US cities hire specialists to counter climate change as impact worsens

New York

TUCSON hired a forester. Miami named a heat officer. And Los Angeles appointed a climate emergency mobilisation director. Across the United States, cities have launched new programmes focused on dealing with extreme weather, reflecting the growing impact of climate change on local communities, according to experts.

Since 2019, at least 30 US cities - including Phoenix, Houston, Louisville, Nashville and Oakland - have taken fresh action such as hiring specialists to combat the impact of extreme weather, said the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, based at Washington DC's Atlantic Council think-tank. Many of those cities have created posts and initiatives to deal with worsening heat waves, seasonal wildfires or the effects of flooding - often with a focus on poor and minority communities, the group added.

"Local government officials have to respond to it," said Kathy Baughman McLeod, the head of the Resilience Center, which promotes solutions to climate impact, in part, by partnering governments and bringing public and private funding to projects.

New data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released in May - after years of delays during the Trump administration - showed heat waves across the country occur more frequently, last longer and are often hotter; that wildfires are torching more land; and that the East and Gulf Coasts are flooding more often.

Many times, poor and minority communities take the brunt, said Alice Hill, an energy and climate policy expert at the independent Council on Foreign Relations think-tank based in New York. "There has been a growing recognition that because they are at greater risk of harm, more needs to be done to protect them," she added.

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Some of these cities, including Los Angeles, said they are hoping their efforts will get a funding boost under President Joe Biden's administration, which in January ordered that 40 per cent of the benefits of federal clean energy investment go to neighbourhoods that have historically been neglected. Mr Biden's predecessor Donald Trump downplayed climate risks and withdrew the United States from the Paris Accord, an international pact to slow global warming.

The Biden administration rejoined that deal, has introduced a raft of new policies to fight climate change, and is now building a database to help it identify the parts of the country most in need of federal assistance in dealing with the impacts of warming and industrial pollution.

Miami Dade County created a new position for a chief heat officer earlier this year, as it prepares for ever-hotter days ahead. The officer will focus on strategies for the Miami region to adapt to its ever-hotter climate, with special attention on "communities of colour and low-income residents, who have fewer resources to overcome these challenges", Mayor Levine Cava said in late April at a news conference announcing the programme.

Miami last year sweltered through 41 days with temperatures over 40.5 degrees Celsius, and that figure is expected to climb to 88 days by 2050, Ms Cava said.

Already, the newly appointed interim heat officer, Jane Gilbert, is getting to work with an agenda that includes creating more shaded bus stops and helping with existing plans for planting more trees in economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

Her office will also be looking into outdoor labour standards and creating permanent year-round air-conditioned community hubs that can serve as gathering places in case of emergencies including storms and heat waves.

In February, Los Angeles launched a Climate Emergency Mobilization office to coordinate the city's policies on climate change across its dozens of neighbourhoods and districts. Among its goals is to advise on "initiatives aimed at environmental justice and equity" such as ensuring all neighbourhoods are getting trees planted to promote cooling, that bus stops have shade and that polluted properties are redeveloped, according to the Public Works Department.

Tucson, one of the hottest cities in the country, has hired a climate change adviser and a city forestry adviser to supervise the planting of one million trees around the Arizona desert city by 2030. City officials said the trees will help soak up carbon and provide cooling, especially in its poorer districts which have less shade. REUTERS