(As I wrote this, Buddy was looking at me askance, wondering, “Is he thinking of moving?” That would be hard on Buddy. Over the years he’s perfected a neighborhood walk that takes us past every home or shop that gives him dog treats.)
A USEFUL FLIGHT
The US has more than 3,000 counties, a whole lot of which are relatively climateproof. Evaluating and comparing all these could become a big dull research project. What we’d rather do is just fly across America, looking down, to actually see the various risks. Coastal flooding, drought, heat, hurricanes, and other natural hazards would all be revealed to us, maybe in colors. We could steer toward the dark blue safer counties, avoiding the yellow, orange, and red areas.
Well, Buddy and I actually took that flight! Anyone can get a free ticket. We sat back, buckled up, and enjoyed a birds-eye view of the possibilities, stopping to examine counties and even smaller census tracts. This flight, introduced six months ago, is called the National Risk Index Map, created by FEMA. All we need is a cursor to move and zoom and see the risks anywhere across the 50 states.
THE BASIC MEASURES
Many qualities that mark a climateproof town are hard to see, and Buddy and I will be spotlighting those hidden qualities in coming weeks. But the risks most Americans think of when they hear of ‘climate threats’ are wildfires, hurricanes, drought, heat, and coastal flooding. The National Risk Map shows these and adds 13 more hazard types. For each hazard, it scores each county.
We found plenty of surprises. Who knew that, while Boston is yellow (moderate risk), next door Norfolk County which also fronts on Boston Harbor, is dark blue (very low risk).
Another surprise: virtually all of America’s coastal counties on the Pacific are red or orange, i.e. high risk or very high risk. Yet Marin County, just north of San Francisco, stands out as blue, low risk. Looking through the details, it turns out that most of those other counties have far higher risks from River Flooding, Wildfire, and Landslide. It’s hard to believe that one county can be rated so much safer from the dangers and costs of natural hazards than its neighbors.
BUT WHOOPS!
The site’s FAQ tells us why what we saw was not what we expected: FEMA’s scores, ratings, and methodology “do not explicitly consider or account for climate change and its projected impacts.” Whoa!
My first reaction was to ask “What’s the point of taking this imaginary flight if we’re only looking at historical trends projected?” (Of course, it’s not surprising that FEMA isn’t thinking about the effect of climate change here. After all, it’s the government department that’s still working to update many maps that reflect flood experience thirty years ago!)
A WASTE OF TIME?
No. I don’t think we wasted our time browsing FEMA’s National Risk Indices. After all, in counties that today have big risks, warming is likely to increase these dangers. So examining today’s dangers - some already boosted by climate change - can still help us rule out lots of places whose climate risks make them bad choices for us - and our children.
While FEMA’s interactive map is a good place to start, most of the forecasts of hometown conditions that Buddy and I will be covering DO account for climate change. Our next letters will look - down to the street address! - at a different source that quantifies the climate-driven risks of Storm, Heat Drought, Flood, and Fire. We’ll also look at the effect of a town’s political leanings on its ability to create protections.
LEARN, THINK, ACT
Here’s the check-in for the flight that Buddy and I took over the NRI interactive world. This risk assessment currently ignores the effects of climate change, but does take past growth in risks and projects them out to 2050.
The Index weights counties by how much damage is likely. They call this Expected Annual Loss. If a county has few buildings in the flood plain it is rated less risky than one with lots of buildings, even if the expected flood levels are the same.
We can see The National Risk Index includes two threat multipliers, Social Vulnerability and Community Resilience. We’ll examine how these important concepts modify our climate risks in future newsletters.
This exploration of measurements of climate safety was begun in my book Climate-Proof Your Personal Finances: How (and where) to safeguard your family budget and lifestyle. New indicators have been developed since, but most climate-safe qualities are discussed thoroughly in the book.
CLIMATEPROOF HOMETOWNS This post is the first about specific climateproof qualities to look for in American towns. In each post, we will point to specific town-by-town measurements. To see a (growing) list of these qualities, with town by town numbers, visit the post below. It's a sort of Table of Contents on this subject.