Thursday, April 17, 2014

Palm Beach County approves climate change plan - Sun Sentinel

This is worth a read and the action is long overdue. Palm Beach County helped establish the compact between Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties, but only now officially signed on to consider impacts from climate change in a wide variety of actions. These could include land use decisions, movement of water wells further west and other accommodations for rising sea levels. This is a Sun-Sentinel article and, of course, Drew Martin is quoted. Click title for link.
While Palm Beach County officials helped craft the four-county climate change plan that came out in 2012, Palm Beach County was the last to formally sign onto implementing its share of the plan.
Palm Beach County officials said they opted to start reaching out to local city leaders and civic groups to try to build support for the climate change efforts before approving the plan.
"We have been at the table all the while," County Mayor Priscilla Taylor said.
Questions about the extent of the climate change risk as well as the steep public costs of investing in infrastructure improvements have triggered backlash from Republicans, the tea party and other critics of government spending to enacting tougher climate change measures.
But Palm Beach County and the three other South Florida counties have opted for the better-safe-than sorry approach to preparing for climate change.