 I'm Paul Butler the president and chief transformation officer at New America. I'm excited to welcome you to today's event. It's being hosted by the future of land and housing program and future tense future tense is a partnership between slate. New America and Arizona State University. Future tense examines emerging technologies public policy and society through content that's published on slate calm and through events like this one. We're here today to discuss climate change, not solely as a challenge, but also as an opportunity to drastically reimagine life in the United States on the coast and beyond. Now, the US is at a climate crossroads, rising sea levels along with more frequent and intense storms, threatened over 100 million Americans who currently live on the coasts. One in six people, largely out West now live in areas with significant wildfire risk. And in places like Phoenix, the fifth largest city in the country, extreme temperatures make places nearly unlivable in the summer. There's no denying that climate impacts are increasingly and dramatically affecting where Americans live. They're also affecting our relationships to our homes, our businesses and communities. Communities can often feel like overwhelming challenges, but we're not powerless in determining our climate future from our work here at New America. And from the work of our partners it's clear that communities can adopt locally based equitable and just solutions that help them manage and even thrive in the face of climate change. In some cases, existing tools and policies can be adopted to the local context than elsewhere. We need to chart new paths for what our climate future looks like. And so it's our hope that policymakers, innovators, advocates and organizations and communities themselves can come together to find creative solutions in the coming decades. So I'm thrilled to kick off today's conversation. An amazing panel will focus on the mix of innovative public policies and societal reimagining that's needed to ensure that the US coasts and other communities impacted by climate change that they prosper well into the future. First, thanks again for joining us. And now I'm going to pass the floor to Yulia Panfil, who's the director of New America's Future of Land and Housing Program. She'll be monitoring today's discussion. Yulia, I'll pass it to you. Thanks so much, Paul, and welcome everyone. Thank you to Slate Future Tens for co-hosting this fantastic event with us. So I'm really excited to moderate this amazing panel. I will briefly introduce the panelists. Then we will jump into about 45 minutes of discussion and then we'll have about 10 minutes for audience Q&A. So our first panelist is Abram Lusgarden, who is a New America fellow and a senior reporter for ProPublica where he covers climate change and the environment. Abram is also the author of a forthcoming book on climate migration. This is joined by Brenda Cooper, who is a technologist, writer, and a futurist. She's the author of a fantastic fiction story out of ash that came out in Slate Future Tens just a few months ago that we'll be discussing. We have Tim Rabustelli, who is a policy analyst for New America's Future of Land and Housing Program and who leads our work on climate change. And finally, Elaine Morales, director of partnerships and policy for Connective, which is a hub for disaster preparedness and recovery in the Texas Gulf Coast region. Welcome everyone. And Abram, let's start with you. Last year, you authored a New York Times magazine piece titled Climate Change Will Force a Great American Migration that paints a pretty dire picture of the impacts of climate change on coastal communities. Can you frame up the climate threat that America's coastal communities are facing right now? Yeah, thank you so much. And I'm really happy to be here in a part of this conversation today. I grabbed some statistics from the book research that I've been working on that helps frame that question is basically the sea level rises. Sea levels have maintained a pretty static level for the 2000 years before the Industrial Revolution, the beginning of large scale human emissions into the atmosphere. Since then they've risen about nine inches, which doesn't seem like a lot, but it's enough to be noticeable. And the US coastlines are the places where that sea level is rising fastest. So there's about 133 million Americans or about 42% of our nation's population that live on coastlines in the United States and from places like Brownsville, Texas or Charleston or Norfolk or Long Island. Sea level rises have risen nine inches just since 1960 alone so they're outpacing the pace of global sea level rise. And what that means of course is, you know, people who are directly affected by those rising waters will have to move or adapt to that situation. Sea level rise is a little different from say wildfires or extreme heat where we can all kind of decide what our personal threshold is for for withstanding it. I mean when you're when you're flooded when your home is underwater you have to you have to leave it's a little bit more of a black and white kind of scenario and that nine inches of sea level rise already is leading to really significant changes in how Americans live. So Norfolk Virginia for example that used to see sunny day flooding or high, high tide flooding about, you know, once or twice a year is already seeing it about 14 times a year. And I see the same here in the Bay Area where I live outside of San Francisco with sunny day flooding coming up through sewage systems and into the streets directly affecting, you know, our quality of life here. So the question is how bad will it get and how fast will it get bad, and that depends on the rate of emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration puts sea level rise estimates of between four and nine feet by the end of the century. That's a huge range but four feet is is bad enough nine feet would be absolutely catastrophic and I presume we'll come back to it but that probably suggests a very significant migration of people of those 133 million people who live on coastlines or near coastlines away from those coastal areas. Thanks Abram and that statistic is just mind boggling 42% of the US population living on or along coastlines such a significant part of our population that's immediately impacted by this threat. Tim, turning to you, what have coastal communities been trying so far to meet this threat and how successful have those efforts been. Sure thanks Yulia just want to say thanks to Paul and our partner future tense before jumping in and just excited to be here with my awesome co panelists today. So there's a lot of action and energy at the local level when it comes to climate adaptation. You know we see in cities and towns across the US actively trying a real mix of public policies whether that's buyback programs, such as the blue acre program in New Jersey sort of the government paying homeowners to move away from flood prone areas on the Jersey and up at inland. There's talk and plans of sea walls and you know extending coastlines and even natural climate solutions such as rebuilding mangrove forests places such as Miami and New York, lower Manhattan even Boston. Then we have some manager treat policies that's being implemented. No places such as the coast of Alaska on the Gulf shore and Louisiana in particular. I'd say that there's you know there's been a range of successes and challenges when it comes to these these local solutions. Obviously there's there's a need for funding. This is a large problem which requires, you know, to be frank expensive solutions. And you know there's also sort of a big fail in many places you know there's folks disagree about what should be done if anything should be done sometimes and sort of the associated community buying as well you have folks with a lot of different interests. Some folks right on the shore some folks a bit more inland, but all part of the same community sort of figuring out what to do so all that to say, there's a lot going on, and a lot that different communities can can learn from each Thanks to Elaine turning to you, you're based in Houston which of course was battered by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and has since seen other storms and increasingly severe weather events. How are the Houston area and broader Gulf Coast communities, you work with thinking about climate adaptation. What are some of the questions that you hear policy makers and communities asking and what are some of those choices that they're grappling with. Thank you, Julian. I'm very glad to be here and part of this conversation. Yeah, Houston communities are thinking about the climate often. We are reminded about the urgency of reducing our vulnerabilities and adapting constantly. Over the last decade, we've seen years of drought, and then all of the sudden five years of flood events and, you know, more than, you know, seven federally clear the clear disasters since 2015. Worst case scenarios are saying that our neighbor Galveston is going to be under water in 2060. The future will be getting hotter but all of the sudden we freeze last year through the winter storm. So climate change is bringing a lot of uncertainty to our communities, and when we are already feeling under water by the needs and challenges of the present discussing discussing our future can be very unsettling. In preparation for this panel I wanted to call friends and other partners to see including policy maker academics and people working on the ground. And what I heard on the common thread is we know the problem. We know what we can do about it, but we need radical transformation in the way we do things. There are a lot of questions that remain. You know some are what is it going to take to change this rhetoric that climate adaptation is too expensive. While we are seeing and the government and others pushing contradicting practices. We are still building in the floodplain. You know how come northeast Houston, a BIPOC neighborhood, sitting in a shallow floodplain isn't getting significant investments to retrofit or elevate structures, or to reimagine its drainage infrastructure when we are seeing our state, our state spending billions to expand I 45 highway in Houston at the expense of for displacement and more pollution. Half of our local emissions come from transportation, which can feel like a waste of money in the face of climate change. How might we Houston the self described energy capital of the world can save up a new climate forward identity in which we can push for a clean transition and build resilient carbon free infrastructure that doesn't leave us to freeze the fire in the heat. Are we going to, you know, enforce strict regulations on emissions invest in fortification and weatherization strategies. How can we envision climate adaptation strategies that are centered in equity and community. And what that looks like for Houstonians with disabilities or low income communities of color. Overall, we want to have hope and hopefully build a better future. You know, I think that, you know, it's a privileged concept right now for many communities in Houston to think about leaving, or even having the choice to move, considering also that this is a global issue that we all are going to experience climate change in one way or another. So we know that there are many solutions out there. We discussed, you know, oyster grief in our coast that can capture zero, you know, carbon capture and also protect our coast. We can mitigate the effects with zero carbon buildings, but both things can improve our quality of life and improve the environment, but we actually need to do it. We know that we can move people that are at higher risk to higher ground in our community. We know we need to change our relationship with water. What does it look to be floodproofed and making space in a safe way for water. So, we just think that this is the moment we can all go in and we can kind of divide climate adaptation versus the needs of the present. So everything that we do has to be part of it and I know that's easier said than done. Thanks so much Elaine for really laying out the issues and I want to come back to this idea of radical transformation that you had mentioned but before going there, I want to just come over to Brenda, as we heard from Elaine of course one of the choices in this choice set is to go to leave and you just wrote a really fantastic future tense fiction story about the mayor of Olympia, Washington who chooses to relocate the city away from sea level rise and she struggles to get anyone to move there despite the obvious risks of staying. Why is that such an important story to tell. A couple of points first, I think science fiction is a great way to explore the future and get a feeling about the things that are happening it's you know we can research the science we can learn the same things that everyone else on this panel is learning and we can put it in a more emotional personal context. So that's why we write stories about climate and many many writers are writing stories poetry, a lot of things about climate in order to help us begin to wrestle with the emotional impact of doing this kind of thing. In this case I chose a city that probably will have to move. And I think it's important to understand that this isn't something we can run away from. We can't just assume that sea level rise isn't going to happen, or that we can push it back or that we can mitigate as was mentioned earlier, like, I can protect my house from fire by cutting down all the trees around it so the firefighters can save it bad idea, but I can do that. But I really there's nothing you can do about the ocean. It's, it's an inexorable force, and it's going to impact our climate in significant ways and our coastlines. And we're going to have to figure out how to move both money and power which are very difficult things to move because that's what's concentrated along the coastlines frankly. And while we're doing that, we also need to figure out how to create better places, so that the places where abandoning become actually better places for us to move to, and then how do you convince people that they can create a new community you're very unlikely to be able to pick up all of the people that exist in a certain area unless you're in a driver very small group and say I'm just going to move these people from here to here. People are actually going to flow to many different places but you're still going to need brand new cities and brand new places where people can congregate and live in a way that is maybe a little bit easier a little bit more intentional to get out some of the lanes comments. Whereas how we can create social structures that will thrive along with an earth that we can help thrive. So, you know I think it's important to look at the significant political and economic difficulties and making these moves. And I want to cut so I'd like to come back to this term, a lane that you used of radical transformation right that this is not a challenge that can be met with incrementalism and we have to think big because the challenge is so large. So I'm curious to hear from everyone on the panel. How do we get there how do we get people to think in that frame and move past some of the political and economic constraints that we all know exist. I could take a stab I guess I, the long pause is because there's no easy answer so I don't think I have have one either. And to be honest I'm cynical about, you know, our, our potential to get there. But I, but I just a few thoughts on this idea of the sort of scale and scope of change that's needed. You know, a lot of the people that I'm talking to right now are pointing out that the very idea of resilience. It sort of implies this elasticity to return to where we are now, you know to a sort of status status quo and that that's not sufficient. That that faster more disruptive change will be needed because we're going to have faster and more disruptive change imposed on us so, you know, the urgency is that we figure out how to, you know, have sort of a radical change, or it will just be imposed on us before we figure it out and you know and one or one or the other will happen. But I think a lot of it, you know a lot of the potential solutions and a lot of, you know what has to happen starts with an economic realization of what's at stake. You know I think the costs for the country the cost for coastal communities the cost for taxpayers will soon be apparently huge, we know that they're projected to be huge but I think we'll start to realize that and live that experience soon. And so with that comes, again, both more pressure but also some opportunity, because as soon as you have, you know, kind of those relative costs, there's a greater potential to make, you know, relatively large investments in response to it or and or compared to it and, you know, and that's part of what needs to happen. And, you know, and I agree, you know with Elaine that a huge component of what probably has to happen is a social reorganization of our of our values of sort of, you know, looking at the sort of capitalistic mechanisms, you know incentivize or don't incentivize the right kind of action and change, and you know adapting coastal communities for example to sea level rise we're looking at where those people move or supporting their movement really comes down to you know fundamental policies that include things like section eight housing and where do you build enough schools, you know and and also climate infrastructure like seawalls and things like that so it's a huge range and and the challenges going to be, you know, as you said, Julia, you're like getting political support for that change and, you know, and then finding the money for it the money will be easier to justify once the actual costs, you know, are more apparent unfortunately, that might take a little bit more time. Yeah, I want to jump in and first I agree with you that I think we're going to see, you know, we can either let this happen to us or we can have a voice and what happens I expect both are going to happen. But things will happen that we don't react to the way that we should but we will begin and I think already are in many cases, beginning to think about how do we mitigate or how do we adapt or how do we change. I'm probably the most corporate person here I work for a construction company, rather than been being in a more academic world and we are focused on purpose we're focused on building green we're focused on on DEI activities and we're basically focused it's not just greenwashing it's not just we want to want, want to talk about diversity we're actually working really hard to bring a number of these changes in and I think we have to address these kinds of problems we have to address the inequality and income and inequality and power we have to address, making it possible for everyone to succeed if they want to. And we're not alone a lot of the corporations that we know or work with or are familiar with in the Washington State area of course we're very blue state, but we're very focused on making these changes. And our government is focused on making these changes as well, and I think that all of these efforts together can add up to at least part of the solution. I'll just jump in with with one quick comment radical transformation can can seem daunting and sort of reorganizing society socially politically economically can can seem like a challenge that's overwhelming but I like to look sort of from an international context sometimes and see what's been done elsewhere and there are examples that Rotterdam and the Netherlands, and sort of how they deal and live with water, and sort of how they think socially about it. That can remind us that like this is, this is a large challenge but it's not impossible this radical transformation isn't impossible and we have examples to perhaps emulate and adapt to local contexts here to show, you know that it can be but it, you know it'll take that it'll take the social will take the political will but it's possible. Yeah, and I just want to say that you know when thinking about radical transformation it really you know I think of how we let go of the things we are used to and the things that we assume our truths or things that cannot change. You know, many of our current systems are extractive and oppressive for many communities, and we can think about systems that build capacity and our responses to people rather than economies, for example. We can think about you know our communities are telling us that they are resilient, that they have survived, that they continue to, but the systems they're operating under are not supporting their flexibility to be resilient. And you know when you look we have systems that continue to put the burden back to these proportionately affected communities, as if you know individual awareness was going to protect them from the floods. You know we have social service systems that we people out from assistance, you know we know that disaster recovery widens inequities and wealth gaps between white populations and black populations, we know that we have systems of weak regulations that allow people to be next to industry at their expense of health and you know nature and their life. We have an immigration system that pretends that we don't leave and share the same planet and prevents people from looking for safety and security when they're you know from them to find it so I think that to store perpetuating inequities we should be thinking about how do we build economic mobility for everyone, you know even providing reparations to address this historic inequities. So we can move from these list of options that we have to address climate change and transform them into choices for everyone. So I think people can choose how to you know if they want to stay if they want to go how they can have equal participation in these decisions. So I think the barriers to adapt to our climate reality are not lack of facts of information of technology. It's the lack of focus and a sustained political will to do what has to be done. And you went in this direction and started speaking directly about the equity implications of this conversation I'd love to hear from the other panelists as well. How do we ensure that climate adaptation is done in a way that's solving inequities and not simply perpetuating them or exacerbating them. How are we thinking about this question. I can jump in to start. There has to come from the bottom up there has to be a very strong emphasis on community engagement and sort of elevating the voices of folks on the ground to make sure that their concerns their interests their needs are being properly accounted for. I think we should sort of talk about the need for political will and and perhaps technical guidance and funding can come from Washington or state capitals but when it comes to planning out what the next move is I think that you know listening to folks on on the shores in in places that are flood prone is critical. One of the keys is going to be shifting money down. And I think that's going to take changing our tax structure changing some of the other things that we're doing and frankly, many of the people who have a lot of money are saying, tax me more. We're seeing that movement in many places and I think that we should be doing that and I think there's some conversation about how do we make that happen. Because I mean trickle down has never worked it's always been a theory, and we've got to find ways to take this money and put it back into social services put it back into infrastructure. And I think people along the coast in Washington State while some of them are very rich some of them are also very poor we don't we have a lot of beaches that are not destinations. They're cold. And those people are going to need help they're not going to be able to pick themselves up and move and so we're going to have to find ways to provide structures and resources, well then to make their own decisions about what do they want to do rather than just going in and taking and saying, you know, go up yourselves, we have to create really good structures, we're going to have to move money around to do that. I would add that it I think it starts with recognizing how unequal environmental and climate conditions, you know have been in the past, you know and I think we're all probably a little bit familiar with environmental justice movements and exposures to, you know, to pollution harms but you know the the exposure to climate change is also unbelievably unequal, whether that's, you know, you know the difference in tree cover and urban areas for, you know, for black and brown neighborhoods as opposed to white neighborhoods, or the temperature that results from that it's literally hotter. You know, in communities with people of color, or the difference in housing stock, the vulnerability that comes with living in, you know, in trailer parks in hot climates across the Southwest. You know and on the East Coast, especially, you know as Brenda was pointing out in a lot of coastal areas are poor and they started poor before the rush, you know for second homes and, and sort of wealthier fantasy living and so you know going way back to, you know to the Revolution or you know to after the end of slavery you had, you know, black communities seeking agricultural lands on the coastlines of Maryland, for example, where no one else wanted that land and those land no one wanted it because they're low lying and you know and flood frequently and now they flood more frequently and those are the communities that are most at risk so recognizing how unbalanced and how urgent that need is I think is a starting point and then you know I'll take my thoughts really big picture because I think about this globally and I think about the stability, you know, of countries and conflict, you know and not to be too sort of hyperbolic about it but not paying attention to these divisions which will be exacerbated by what will ultimately lead to, you know, to instability and so you see that sort of in, you know, in the political, you know, divisions in the United States already but imagine, you know if these inequities go unattended to for another couple of decades, what kind of pressures that puts on American society so I think that there's a real, you know, incentive for everyone. to sort of roll up their sleeves and dig into this isn't really just sort of a philanthropic or you know be good to all people kind of issue we all have something to benefit from, you know, from equalizing the effects and addressing our solutions across the board. I just want to add that when thinking about equity and recently we've seen this thing about going to space or bunker down someplace. It's always in relation to who is able to go to space or bunker down in the middle of the country. And I think it's because we are operating, you know, under these scarcity mentality or, you know, selfishness mentality of protecting my assets protecting my life at the expense of others. So I think like if we can, you know, remove that type of mentality and instead go from an equity mentality, you know, it won't be, oh it's too expensive, it's not feasible. We don't have enough resources for it I saw a quote this week that said there's enough if we share, I think that in the context of climate change, there's enough if we care about it so just put it out there. So how do we, how do we do that how do we get people who are not yet bearing the brunt of climate impacts and for whom this is still in a sense a hypothetical or kind of academic issue to care enough about this topic to, you know, put money into it and put political action into it and prioritize it. So two comments one, I think most people either are affected or beginning to feel affected I think the day when there were people who were not affected is behind us. I don't think there's any part of the United States for example that is not somewhat affected at least by climate if there's no in or those people so so I think we're past. Secondly, I think we have to get better messaging out. There's still this sort of mixed political messaging, there's lies, Frank lies on many sides of it. And somehow we have to address that and I don't know how we address that but I think it's very important that we can address speaking truth and helping people understand that there isn't a single truth about climate that you know there are many reasons for studying it that's going to what we learn is going to change over and over. And many times when I talk to people who are confused or don't know what to do, or are trying to ignore it. They'll point to the fact that we've had many many mixed and different messages, which is true, because we've been learning more and more I've been studying this for 10 years and the predictions have gotten worse and worse, quite regularly. So I think we need to teach people more about this being a science more about the details of it, and we need to figure out how to make it, make there be consequences for flat out lies about climate, and I don't know how to do that that's a really hard one I think it's important. I can throw into two thoughts as well. Minor one, maybe it's a pipe dream but I think leadership, you know is is just critical on this, this does not have to be an entirely democratic process where every single citizen agrees to make this investment, this is, you know an opportunity for people who understand better and in a position of power to, to do what they think is necessary. And the second is that action doesn't need to be framed as, as climate action and you're seeing plenty of examples of where it's not. It's just necessary action sometimes it's just doing the same old things that we've known for decades need to be done to shore up communities. You know if you can see Rhonda Santas in Florida, taking action to protect flooding communities and, you know essentially addressing climate change without and climate change. It sort of doesn't matter what the climate change language is as long as you know we begin to you know to raise money and make investments some of these projects are going to take a long long time to build and, you know, and equity ultimately also you know it stems from just starting starting somewhere. So you can you can frame these as economic projects or you know business improvement projects or infrastructure whatever you want to call it besides climate change. And then just to brahman and Brenda's what completely agree with I think you know policy creating incentives and disincentives for folks in the decisions that they make and play a part in this as well. Whether it's flood insurance or subsidies provided after a disaster to rebuild, you know a house that's been destroyed by a hurricane three times. Do we want to rethink some of those policies and sort of how we shape the choices that that folks are going through through incentives or disincentives financially or otherwise I think can play a big part in it as well with the floor. Actually Tim I've often wondered if the insurance companies aren't actually going to be the ones that help lead us out of this. Oh no go ahead Tim. I said there's certainly something to say about that, you know sort of banks and others that are underwriting 30 year mortgages and how they're thinking about, you know the risk that's associated with houses on the flood prone area so there is a bit of movement on that, and you know money talks right so I think sometimes they can be the first movers on that to change where people are building and rebuilding. I'm seeing some head nodding all around so let me stay on this for a little bit and see if anybody else wants to jump in on this topic of you know how do you align incentives towards tackling climate change. Yeah I was nodding my head a lot. I mean I can get about as wonky as anybody wants on insurance I've looked at it you know a lot and you know Tim is exactly right. It cuts both ways though so you know for by brief way background I'd say insurance policy and the insurance market is one of the big reasons why coastal communities are in the you know in the trouble that they're in. The number of people that have moved and been encouraged by cheap subsidized insurance to move to coastlines, you know over the last couple of decades is enormous and I've got this stat here that you know the result of that I think there's twice as many people live in coastal counties now as they did in the 1960s and the value of you know at stake is $36 trillion which is 30% higher than it was just in 2012 so the stakes are big and a lot of that is because insurers offered policies and because states mandated that where insurers didn't want to that they offer it anyway and that they offer it cheap you know Florida for example Louisiana Texas they've all you know set low prices for insurance and required insurers to offer homeowners policies at that price. So then the flip side of that you know is that insurers are beginning to realize it's not in their best interest to remain and they'll start to pull out and that can be a positive incentive for what we're talking about it can also be a real risk for you know those same, you know, lower income communities who won't have anywhere to go, if they can't ensure their homes or will lose a lot of the equity that they've managed to accumulate if they can't ensure their homes. And, you know, so I in general I think it's great for signals to start pushing people to at least recognize bluntly what the true risk is of the environments that they live in. That's an adjustment but I think it will be a painful adjustment. Just to point on that in terms of incentives and also thinking about the work that we normally do every day as part of, you know, fighting back climate change, you know in Houston and in the country we have a housing affordable housing crisis and there are distinctions between builders and, you know, developers to say we can't build resilient homes or resilient strategies because it is increasing the cost. So you're asking me to, you know, reduce the cost to have more affordable housing but then you're telling me that this needs to be resilient and I think like there's a return on investment for resilient homes that you know can be, you know, should be sold either to the government or private sector as incentive of why to do these things. We know that, you know, $1 investments in mitigation are, you know, $11 expenses during recovery when these homes are affected. So I think that retrofitting rehabbing the naturally affordable occurring housing that we have, but also build to do that is part of how we fight climate change as well. So I'll just ask a couple more questions and then we can move to the audience Q&A. For those in the audience, please feel free to drop your questions in using the question function and we'll get to those in just a moment. Elaine, I wanted to come back to something that you said during our planning call that really struck me. You said that it's not that communities aren't resilient to climate change. It's that the systems that they live under aren't resilient. What did you mean by that? I tackled that up before but it's about how, you know, the current systems we live under the disaster recovery systems are widening, you know, wealth gaps that, you know, migration systems are not thinking about the needs of people and it's a lack of prioritization of humanity over economy and how do we think about climate change solutions as not being oppressive and strapped but rather building, you know, support for these communities to thrive in the face of climate change. You know, they have survived, you know, redlining policies and, you know, lack of regulations and feeling, you know, that the communities have to take care of each other and they have, they have. They have these strong social networks but we need to ensure that public sector support is there to balance that bottom up build capacity. How do we help governments and private sector to learn from the resilience of communities to be more flexible and responsive to what's going on. So I'll end with this quote, and I'd like for each of the panelists to just briefly respond to it from a new America fellow lead drop man and he wrote that while it's easy and valuable to imagine worst case scenarios in order to avoid them. It's also important to imagine best case scenarios in order to try to bring them about. We can't enter an era of transformation without a realistic utopian vision for it. So what has been an example that you can point to of a transformative best case scenario on this topic that gives you some hope for the future. So I'm going to go to a fiction example that I think is fabulous and I believe new America actually talked about this in another panel, but Kim Stanley Robinson's work on this topic is phenomenal and his book Ministry of the future which I think came out last year addresses a lot of the big and monetary issues that we're going to have to address, and the political issues and the idea that we have to look at things as as a globe and not as a bunch of individual small areas and so for me, that book had in it a lot of hope, and a lot of possible solutions and just the idea that yes we can do this we can get through this and I think one of the things we're missing is that hope fiction might be a good place to answer. This question, I mean I think. Well first of all I'm going to stick up for the importance of talking about worst case scenarios, because it doesn't have to be the only part of the conversation but it's really important first of all that we're honest about how how difficult things are going to be. And, and secondly, we seem to keep outpacing what we think the worst case scenarios are so they may not be the worst case scenario but it but it is important to pair that with recognition of what the opportunity is and that opportunity can come in lots of different ways and there is that big picture global, you know, partnership kind of sense of opportunity that, you know, that Kim Stanley Robinson writes about. In my research on on Americans migration now, you know opportunity to different people looks like, you know, potentially moving into places that are less vulnerable and, you know, and there's change that comes with that. So, there's a lot of data that I've been looking at for example looking at crop yields across the country and how they change with temperature and the economic impact of that and obviously for the southern part of the United States that's bad. But for the northern part of the United States that's potentially good and that's the kind of thing where, you know, a small seed of economic opportunity can lead to a bigger seed as if you imagine in the northern part of the United States crop yields the farming increases, the farm industry that's something like a, you know, a $34 billion annual industry and, you know, in Oklahoma and Kansas, part of the Midwest shifts into, you know, you know, Wisconsin and Minnesota and North Dakota that that's, you know, that there is enormous economic opportunity for that place or for the repopulation of cities like Detroit and so forth so that's one place I think people see opportunities. But also just in general, when things get urgent. And again, you know, it comes with pain but when we do start to make those huge investments in cities or in seawalls or in new technology and so forth. Every time that happens it's an opportunity to rebuild things the way we imagine them to be for the future. And, you know, for some people in some places that's going to be chock full of opportunity. I agree with the worst first kind of approach. And I, I see hope for future in the glimpses of success that we are seeing in our community. You know, in Houston, we've seen that collective networks are built bottom up through crisis and pressure tests like after Harvey, we saw new organizations that have common line to elevate the voices of those in different lines and they are working towards environmental justice, equitable mobility, food access, affordable housing, justice after recovery. And I think that highlighting and elevating these efforts will hopefully allow us to prioritize action over perfection and start kind of like worse first and see big investments in crisis areas and move past the planning stage into action. We have so many plans, you know, resilient Houston plan climate action plans neighborhood based plans. So how do we move now into action without the fear of, of making mistakes like we can readjust. And thinking about kind of like more in the fictional or talking vision. I think like we hope for a feature in which we have adopted in which we are ready for these chocks and when we always say at connective that we hope that when disaster strikes. There is no emergency. And I really hope that frontline communities are not left behind to fend for themselves, but that instead we have joined forces through participatory practices and transform these systems into humanity systems like that, you know, where care is the norm, where empathy and dignity are priority. And I, you know, we in the ground in the frontline communities where, you know, we are experiencing these worst case scenarios. I think we need to believe in that vision because our survival depends on it. So I'm going to take this out and just build off what Elaine said about the glimpses of success and sort of looking at what's been accomplished at the local level whether it's an innovative solution such as a basketball court that doubles as a retention pond. And, you know, the floods come or is it a dyke that serves as a park for an underserved community during sunny days so just seeing that there is action and that there are folks that are being innovative and creative to to confront this problem both at the local level, and perhaps more sort of broadly to reimagine what we're doing so that gives me hope how creative folks can be to try and address this problem. Thanks, Tim. Thank you, everyone. So, we have about 10 minutes of audience q&a, and I'm going to move us right from the utopian to the realistic and reading this first question and it's cracking me up because it's basically just the name of our panel, thrown back at us as a question. And the question is, what is coastal America's future. Brenda, if you don't mind maybe since you're the futurist I'm going to put you on the spot to maybe start us off. What do you think is actually going to happen if you had a crystal ball. Okay, well, futurists don't have crystal balls first of all we're not necessarily really great at predicting but we do understand I think a lot of the trends that are happening. So if I were to just take the future of my state as a way to sort of take a look at that because we are on the coast. My guess is that Seattle may thrive. We have there's money in Seattle there's engineering know how in Seattle there's political will in Seattle, we already have a C wall we can build it bigger. We'll have to we'll see some changes we'll see some things that are bad that will happen. But by and large I would imagine Seattle will stay on the coast and we'll be able to figure out how to do well. I think Olympia is going to have to move. And I think some of our other coasts, we have, we have entire cities built on peninsula that are at like three feet above seawater, and they're not going to survive this, you know, I mean whether it's 10 years or 20 years or 30 years, the water's just going to be up over those places and they don't even have a way to build up because you'd be building up on sand, you know so we're going to see a lot of our communities back up off of the coast and I think some of this is going to be really difficult and hard to just get to create a brand new pretty beach right where the sea level rise took away your old beach we're going to see a different kind of coastline and we're going to see a coastline that we know is changing. So it's not like 10 years from now you'll just build on the edge I mean so I think a lot of the coast we have to really give back to while then. And I hope that that's what we do with the number of our areas. I think some of our coastal cities are going to figure this out and they're going to figure out how to thrive. I'll just flush out a little more detail on that from what I hear from futurists and scientists that I talked to but it's basically, I mean Brenda's exactly right. Places that have wealth, which means a tax base to invest in protecting themselves will and other places won't be able to do that and those two kinds of places will head in different directions so you know you see New York City, you know investing what's now priced at $119 billion or something like that for a seawall and you can imagine other major cities beginning to do that. 12 of the nation's 25 largest cities are on the coast, some 80 million people will be, you know, you know, affected by the changes in those in those cities. For poorer communities, it's the start of a downward spiral, as economists describe it to me so you get some the projected migration away from coastlines is, you know on the order of 14 to 20 million people. I could be much larger than that but that's a study that came out of Florida State University that it's been influential in my work. As people leave communities, those communities lose their tax base, the, you know, their schools lose population their schools lose funding so more families leave the lower the tax base gets the, you know the poor the roads get the more people leave because they don't like the roads and so forth and you get this sort of downward spiral until you have, you know the collapse of a lot of places, or the people that remain there because they can't afford to move as we've talked about so you get this just really strong division between places that will thrive and protect themselves. You know, Charleston another example passed a tax measure to invest $200 million into seawall impoverished coastal Georgia is not going to do that. And maybe that'll go back to nature or maybe the poverty in those places will will simply deepen. I said so you're going to see an urbanization and a concentration of populations in the places that can afford to protect people. And just think like, again, like we need just to change our relationship with the coast, you know, I am from Puerto Rico, my family is in an island. And we see the contradictions of wealthy people still building in the coast, and even though erosion and the water keeps getting closer. But I'm also seeing hurricanes organizing to letting those structures just be taken by the water. I think that we, we are okay into bringing back to nature watersheds and the coast where nature can protect us. And then we just need to figure out how do we manage ourselves for these imbalances of those that can protect themselves and those that need our priority and our focus now so they can be also protected in the future. Well, let me move to one more question that is hopefully slightly less depressing the man's first heard, although Lane you shifted us towards a slightly more uplifting direction. A few of you have touched on this but there was an audience question that was hoping that you could expand. What are some successful grassroots organizing efforts that have made a difference on a local level and that we can look to to mimic and implement in other localities. Well, you know, even though like these are not maybe directly related to officially climate change but disaster recovery and you know, responding to to coven. Like Abraham said like we need to maybe start seeing these pieces as part of this bigger strategy. So here I can Harvey I think our community really learned what works and what doesn't. And, you know, we hold a lot of collective knowledge and the reality is that a lot of the gaps were left to be filled by the philanthropic and nonprofit community and even grassroots organizations. For example, the philanthropic and nonprofit effort to repair homes after Harvey was able to repair four times more homes than the government response. So that gives you an idea of how broken this, you know, disaster recovery system is. And when coven happened we knew that a lot of millions were going to get into our community and that we really needed to get our act together to make sure that those funds got to the people that needed the most. So our community showed up and we advocated for a joint city and county strategy, no more, you know, siloed programming. And that was an effort of private nonprofit grassroots organizations were doing drive through events helping people apply for assistance. We had community organizations knock knock around doors and doing peer to peer texting campaigns to for people to know like what alternatives and choices they had, while the government was making sure that those federal dollars get to our community. So right now in the, you know, risk of climate change, I think that we need to make sure that justice 40, you know, let's hold accountable. The federal government so justice 40 is is held accountable like let's make sure that the infrastructure bill works for the worst case scenarios and hardest hit communities. Let's push harder and not let that housing is not considered infrastructure as part of the infrastructure bill when we know it needs to be. So really like how do we elevate and use our local and grassroots networks to use the resources we have when we have them to move the needle and create step changes into the right direction. I want to talk about two small successes in Washington State, both are tribal, and I'm not Native American, but the quid all tribe was able to move an entire city away from the coastline and up the hill at town. They moved the school they moved the people they moved everything successfully. And we've also started paying reparations to some of the Native American tribes in the United States were doing that for the Duwamish tribe in the form of rent for some of the lands that we took from them. And so I think I think these while they're small and maybe only in some ways directly relate to the larger problem of how do you how do you move really large cities. There are places where we can look at successes and we can look at things that have increased equity, rather than decreased equity, which is going to be a really difficult poll as we go through these changes. My mind comes quickly to just a few bureaucratic fixes in the way that FEMA and other government agencies do things that can really go a long way for those affected by climate change and related natural disasters the example of Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico comes to my mind. And the rebuilding process how the FEMA eventually accepted affidavits for folks to prove where they lived to receive money to rebuild instead of titles, a lot of folks in Puerto Rico were missing those titles so sort of being mindful of how policies were drafted for everyone initially and making that change to account for, you know, those those and underserved communities and without a lot of resources so I think movement there while small and bureaucratic can go a long way to helping people as well I look at that as a success. I'm glad that during covert there's not best practice to allow public benefits to be proof of income, instead of, you know, adding more documentation into application processes. So really reducing, you know, administrative barriers bureaucracy to get to the people when they need it the most, I think it's one of the biggest thing we can do. And coming back to the question of grassroots organizers it's often those grassroots groups for pushing for those bureaucratic fixes because they're the ones who see the where the policy is not matching up to what the realities are on the ground. Well with that I'd like to thank all of our panelists for a really fantastic discussion, and to thank the audience for tuning in. The video of this panel will be up on New America's website within the next day or so. Again, we thank you so much and enjoy your afternoon.