As fires continue to rage in the American West, as swaths of Louisiana
including New Orleans remain without electricity as a result of Hurricane
Ida, and as flood damage resulting from the remnants of that hurricane
continue to dog New York City and the Northeast, we are already hearing calls
for "hardening" our infrastructure. Hardening means making our
infrastructure more resilient in the face of disaster, both natural and
man-made. That supposedly means making our electrical grid more resistant
to wind, improving drainage and sewer systems to prevent flooding, and
upgrading roads and bridges to prevent them from washing away.
While hardening infrastructure seems like a good idea, there are two
major obstacles. One is obvious: It is much easier to harden
infrastructure when building it from scratch. Upgrading any piece of
existing infrastructure means working within the limitations of that
infrastructure and replacing and adding parts in ways that are less
expensive but also less ideal than rebuilding. While some of Louisiana's
electrical grid might be rebuilt from scratch, very little electrical
infrastructure elsewhere will be rebuilt since upgrading will be far less
expensive. The same holds true for water and transportation
infrastructure.
The second obstacle may not be so obvious: Climate, the primary reason
for hardening, is a moving target. The planet has not simply reached a new
stable state. Rather, climate change itself is changing, that is, it is
getting worse over time. First, the
rate of human-caused emissions of climate destabilizing carbon dioxide,
the main greenhouse gas, continues to rise. We are adding more
carbon dioxide every day at ever higher rates. Second, that trend has
resulted in continuously rising
concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Third, there is