Facing the Future We have an historic opportunity to ensure public institutions are prepared for climate change, and are ready to act in a world of increasing risks and uncertainties. While climate change should be an important factor in every decision, it is not at the top of the list in many decisions. Our challenge is to build a resilient society and economy, one that can adapt to inevitable changes and thrive in changing conditions. Sustainable design is creating change at all levels of design, planning and policy The need for sustainable design is pressing. We are making decisions that will have consequences for the long-term. However, climate change, energy scarcity and resource depletion are not front and center, and their impact on social and economic well-being has not been identified. This lack of information and understanding reduces our ability to respond. We need more knowledge about the impacts and options for future development in order to have informed choices about infrastructure and urban planning. In all of this, the challenge for cities is to ensure that the decisions being made are informed by science, good planning and evidence. Planning needs to be done as a partnership, involving not only professionals but also stakeholders, including private companies, developers and residents. The challenge also is to bring the expertise of academics, as well as community groups and local governments. The role of climate change in today’s economic and political debates is critical The political debate on economic and climate policy in the United States is not helping the effort to build a prosperous future for the generations to come. Climate change is seen by many as an impediment to growth. It’s not clear that the economic benefits of investing in sustainability can counteract this argument. A number of companies and business leaders feel they have been disadvantaged by climate regulations and subsidies that favor competitors who do not pay the same costs as they do. While this is a short-term challenge, long-term economic growth for our citizens is dependent on environmental and climate risk management. As a society, we need to build a new framework for assessing risk that includes human values and considers the cost of adaptation to extreme events and natural disasters. Building strong economies and resilient communities requires a shift from competition to collaboration The recent economic downturn caused a number of individuals and businesses to question the basis of a market economy, which has been described as one of the “institutional sources” for the destruction of the planet. While economic institutions and structures have their limitations, we believe that they are necessary and should continue to exist. However, economic competition needs to be joined with collaboration and social responsibility. The shift from a “take what you can” mentality toward sustainability requires broad policy changes. We need a long-term plan to guide this effort and to bring all stakeholders to the table to drive solutions for the challenges ahead. Climate change offers us a historic opportunity to build a prosperous society However, we must work hard and develop a new narrative. We need new solutions that build resilience at every level, including better cities, stronger families, more sustainable businesses and more collaborative leadership. When we think of new urbanization that is compact and connected, we can imagine that a sustainable development paradigm will be one of the solutions that will be needed. It is a shift from a culture of blame to one of responsibility. We need to stop the blame game and the finger pointing and create a collaborative space for developing better solutions for building a prosperous society and a sustainable economy. It is only in this context that we will be able to see the economic, social and political foundations for a successful and prosperous future. Related This article is part of the New Climate Economy series, a partnership between The Huffington Post, The World Economic Forum, and U.K.-based Climate Strategies. Climate Strategies is a major force in urban and public-private governance in the U.K. that works on the intersection of environment, energy and climate in order to create sustainable prosperity, improve quality of life and catalyze growth, within cities and across society as a whole. “The challenge is to ensure that the decisions being made are informed by science, good planning and evidence. Planning needs to be done as a partnership, involving not only professionals but also stakeholders, including private companies, developers and residents.” This is precisely the kind of change that I call for in the forthcoming publication on the Economics of Climate Change, available here for free download: The author has used the opportunity to make several important statements about the nature of this problem and how we must address it. As these comments would make most economists extremely uncomfortable with the statements here, they are not likely to be read and understood by either scientists or policy makers. The author would make an excellent person to have come out of these pages and been brought into the policy making and scientific institutions so that he could influence both sides. An outstanding contribution to the economics debate. Climate change is a complex problem, but this paper illustrates well the complexity of the issues. With this analysis, you could add to the debate, which is urgently needed. One Response to "How Climate Change Affects Decision-Making, by Martin Hoerling" A thoughtful and informative article. It was really important for those of us in the business world to read. I know of very few people who have had an economic impact that can be tracked back to being willing to think about climate change in any terms other than global warming. This change in thinking has not come from policy makers or politicians (except to the extent that they are willing to try to use the global warming label to create awareness of their message). It is coming from economists. This is the only group of people who spend their time trying to evaluate the cost of something. We need to be more focused about what we want to accomplish with policy. What does the average person want the government to do to limit the global warming caused by CO2 emissions? You will notice that there is no mention of CO2 or carbon emission reductions in this article. We want policy to address many different things. We need to be more specific about what we are trying to accomplish. Then we need to be prepared to identify the benefits. The economists want the policy makers to focus on the costs. But most of us working in this field are trying to figure out a way to convince politicians that the cost of our emissions is not all costs. That is the part that politicians are very reluctant to accept. If we make ourselves more clear about what the purpose of these policy decisions is, we will be more successful. We need to address what we want to accomplish and make that clear in this discussion. We need to work harder at getting that message out and not waste time talking about how expensive the solution is. In doing the policy change that would make sense, we are not going to make the world perfect and there will be mistakes made by policy makers or governments. Those errors can be identified with the right information. We can use their mistakes to figure out how to do it better. That is how science progresses. When the scientists identify a problem and solve it, they