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As our state experiences hotter and drier summers, less snow, rising sea levels, intense storms, flooding and wildfire smoke, Snohomish County is working to plan for and mitigate climate impacts.
A key priority is the creation of a Communitywide Climate Resiliency Plan, which the Department of Conservation & Natural Resources’ (DCNR) Office of Energy & Sustainability is developing. The plan is designed to help strengthen the County’s communities, businesses, ecosystems and infrastructure to withstand a changing climate, while ensuring equitable outcomes for the people and areas most affected.
Nearly 45 residents, ranging from teens to seniors, showed up Wednesday evening to learn about and contribute input to the plan during an open house hosted by the DCNR at Mariner High School in Everett.
“Climate change is already impacting our county, and community voices are essential to building a plan that meets our shared needs,” said Molly Beeman, office of energy & sustainability manager (OES). “We look forward to hearing what residents, businesses and youth envision as their climate priorities.”
Over the next few months, OES will continue gathering ideas from residents at public events and through community organizations.
OES encourages residents to share their climate priorities by responding to this four-question survey here.
Our climate has been changing since time immortal. Nothing we do is going to stop it from happening, we can adapt and we have been for all recorded time, in there is where our efforts should lie.
It is the rate of change that makes it a problem,Jim. With fossil fuels releasing so much carbon dioxide and methane in the last two hundred years we are doing what might take millions of years naturally. The change is accelerating too fast to adapt unless we slow it down. We must put into place more renewable power. Solar is now the cheapest on the planet over other forms of energy and deep geothermal holds promise to produce constant energy almost anywhere once they can scale up the drilling to go down further and further toward the earths core… which oil companies have good practice doing. We can slow the rate of change down enough so we might have a chance to adapt, but only if people like you stop disseminating falsehoods about climate change.
What falsehood did I disseminate?
“[W]e can adapt and we have been for all recorded time”
“The cyclical occurrence of famine has been a mainstay of societies engaged in subsistence agriculture since the dawn of agriculture itself. The frequency and intensity of famine has fluctuated throughout history, depending on changes in food demand, such as population growth, and supply-side shifts caused by changing climatic conditions.” – Wikipedia
The European population of Greenland was wiped out by the failure of farming due to the Little Ice Age.
The American Dust Bowl in the 30’s was certainly enjoyed by all…It was caused by a combination of drought, poor agricultural practices, and high winds, which led to massive soil erosion and displacement of people.
Pacific Islands, which have been inhabited for centuries are slowly being covered by rising seas due to global heating. How do you suggest they adapt?
When the polar ice caps go, and they are going, seas will rise and cover low coastal areas, damage or destroy delicately balanced ecosystems, destroy food production. Melting of permafrost will release enormous amounts of methane, adding to the downward spiral.
Etc.
Unfortunately, ignoring science and real problems rarely leads to happy results.
There are civilizations that have been underwater long before the use of fossil fuels what did the people do, they moved and so will the people on those low lying islands. How many people now live in places that were once covered in ice where will they go during the next ice age. Global carbon emissions continue to rise science says the planet is going to continue to warm for a very long time to come, my point instead of giving rebates and tax credits to rich people maybe the money would be better spent adapting. Not to worry fossil fuels are will largely run out before much longer part of adapting will be finding viable alternatives, I hear Antarctica is going to be habitable in the future people might think of living there.
Fleeing is not “adapting.” Neither is starvation” “adapting.” Neither is loss of food production and overcrowding in remaining land as populations are driven out by hunger and heat and “viable alternatives” grow scarce. Subsistence is not “adapting,” nor is survival of the wealthy while the poor starve.
Civilizations have risen and fallen because of climate change/weather patterns, one could argue fossil fuels have been the means to lift billions out of poverty. Climate change and associated weather patterns have affected people before fossil fuels and they will still after and there is little we can do to affect that. Is buying a little more time as a commentator above suggests at great cost to the poor today going to be beneficial to anyone but the rich? Might I ask, was you recent trip you took worth the harm you cost the planet? The delay in measurable change because of similar people’s actions worth it? It kind of makes me wonder just how important all this is, except that I know the poor will still pay the greatest price to pay for the richest virtue.
What is interesting to me is that every City in Snohomish County has already incorporated Climate action in their Comp Plans and has, at least in one form or another, a Climate Action Board or Commission that contributed to a climate action plan. I couldn’t sleep last night so I took 30 minutes and asked Gemini, GPT, and another LLM to combine the action plans into a regional climate action plan. It took 15 minutes and combined the work of 4 municipalities in seconds to come up with a draft plan – not perfect, but that’s probably due to my data mining and query skills. Now we have additional staff at the County level recreating what staff and planners are doing at the municipal level. I am sure there are additional resources being spent at the State level. It’s another bucket that we throw money into when we’ve thrown money into it at the local level. Maybe I am shortsighted, but shouldn’t we know the plan by now and leverage technology to enhance our ability to reduce time and expense on a regional plan that results in a combination of already existing data?
I believe if I would have downloaded the documents from each City and the Snohomish plans, and then uploaded them for analysis, that it would have produced even more robust details and metrics versus the general web query. Grasping technology and techniques to consolidate administrative functions would go a long way to allowing the experts to focus on execution of the actual plan, not rewriting the plans that each City is required to produce. Maybe I am oversimplifying it, but my preference, in both private sector and public sector, is that the high talent folks we have spend time in execution, measurement, course correction, and goals than in administrative functions of reproducing what talented individuals and citizens have already invested time and effort in.
Tongue in cheek:
We have learned how to fight climate change…just raise taxe$$, like the tax and cap Washington State plan…
It has worked very well for the State of Washington…kind of like jousting with Wind Mills
…Just sayin’