Climate Change and Its Impacts Risks and Inequalities

Colleen Murphy, Paolo Gardoni, and Robert Mckim

Climate change is one of the most important and pressing contemporary global challenges for the international community. Climate change is modifying the likelihood and magnitude of natural hazards around the world and creating new vulnerabilities (Gardoni et al. 2016). These hazards include heat waves and their effects on wildfires and droughts; severe precipitation and its effects on floods and large snowfall events; and hurricanes. Climate change is also causing sea level rise that affects coastal communities where large and vulnerable populations often reside. It is estimated that $70–$100 billion will be needed by developing countries to adapt to the anticipated impacts of climate change. There is a clear need for a deeper understanding of the consequences of climate change, of the attendant natural hazards, and of their social impact. Topics to which particular attention is paid in this book include: Scientific understanding of the effects of climate change on the likelihood and magnitude of natural hazards; Determination of the contribution that each person alive today is making toclimate change; Selection of the kind of ethical framework and lines of reasoning needed to evaluate behavior that contributes to climate change; Assessment of civil infrastructure vulnerabilities as they are exacerbated by climate change as well as probabilistic predictions and stochastic formulations of intensified extreme load demands on infrastructure; Development of new design criteria, codes and standards that can be put in place to help mitigate the impacts of climate change; Identification of inequalities in vulnerability among communities and discussion of how these are exacerbated or diminished by climate change; Resilience assessment for coastal communities exposed to hurricanes, storm surges and coastal floods affected by climate change;Policies that can be put in place to help mitigate the impacts of climate change; Cultural shifts and reevaluation of our priorities that might help humanity to respond adequately to climate change.