California authorities call for climate adaptation

A new kind of pragmatism entered the US climate change debate yesterday with the release of a report urging Californians to start dealing with its affects now rather than wait for the inevitable.

The draft document, released by the California Natural Resources Agency, indicated that, even if a global deal is reached on reducing greenhouse gas emissions at a United Nations' climate change conference in Copenhagen in December, the state will still need to prepare for rising sea levels, hotter weather, and more wildfires, droughts and floods.

The report warned that regardless of efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, current levels of heat trapping gases will remain in the atmosphere for the next 100 years and continue to have an impact.

Over the last century, California has already seen sea levels rise by seven inches, average temperatures increase and spring snowmelt occur earlier in the year.

As a result, the Agency recommended that local government, universities and residents all work together to minimise potential future damage. It suggested that local communities rethink future developments in low-lying coastal areas and regions prone to flooding and that they provide property owners in such danger spots with incentives to relocate.

The plan also advised reinforcing levees to protect flood-prone regions and conserving water supplies in the densely populated but arid region, not least by encouraging farmers to undertake more efficient methods of watering crops.

In addition, the Agency said that the state government could also partner with local authorities and private landowners to set up large reserves to safeguard wildlife threatened by temperature change. Wetlands and fish corridors should also be created to protect salmon and other fish that are sensitive to environmental conditions, according to the the document.

The report, which was compiled after governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered the Agency to devise a state climate strategy last November, is due to be released in its final form this autumn. It comes three years after he first signed California's landmark global warming legislation, which required the state to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

The study also follows a similar nationwide report issued by the Obama administration earlier this year, which warned that the US economy could be devastated by the impacts of climate change, including increased heat and flood risks, and severe water shortages capable of making large swathes of the country uninhabitable.