and part of the ongoing work is to consider, you know, what that what that means, you know, sort of a new way of looking at the, you know, the quote unquote disaster of climate change and, you know, it's been a difficult conversation but we're at an interesting turning point and then partially because of the disasters of the last year or three, where I think that, you know, the audience for these kinds of stories and the participants these kinds of conversations are more open now than perhaps you know in the most the politicization is less less than it that it used to be and the real life impacts on home and family and finances is becoming greater. You know, but where we go from here I think is an enormous challenge it's not clear my you know my reporting highlighted enormous equity challenges which we're all aware of in this conversation and talking about more but but of course you know the effects of these environmental changes do not strike Americans equally, though they probably will impact all strata of Americans, but with different effects and one of the most interesting things that I'm continuing to explore is this idea of, of what resilience means because, you know, one of the things that becomes apparent through my reporting is that the very idea of resilience as important as it is is also sort of a suggestion of reverting to or preserving the status quo and look at the equity issues that arise through, you know, climate impact one of the things that is clear is that the status quo isn't good enough that there's a lot of structural changes across culturally across the United States that relate to climate but it relate to economics and relate to race that all need to begin to change and so you know I guess you know as a launching point for the conversation I think it's interesting to start thinking about how a changing definition of resilience or what it is that we're aiming to preserve you know is is a is a is all sort of part and parcel of this question of how we adapt to climate and what the country starts to look like as you know our population moves around around the country and around the world. That's fantastic, I really do want to return to definitions of words like resilience, and we're about to speak to Abana who's the first chief resilience officer for her city. But Michael Oppenheimer's recent article in Foreign Affairs says, yeah, we've got to do a lot of things but the word adaptation really needs to enter our vocabulary if you're talking about 160 million people impacted abroad. I think that adaptation is hugely important, and I hope it doesn't suggest resignation, I think it suggests proactive address to a situation that's upon us but turning to Abana. You're an engineer you think about and have thought about infrastructure in the part of the world where you are now but also internationally and in New York, and like Nicole you're dealing with real time issues in a city and you as you've described your city to me. You're a full service city and I really appreciate that I think solutions are going to come at the local level. So, do you want to describe your situation Tallahassee Abna and maybe even respond to what you heard if that makes sense. Thank you for the opportunity as well and Tallahassee has had its share of shocks as well. Probably even more so when we began this journey of building resilience and thinking about strategizing and beginning to implement resilience efforts in our community it's almost like a. I don't know once you say the words then you start being aware of perhaps all the challenges and you start to see disruption in a different way. We've gotten into a joke in in our leadership team because somebody just has to say a word or well at least we didn't have a pandemic and then here we are with a pandemic and so we're also I just before this call got off our emergency management planning for cold night shelter because our temperatures have dipped below the threshold that the health department warns us that anybody that's unsheltered could could die overnight and so we've activated emergency cold night shelters. The last couple days so truly unprecedented times and I think when we began our process. With resilience planning several years ago we were coming out of one of the first major hurricanes. In several decades, but immediately when the conversation started I think the community recognized that it's not just hurricanes that we may not be prepared for but a whole host of other issues. And before that plan was completed we had an active shooter, we had a cold spell, we had actual snow I don't care what anybody says Tallahassee had snow is about half an inch maybe sprinkles but we it was disruptive enough for us. And the host of other issues that come up and so luckily or unlucky we've had a lot of practice over the last four years and when the pandemic hit in March. It was amazing how quickly multiple departments agency sprung into action. We didn't do it perfectly by no means, but just the exercise of waking up alerting activating thinking through multiple steps. We've had a lot more practice leading up to this. But to the points that were mentioned before. And I love the way Van you said it about disasters being a punctuation mark to a sentence. Absolutely true. These moments of disaster really just wake up, wake us up to what has already been happening and so our discussion about resilience and Tallahassee has been this balance of the underlying stressors. And what does that tell us about our vulnerabilities, who is vulnerable, how they are vulnerable, and why that might be much worse for them and for the whole community should something accentuate, you know those vulnerabilities or a crisis happened so some of the questions have been a focus on who is vulnerable, and that has shown us the way on how to begin to act so when you think about a cold spell. When you ask the question who is vulnerable, well it's somebody who is unsheltered right or somebody who is sheltered in a poor standard home that somebody who can't afford utility bills, they might be tempted to not heat their homes properly. I'm always asking that question helps us, I think with a better answer and when we address those vulnerable individuals first. I think we start to have solutions that serve the entire community quite well. So your responsiveness to the individual is a direct reflection of Nicole saying it's about people. And I think both of your definitions of resilience which are either given to you by organizations with whom you work or however you came into them have expanded literally your title has changed recently reflect housing in that. But before I go to the mayor because he's going to be able to respond to this, I'm sure you are in one of the three state capitals. That's in the 10x quarter. And you're in a state that not that long ago really couldn't talk about climate changes openly as I think you can today. The relationship and you're right down the street from the capital, it being in town has to be the relationship between the local situation and the regional and or state situation and how you navigate that. How does that operate for you. Yeah, it is very interesting to see feels big but it's quite small there are multiple agencies from the federal level down to the local level. I would say we play relatively well but at the city as you mentioned being a full service city. We can't help but get right to work with every day issues on water, you know storm water. We run the airport we run the mass transportation system. We're it where the beginning and end for a lot of our residents and so when we engage around these issues we have a good, a great laboratory to explore the solutions, but we also, you know as they say that this where the rubber meets the road. The policies are being discussed at the state level across the street. We can quickly say, this is how it will translate to us, and we can engage as needed but practically speaking. We can't afford to wait for decisions to be made. And so when they're national level discourse about whether or not we call something one thing or the other. They're at the local level at the resident of the neighborhood level. They want solution they understand the problems they don't care what you call it. They want to see some actions. And I think that's been the spirit of how the city has worked solutions focus not so much more on terminology I don't think that's ever slowed us down. And not so much about you know whether one believes something to be true or not. The reality is that there are issues today that we've had to respond to. And I think that has been enough motivation to get us working quickly. Great. I'm going to go so you've seen government at all levels, even the speaker of the house in California, obviously the mayor of second largest city in the United States for a considerable length of time, head of the US Council of mayors, and I know you've had an eye on national politics in how we need to move collectively forward. So as you think about the roles of government and various levels in that the macro issue of climate change and the things that are being encountered whether it's on the street or on the continent. How do you think about these issues and optimal if you want to think about it that way role for government. Well, first of all, Duke, I want to thank you and 10 across it. This is not my first opportunity to participate in this effort and when we first met a couple of years ago I said to you that I was very forward thinking of Arizona State to connect us because it does take a village and the 10 freeway is kind of a metaphor for that and it connects from Tallahassee to Los Angeles, as you said the second largest city in the country, the third largest metropolitan economy in the world behind Tokyo and New York, and we believe the capital of the Pacific Rim. And so I was elected in 2005 if you recall, and I told 2013, eight years, and I was very fortunate. By the way, I always feel a little uncomfortable being with subject matter experts like all of you and very esteemed group of people. I had some of those Nancy Sutley went from my deputy mayor to the White House chair, environmental quality has worked for Governor Brown and myself and Mary Nichols work for, I believe, for governors, and also for me, and is chaired virtually you know, commission at the city related to environment and at the state and Romal Pasquale was my deputy mayor and worked in the Clinton administration, those were the experts but when I got elected I said we're going to make LA the cleanest greenest big city in the country. You remember before Paris, it was Copenhagen and Kyoto, and the United States of America had not signed on to either of those agreements, and it really done very little to move the country ahead on the issue of climate change and so mayors got together and said, if the federal government is going to do what it's done at Kyoto what it did at in Copenhagen point fingers at all the other countries and refuse to take responsibility for climate change. We're going to lead the way. So, Mary Nichols out of Seattle led the effort. I think in January 2005 I was elected in July, but we did. We signed on to the Kyoto initiative, which as you know says will reduce carbon emissions by 7% of 1990 levels by 2000, I believe 12. I signed on in July a couple of weeks after getting elected. I said, in my inauguration we make LA the cleanest greenest big city in the country. For those of you don't know LA it's known as the city with the dirtiest air the most. It's addiction to the single passenger automobile, a city of sprawl a city of very little transit so when I said that everybody rolled their eyes and said another politician talking We at the time we had about we had the dirtiest public utility in the United States of America and the biggest I said we meet the Kyoto levels we did we reduced our carbon emissions not by 7% not 14, but 28% below Kyoto levels by 2012 we six coupled or if that's the word. The renewables from 3% to 20% by 2012 I think they're only at 28% today, what eight years later, we signed agreements to get LA completely off of coal by 2025. We passed a half sending penny sales tax that generated $40 billion over a 30 year period of time built three light rail lines and one busway, more than anyone in the world as I understand it, unless China did more. I'm not sure of that but cut air pollution by half with cold ironing and other technologies, the most far reaching effort to reduce carbon emissions at a port in the world. We did the first feed in tariff program of any city in the United States. We synchronized all of our lights and we're a big city I think 456 square miles. So every traffic light was synchronized. We, and put an LED installed LED lights and all of them. We did the largest effort to 144,000 street lamps installed from incandescent lights to LED and the list goes on I you know did more parts than we had done in 12 year double the number of parts that we had done it in the 12 years beforehand. I said we plant a million trees and by the way, for those of you who work for politicians. That's the one thing the press always focused on. We had something called the biggest recession since the 1930, or 28 29 crash and during the depression. We didn't have the resources we thought we were going to have. We didn't do a million trees we did 400,000 was six times more than we had ever done before. In fact, the federal government called it the best urban forestry program in the country and so did California. And yet, we were just one of many cities and while we certainly were among the top, all across the board on the issues I just raised. We were one of many cities that led the way. So by the time we got to Copenhagen, most of us were really, you know, taking some of the spotlight from the federal leaders because we said hey look, we're going to stop pointing fingers. We're going to stop making excuses. We're going to do what we need to do by the way on adaptation. I did the most far reaching adaptation plan. Remember I was mayor way back when many people have done it since then but in our city with UCLA. Back I think in 2011 or 10. And so we did all of this but so did many other cities they they all, you know, dug in deep and led the way and so even though today although we had signed the Paris Accord under the Obama administration. So now we have a climate denier in the White House. Soon, we will have a partner at the federal level, and that's going to be important, because as much as we've done, we need to do so much more. What about to ask you that's a great segue, what are you because you you are a the best advertisement for the local address to these issues, I mean it's just fantastic what you just went through and I'm sure Nicole and Abadda and others aren't agreeing with that. What are your expectations with Senator Kerry as an ambassador or an envoy with regard to play. Kerry I co chaired his campaign in 2003. I chaired the platform committee and as you know later chaired the Democratic Convention for Obama, and I can tell you this. He was there front and center, helping to negotiate and lead the way lead on the Paris Accord. I think he's a great pick here to get us back in the Accord. I think to work with the federal government and marshal the resources of the various departments to really move us and accelerate, you know, our efforts to make up for, you know, for last years. And that's what we had, you know, the other thing we did, because, you know, actually this all started before I got elected in 2005. I remember I was speaker at the assembly and assembly member, and back then the Democrats were trying to get rid of the air quality, well if not get rid of reduce the jurisdiction and lessen the powers of the air quality management and I took them on my own party. They were joining the Republicans by the way, and I took them on it and took on this issue of jobs blackmail. What you've seen in the campaign on, you know, on the issue of, you know, moving away from focus on carbon, you know, on carbon sources of power and coal is that we're going to lose all these jobs. So one of the things I did early on is we worked with our unions, but also with community organizations to develop apprenticeship programs to develop F community driven efforts to retrain people reskill people for these new jobs. That's critical, because the pushback from the conservatives and the pushback from the climate deniers is, you're going to, you know, kill jobs, you're going to hurt the economy. Actually, it's the opposite. We can grow the economy with these new technologies, but they're right about something. You can't just throw these people out of jobs. And sometimes I think the Democrats aren't, you know, aren't clear enough about explaining how we can retrain these very same people in good pain union jobs to do the work of the future that's installing, you know, solar or any of it, you know, installing LED lights, all of those things. And so I think with a federal government that's focused now, you know, I pray that we win the Senate because without the Senate we're going to have you know I think if anybody who's reading or who's understood the level of partisanship on the other side, although, you know, President-elect Biden and I share this notion that we got to work with them as much as we can. Right. Trump won. I said that we have to work with him where we can. But it's clear that there's going to be a lot of resistance. And so winning the, you know, the two seats are going to be important. I'm with you. I agree. I don't mean to interrupt that. I don't mean to be rude. I want to make sure we buy our other colleagues in here at Lubbock. Is that all right? Absolutely. I'm totally with you. So I'm sure some of you may have something you heard that the mayor just vocalized that you may want to respond to if not I have thought in that a couple of the items that came before with the mayor was describing and he is describing by the way an immigrant city, a place where a lot of people have migrated to from all over the world. The words displacement show up in vans work and clearly in a bronze writing and I know Abad and Nicole, you're dealing with matters of displacement, whether it's across the border in El Paso or downtown and the mayor had these issues and that they're still there in L.A. And it's something we all need to overcome. How does the word displacement serve as a registration for these big issues and the rule of government in addressing displacement at all levels. I don't know who would like to take that on me. I mean, Nicole, we haven't heard from you for a minute. Do you want to talk about displacement because being right there on the border, you see displacement every day. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that I mean you have displacement that occurs, obviously locally within our community. We start to talk about trying to address affordable housing issues utility costs burn it starts to become an issue that surrounds poverty and opportunity when we're looking at it locally but I think more broadly and and I look back to around work and and he looked into, you know, the role, the sort of node that El Paso functions as in terms of the migratory patterns of a lot of folks and so when we started to talk about displacement in terms of where people are coming from and moving to El Paso really becomes a crossing point right you know, for those of y'all that don't know our history. We were originally referred to as El Paso the north day right so the past of the north and we still largely to this day function in that capacity you see folks that are coming up from South America they're coming through El Paso but largely they're not staying here. Largely they're continuing to move on to other areas across the United States predominantly lots of times Los Angeles sometimes Houston, sometimes New Orleans I mean they're moving to lots of different places and so a lot of times what we're grappling with in terms of that kind of displacement in our community is how do we sort of provide that sort of humanitarian checkpoint for folks how do we put our arms around migrants that are moving along but are really in desperate need of varying levels of support as they get here as you know in 2018 it was Christmas 2018 so actually two years ago this holiday Christmas Eve. We were experiencing somewhere in the range of 500 to 1000 migrants a day coming into our community that was when we had that big surge and on Christmas Eve the city of El Paso really had to catalyze our own resources to be able to protect those folks not because you know there was a federal mandate to do so actually it was quite the opposite we didn't have any resources to do that so we had to come together as a community. But what we realized is that we didn't have the structure to do that so since that time do that I will say we've learned a lot in terms of what systems, structures, services and processes can we put in place that work for us every day with that local displacement that I mentioned right that also prepare us for that surge capacity that we have to absorb and I will tell you that's happening now due to COVID we have more and more folks that are just placed for a variety of reasons and I will say without going too far because we're just starting to see this now we're starting to see folks coming into El Paso legally and illegally to access resources, testing resources, shelter resources, safe space resources because they're not getting what they need in other places and so that's something we grapple with on a regular basis. So that that migration is a result of a lot of difficult things in countries to the south of us and for a variety of social and economic issues. Abram you've described in some ways you haven't seen anything yet so you see climate induced migration and people are forced to move north or to a place where they can not only find jobs but literally they can work because it's not too a variety you've described the inability of some economies to function at a certain heat level. Do you think what Nicole's dealing with now will be clearly exacerbated in the future and how quickly do you think we might experience something like that. Yeah, I mean the short answer is yes. There's some specific answers to your questions I mean we modeled for the reporting that I did about change in the United States we intentionally modeled out to 2040 to keep it in a very near term time frame so we're looking at substantial changes that we will begin to we are experiencing and that will intensify over the next 15 years or 20 years. The, you know, the economic impacts even for the United States of what we're going to see the ability of people to work in heat, for example, you know, some of the researchers that work with the rhodium group climate data firm here in the Bay Area. You know they project economic decline ranging from around eight or nine percent for cities of or slowing in GDP growth I should say of eight or nine percent for cities like El Paso to, you know as much as 50% for for some places some counties in Florida so that's for a lot of reasons but I mean he makes it more difficult to work it makes it more difficult to grow food it makes it more difficult to get along with your spouses I mean it's a it has wide ranging cultural impact. Some of the research that I'm reading right now puts an optimum temperature range for human productivity, the little bit of a wonky thing but it's at like 55 or 60 degrees and what you see is that really only the northern half of American cities have an average temperature in that range so the southern half are already, you know, kind of on the boundary, you know, of what's workable in that sense, and are going to be moving, you know, out of that work further out of that workability range so. Yeah, I mean I think these, these problems are going to intensify that international pressure and it's going to be coupled with really, you know, substantial changes in in the US as well. If I can just cap off with you know quick thought going back to this idea of displacement because it gets to this I mean, displacement is you know by definition and involuntary action and I think that's what's really you know defining about you know sort of this climate movement at the moment is the you know cities states they build economies they they plan for attracting people for building voluntary growth voluntary participation in new economies etc but we're moving into a stage where. Individuals are going to begin to grapple with the fact that they can't fully make the their ideal decisions about their own life paths are going to be steered by external changes like environmental changes. And, and communities that have to grow and respond to that are going to begin to need to incorporate. If you know refugees is a severe term that applies to some of these people but there's a much more subtler gray range of people who will be, you know, pushed to relocate or pushed out of, you know places they prefer to be involuntarily and I you know I think that's really you know sort of ringing the bell on a new era of the kind of change we're going to see. If you don't mind you guys just really quickly around, I just want to put an exclamation mark on what you kind of just said about displacement being involuntary because I do think that what you see in a lot of cities and we're guilty of it as well as you start talking about economic development and we start talking about quality of life and investment and a lot of that is because we're trying to attract folks, but we do have, you know, you have that sort of migratory pattern for a community how are we embracing that or are we looking at that a little differently and start instead of kind of approaching it with the same cookie cutter sort of model that we've seen for many many years and then the last thing I will say just to lighten the tiny bit is the desert rat in the room will say that 55 degrees is cold. And if it's not 80 degrees for any is not happy so just I was about to say. And then I want to get right to you but Phoenix went from about 30 plus 110 degree days a year to over 50 this year and that kind of leak is wildly abnormal. But linking the idea of displacement and is a promise put it forced and but the predictability of being forced, if you will, which is sort of an oxymoron I understand that if you know New Orleans like Van and I do what happened to Katrina was predicted and predictable. So people were forced to move but if you looked in the engineer and I would say yeah look at those living walls other things. How do we see the potential for something happen that's going to cause displacement and do something before that happens, or maybe not live in certain areas they're going to make us susceptible to those kind of things. Then how do you perceive a place like New Orleans because you talked about it, even post Katrina people saying maybe we should just let that place go. Maybe it's just too difficult, we shouldn't have been there in the first place. These are difficult questions and I think one thing that I try to do in my work is to take a lot of these terms and ideas like displacement and movement and migration and take them from the theoretical to really thinking about how they are affecting families individual families are going to have to make. What does this placement mean what is a forced migration mean, when it means leaving a place that your family has called home for hundreds of years. What does it mean you know when you live on a street that has your last name has the street name. These are, you know, that's a whole different. I think ballgame and it's not just people decided to pack up and leave it's people making, you know, real historical decisions to cleave themselves from a place that is sustained them and oftentimes for people of color has been a place where they found a safe haven. You know, the history of migration for people on the margins in America, you don't know if you're going to find another haven, going to another place. And that's a key consideration, I think it was really important with looking at people after Katrina in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, how they really pushed back against the phrase refugee, because that phrase to them and to lots of people sort of meant that their placement, or they're being accepted into new communities was purely on the basis of charity, and that what happened to them was not the responsibility by law of other Americans. And I think people are actually having that conversation now with the term climate refugee to people in America is saying wait a minute if I'm being spliced by sea level rise that is being you know sort of pushed along by American corporations. Why would that make me a refugee wouldn't make me a person with a legal claim to safe haven somewhere else in America. They're seeing people have those conversations now, and they are influenced by these major disaster events like Katrina like the major migration of people from the island of Puerto Rico after Maria. But also they're being influenced by the slower attrition of people from hot from environmentally marginal areas to more attractive areas. Again, you know they are conversations about what home means about what it means to leave a place, what it means leave place where you have security, and go to a place where you're not guaranteed that kind of cultural, economic, or social stability. Those are things that we have not really done well as a country of putting together in any type of you know coherent national strategy. You know we're talking about government I think we've left places left cities left towns and counties on their own, for the most part. And that's one thing I think we really need to pivot towards in this climate century. In 15 minutes we have with the group and then just to pop on exactly that point if you're in Louisiana and in the New Orleans area where you've written about. You've got that immediate disruptive need to move when the hurricane comes in frankly government failed a lot of people the buses didn't show all kinds of things. But you've got that slow moving time which I think you were also suggesting maybe based on what corporations have done to the buy you and remove some of the barriers that would preserve the wetlands and people have been literally forced off the land because it's now under water. How is your perception of government change with regard to viewing all these stories at such a personal level, what do you think about it. So, I think that our current model of problem solving is simply not built for all of the different challenges that we're going to face in a warming world. And that's on the disaster level. That's thinking about our response to really acute sudden things like hurricanes like big floods. You know, we still rely on essentially a Jeffersonian federalist model of, you know, trying to. It's very slow. People generally have to petition on a on a state local and even family level for the resources they need. And they have to have the wherewithal to be able to figure out what they need. You know, a lot of it's still based in insurance. And that doesn't really work in a world where, again, you know, 6070 80 million Americans are going to have to move imminently because of climate pressures. So, I want to go to Obama because she was taking me to task a little bit I said something like government for me really got on and I wasn't talking about her company. But based on what you just heard Dan say and again, you know, for all intents and purposes you are going to you are trying to help based on what Dan saying and so the inadequacies. Do you have enough tools in your toolbox and what do you really miss. What did you wish you had in your office or how might you think about your role and how you could be more effective. Yeah, the risk of speaking for all governments everywhere. I love local government because I think they're they I know they're closest to people, and I know that our decisions are careful and well thought out because we go to grocery stores and schools with our constituents. So, you know what we need, as we balance international and national best practices with our unique local context is the resources and space, you me all the money, and then give me the space to implement. You know whoever's listening, because I think that there's a lot of creativity and innovation at the local level. We can make it work. I think local entities have also learned to be creative because there hasn't always been federal and state level resources I mean on the housing aspect for example, you know our like local funding sources usually get swept. And this was the first year that it's not swept but it's on hold. You know we deal with COVID. So it's yet another reminder that you know if we are serious if we care and if we want to put the resources there we can. And when we do I do think you'll find that a lot of local agencies are ready to spring into actions because one thing we'd love to do is develop strategies we have metrics in place and not enough funding to actually do the work, but I do think to chime in on the previous commentary, you know, migration and movement has been part of the human history. It's not going to change and I think that we need to kind of understand that this is a way that we have as a as people evolved, we move by choice or by force. We can move for better or for worse, and we should expect it. And I think sometimes these disasters are good reminders and good motivators for movement. But I think in the early part of this conversation we started talking about adaptation and why that's a good thing is, you know you can move or you can adapt. There are models to have people that have stayed and adapted and we can learn from indigenous groups we can learn from, you know, smaller communities that have learned to live well in their environment and to live lightly on the earth. Those lessons are so important now even as we get so advanced and technical that we forget there are ways to do this in a more balanced way, but not to fight the, the, what the land is telling us that we need to do. So the, the limited work that I did in New Orleans was looking at that as well what what is the land telling us is our capacity. So if we are going to stay here, we have to adapt in the same work in Nigeria, where the community I was working in was dealing with flooding, they've been there for centuries. So the question isn't so much, should we leave it's how must we live here. And that that could be an acceptable response as well, versus fleeing versus moving to a new place because that will also have its challenges. One of our conversations on resilience has been not just getting away from it or avoiding the worst it's looking squarely in the face of disaster and saying this will happen and when it happens. How will we include how we have capacity to deal with it. You know what will we do to respond and then thrive, eventually. And some of that response includes taking better action so that those disasters aren't as horrible as they could be. But it also includes dealing with the reality that disasters and crisis and shots are a natural part of our lives as an individual at a household level, certainly as the city and the national level. And we've got a little less than 10 minutes, and I know the mayor has an important appointment so I'm going to go to him shortly. We have one question which I'm not sure anybody has an answer to but it's an interesting thing relative to local situations and the questioner asked that he's interested in his day about a car to feed and dividend and it would happen at the state level presumably and what would be the local impact. Does anybody have a short sweet crisp answer to that and our strong feelings about it. Looking to the audience here. Now if you don't it's okay because we'll save that because it might take us on another track. So, in the, as we close this down I'm going to turn to the mayor first and then come back to each of you something I raised at the beginning. This is a uniquely composed panel where you've got, again, people like Dan and a Brom who are sitting back and collecting data and narratives and all kinds of things and reporting back what they're finding to us. And I want to understand for those of you who are in government, the, how you read those things if I'm, if I'm reading a Brahms article and I'm looking at if I'm the mayor and a California citizen I'm looking at my, my state on fire here. What's my response that am I glad that someone is telling it like it is as he sees it, or does it, maybe not to use too much upon sort of inflamed tensions about climate change, everything is in a triple or cloud change. How are those of you who are reporting and writing helping those who are in government, and how those in government use these things or maybe say yeah that was great to read, but I've got to keep my head down and get my job done. So Mr. Mayor, how do you how do you take big picture issues like climate change, the way they're presented by these authors and work them into your work. Well that's why it's great to be on a panel with subject matter experts like the folks on this panel. I embrace it, you know when I read something that that we should be doing that we're not, you know crisis that is coming down the road or the highway the 10 highway no pun intended. Obviously, you know, I, instead of, you know, getting upset that we may not have focused on that. I bring the best and the brightest and say, let's put a plan together. That's not how we do this. And something that van said that I think is really important because my criticism, sometimes of the environmental movement is that they don't focus enough on environmental justice focus a lot. You know, as an example, you know Volkswagen. Basically says their cars are doing X and they were really doing why and the, you know, the state of California forced them to pay a lot of money to the state and the first thing they did was do, you know, what's it called charging stations for cars. Well, not everybody has an electric car, particularly poor people. I have a hybrid. So it benefited me but it didn't benefit the people that are always left behind so I focused a lot on equity virtually everything I did. I would layer across about the issue with equity, whether it was parts, I put them mostly in part poor areas, whether it was transit, I put it in the areas where the expert said the transit dependent were, you know, an islands on to themselves and so, you know, a focus on the, the poor and on the implications of environmental justice I think is very, very important. And I'm hoping this current administration really understands that, but I embrace it. You know, I say look, let's get together and let's do this and put a plan. The reason that we selected the geography from 10 across so much of what you just described is very present here, whether it's because of industry or long standing socio economic circumstances. If you want to see the future of the country we think it's here and environmental justice is a huge part of that. Mr. Mayor I know you need to run to your next appointment. We were delighted to have you here we'll finish up with the rest of us. If you need to run and workers we're going to close here in just a few minutes and if you could share the contact information the other speakers that would be great thank you. And as I said to all of you before I think this is not our last meeting I think we're going to get back together we have too much else we want to cover, but in the closing minutes for everybody. Maybe Nicole you haven't gotten a few words and lately, tell me again how you take major observations by our esteemed authors here and how you absorb it into your work. Absolutely. I think you're getting accustomed to reading my body language. So I want to take a couple of steps back. And resilience is absolutely not about maintaining the status quo. I just want to challenge that notion. Resilience is not emergency management. Okay. And I think that with the point that I want to bring up and kind of answer your question and some of the takeaways from this conversation is to bring to light this tension that exists between emergency response emergency management. What do we do as resilience practitioners and community developers right because I consider myself probably a community developer first right really looking at what impacts people in the long run I said it in my opening comments. You know if we're looking at you know creating whatever the next hashtag is in terms of solutions to the latest crisis that is the only space we're ever going to live in. And to say that the crisis is the punctuation right but it's important to understand the rest of the sentence and not just what's past but what's coming. Right and I think that when we talk about resilience it's important to start to 360 fake start to understand that an investment in emergency response cannot just do that one thing you cannot just deal with, you know, pulling back the flood waters. Right, you have to deal with what's left behind and make sure that it's increasingly stronger for the future and I'm going to use a very recent example is the CARES Act that was deployed to address COVID-19 across this entire country. I won't take all the time, but I will tell you, if you want to I can have a three hour session with cocktails about what worked about the CARES Act and I know what it was intended to do, but it did not. Well Nicole we neither have cocktails or three hours but I do want to come back to you on that because I know I know you have a lot to say and you say it so well on behalf of your community. I want to quickly go back to something I said earlier what do cities need. We need flexibility, we understand our community is better than anybody else and if I'm going to talk about legislation and I'm going to talk about stimulus and I'm going to talk about what comes down to cities, stop trying to micromanage us from on high. Exactly, I think that the lesson is the federal government would do so well to listen and observe what you're doing. And I'm sure Abana would second that you do you want to put in a very short last word Abana. Yes, you know the poet snap to that flexibility has been proven to be the way we can innovate and we can be nimble when we have less restrictions and where we've learned that very clearly with the CARES Act. I echo the sentiments about focusing on who's most vulnerable that those solutions for them actually are better for the whole community as a whole. So it's my pleasure to be here I thank you for the opportunity and I've learned a lot from the rest of you all as well thank you for the work you're doing I embrace it, I take your writing. I read it well in fact I got a couple just today. But what has what it has meant for us is that a focus on data for our local needs so when I hear the national rhetoric I can say this is interesting I wonder what it's like on our local level. I'm motivated to seek that data and then contextualize it for ourselves and we're doing exactly that actually next week on housing instability in light of COVID because we hear the national conversation on evictions and foreclosure, and our leadership is asking us well what does that look like for Tallahassee and we go out and we seek those answers so it's instructive it's helpful to have the clarion call we appreciate it, but we know the hard work is still looking at what is local for us, and you guys inspire that so I think the motivation for 10 across is the fact that with data, as well as the stories that people like band collected a field. We have no excuse for now. We can see the future, maybe more brilliantly than any societies ever been able to do therefore what will we do with that information. Rob you want to add anything to that given that the predictive nature of the work that you've done with all of that data and how we should be responding in 30 seconds. Yeah, I mean I guess I would just go back to this idea of turning point and response to the kind of articles I think that people are beginning to see that less as you know hyperbole and don't care as much what we call these problems or politicize them as realizing that they're actually happening and that they're happening to them and in their communities regardless of of where they you know are on the political or economic spectrum so if you're a farmer and you're losing crops you're you know a California and you face fire threat and that realization is opening minds I think to you know it for maybe for the first time or maybe you know reaching sort of a critical momentum where there's possibility to do the kinds of things that Nicole and Avener talking about to drive policy on a local level or on a national level. That's actually responsive and that substantive. And we can start to move away from the rhetoric and that's actually been the response that I've gotten, you know, to my stories surprisingly, a diverse and and much more personal response than much of, you know what I end up writing about climate and I see a sort of representation of that and I think that's good. Right. So, I told I was told they turn the lights up on us like in one minute so so if you want to hear more from van, you've got to go listen to his podcast for months. And so you'll get another four hours of band and it's an extraordinary tale of not only what happened there at the families but the rule of government the geographies and incredible personalities. It's phenomenally well done so so bad I want to thank you for that and I think I hear your kids in the background the way you've managed this is brilliant. So thank you for all of you for being with us. I was also asked to say because it's important that for future tense the next event is next Tuesday on December 8 at 1230 and the topic is, is your university designed to create a better future. The answer to that is yes because the president my university will be speaking so yes we are designed to create a better future. So all of you can attend that into the four of you who remain into the mayor as well. You're good friends, you have so much to say you're doing phenomenal work and I do hope we get together again in some format to follow up on some of things we've just barely began to scratch the surface of so thank you very much, and look forward to that time when we see each other again.