This is New York City's subway, essentially underwater.
And this is London, also underwater.
In China, one year's rainfall was dumped in Zhengzhou within three days.
And Germany experienced one of its worst national disasters in 60 years.
All of this happened in 2021.
It is an emergency –
not just for one particular country.
Cities and towns across the United States – and the world – are drowning.
But why?
Is it just because of the climate crisis?
Or is there something else also at play?
I think we can see how our infrastructure
is completely unprepared to deal with
the effects of a changing climate.
Scientists, activists and the Global South
have warned the world about the impacts of the climate emergency for decades.
If you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it.
It wasn't until recent years that the U.S. started feeling the impacts more severely.
Images like these are becoming more and more common.
Experts agree that
global heating has made extreme weather more intense and frequent.
How?
Well, in short, heat-trapping gases
have warmed the climate
and warmer air can hold more water vapor.
This means hotter air and other climate factors
can collectively make storms
linger for a longer period of time.
So when it rains,
there's just a lot more water coming down.
But that's not the only reason
why cities are drowning.
Extreme storms don't always have to lead to flooding and destruction.
We have seen how
infrastructure in the United States is
Infrastructure failure
has played a big role in the devastation of American towns and cities.
Stormwater infrastructure, for example, is supposed to pump out floodwater
to avoid exactly what is happening here in Detroit, Michigan.
But the increased rainfall was beyond pumping capacity.
The current infrastructure in the U.S.
was designed for the climate of the past.
In other words, U.S. infrastructure is outdated and decaying.
For example, over 40% of the country's bridges
were built more than 50 years ago.
That's before the UN designated climate change as a concern to monitor in the '70s.
Nearly 1 in 3 people [in the U.S.]
have been impacted by a climate disaster.
And a lot of those impacts felt by folks
is because they haven't had
the infrastructure necessary to protect them.
The infrastructure isn't just failing when it comes to extreme rainfall –
it's failing in other extreme weather events too.
In record-setting heat, streetcars in Portland shut down service
after power cables started melting.
Roads bent and cracked in extreme heat waves across western states.
Texas’ power grid shut down after equipment froze from unprecedented cold weather in February.
When infrastructure that was thought to be ready fails,
it can surprise local governments when coordinating an emergency response.
The American Society of Civil Engineers, a professional society that has evaluated
U.S. public infrastructure for decades,
rated it a C- in 2021.
The group's recommendation is simple:
American infrastructure needs to be more resilient
to cope with the weather events created by a heating planet.
But infrastructure isn't just about roads or sewage systems.
When people say infrastructure,
they tend to think about
the physical infrastructure –
maybe the roads,
the critical infrastructure
like electricity, transportation system.
For me, infrastructure is beyond the physical infrastructure.
There is also what we call
the natural or nature-based infrastructure.
For example, land covered by roads and buildings
isn't able to absorb water as well as undeveloped areas.
Wetlands that could potentially absorb and slow down flooding are disappearing
thanks to land development.
These impacts of urban construction have increased the chances of flooding.
There is also what I would call
which is really people coming together,
building the capacity of people,
building knowledge,
research and development that allows us
to deal with this event.
We shouldn't be having folks
fend for themselves in times of crisis,
which we know are sure to come.
We should be implementing policies
that deal with the crises of our time,
not just so people can survive,
but so people can actually thrive.
But you can't talk about the United States' decaying infrastructure
without talking about the role of
The private market is not set up to encourage infrastructure companies
to update their facilities at the expense of short-term profits.
Profit-maximizing utility companies and many U.S. states
were reluctant to adapt to the climate crisis,
even after historic power grid failures.
That's a problem, because utility service shutdowns could affect
water pumps and communication with emergency services
if flooding happens.
In 2021, more than 200 people died from the cold storm
and blackouts in Texas.
Without essential utility services, people are left defenseless in extreme weather.
For decades, the world's best scientists
have told us how grave the climate crisis is.
And for decades, we've also had the solutions
in place to fix it.
But what's gotten in the way?
We have a democracy right now
that is being overrun by
by fossil fuel executives
who are hellbent on stymieing
and obstructing any form of progress
that will hurt their bottom lines,
their profits, right?
Now, all of this might make you think that the future is nothing but bleak,
but all hope isn't lost just yet.
It's true that cutting carbon emissions
could prevent a complete climate breakdown in the future.
But actions can be taken to defend people from current impacts.
Preparing infrastructure to handle the effects of the climate emergency is not cheap,
but it's much cheaper than the cost the U.S. government is paying
to fix the damage from extreme weather.
Between 2017 and 2019, the U.S. government spent an estimated average
$46 billion every year to recover from disasters.
That's almost seven times more on average than what the government
spent making places more resilient to extreme weather events.
Making that investment up front
to build the resilience of people,
resilience of cities, of communities, is, in fact, much more logical
and much more meaningful to do that,
compared to waiting for the storm to happen
and then trying to address it.
We have gotta be flexible
in how we think about adaptation
to these different disasters.
The Earth is indisputably warming due to human-made carbon emissions,
but climate projections give a range of predictions.
Future planning should be able to handle that uncertainty,
as well as unexpected failures in the complicated and interconnected infrastructure system.
A new $14 billion levee and floodwall system
successfully fenced New Orleans during Hurricane Ida in 2021.
But that system won't last forever.
Because the sea level is rising faster than expected,
and human-made landscapes have caused levees to sink,
the storm system will stop providing protection as early as 2023, five years after its completion.
And in another town 20 miles away from New Orleans, floods caused by Ida
already toppled a levee, forcing residents to evacuate at the last minute.
We need to move faster because
the storm, the floods, the wildfire and the heat waves,
they are happening faster than our policy can catch up.
And as we're investing in the physical infrastructure needed to deal with this event,
we need to also continue to invest in the nature-based solutions.
Those are the solutions that are actually much more
sustainable,
that are not likely to just break down
or that are not likely to cause newer problems.
Like most aspects of life in the United States,
the level of impact of the climate emergency depends on
where you live and your racial and socioeconomic background.
We also need to prioritize investments
in low-income communities,
in minority communities.
For example, Black people are twice as likely to die in a heat wave in Los Angeles than others
because they have less access to air conditioning
and are segregated in the inner city where heat builds up.
In areas hit hardest by the climate crisis,
only rich people can afford to stay
by strengthening their homes against flooding.
How do we invest in areas where
we would really protect people,
particularly vulnerable people?
They are more exposed
and they have less resources to deal with it.
Congress is currently working on two infrastructure bills
projected to a total of $4.5 trillion.
The first bill focuses on updating traditional infrastructure,
like roads and water pipes.
The second bill aims to invest in human infrastructure, like education
and affordable housing.
Even though the Green New Deal didn't pass Congress in 2019,
it posed tough questions about building deeper social resilience
in the face of the climate crisis that the government needs to answer.
So when we talk about what just policy,
what equitable policy,
what resilient policy can do
for the lives of working people,
we're talking about tapping into the imagination
and promises that have long
been spoken of by various politicians,
but never actually delivered.
We don't want just a couple corporations
benefiting from the rebuilding of infrastructure.
We want workers to benefit.
That means forcing our government to create millions of good-paying union jobs,
to actualize our infrastructure,
to build stronger homes
that can protect from floods,
from wildfires, to invent new industries
and invent new technologies
that can reduce carbon
and protect us from the climate crisis.
We have to kind of tie this issue of energy transition,
racial justice, climate justice, education,
innovation, science and development.
If the most vulnerable person in a particular city
is actually resilient,
the whole city will be resilient.