Climate threat to U.S. infrastructure is accelerating
The US infrastructure barely gets a transition grade and one of the fastest growing problems is climate change. Airports flood, bridges melt from extreme heat, and telecommunication is increasingly multiplied by more and more air.
In 2023, at Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport, he turned historical rainfall tracks into rivers, closed the operations and closed passengers. Last summer, in New York, the excessive heat caused the metal on a bridge on the Harlem River to expand so much that the bridge was opened.
Each category of US infrastructure is at risk of increasing climate change – a finding that the American Civil Engineers Association educates engineers and informs federal, state and local building codes.
ASCE’s latest infrastructure report card in general gave the nation a “C” grade and said that climatic challenges are widespread and previously affected the resistant areas against these events.
“We continue to see more weather events, so our infrastructure is often not designed for such activities.” He said.
“Ice, snow, drought, heat, obviously, hurricanes, hurricanes, hurricanes, we have to design for all these, and we should guess we think we’re going to go, but also that we think it’s going,” Smith said.
Among the sectors with the worst grades are airports, power and telecommunications infrastructure. The CNBC asked the First Street, a climate risk analysis company, to cover the risk modeling in certain places. He found that 19% of all power infrastructure, 17% of telecommunications infrastructure and 12% of the airports had a great risk of floods, wind or forest fire.
Most US infrastructure were built decades ago and therefore designed for a climate that no longer exists. This has a direct impact on investors in the infrastructure field.
Sarah Kapnick, the former chief scientist of the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration and now the Head of Global Climate Advisory JPMorgan Chase, He said he asked more about the climate impact of customers’ investments.
“How should I change infrastructure and invest? Differences in my infrastructure, how should I think about my infrastructure construction? Insurance, should I think of different types of insurance? How should I access the capital markets to do such jobs?” Kapnick said.
Both Kapnick and Smith said that making infrastructure resistant to climate returns to science.
“Climate and science are very seriously, we work with science, we work with science, public health, security and prosperity is something we connect with engineering.” He said.
However, under this scientific attack, Noaa, FEMA and the National Institute of Technology and the Institute of Technology – the key government agencies that advance climate science – see deep cuts from the Trump administration, which fires hundreds of employees.
Kapnick said, “People will have this setting period because they understand where they need the information they need, because many market decisions or financial decisions are based on certain data clusters that people think they will always be there.” He said.
The country’s infrastructure also needs financing. ASCE estimates that there is a $ 3.7 trillion expenditure gap to lead the US infrastructure to a good situation in the next 10 years.
The Trump administration is to order FEMA to cancel the program of about $ 1 billion building, which aims to reduce the damage from future natural disasters, to cancel the program of about 1 billion dollars of building flexible infrastructure and communities.
