CRT 2016 # 4 · Communication to the City Council · Jan 25 2016

ATTACHMENTA Agenda for 14 December Public Safety Meeting Cambridge's Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Work 1. Overview by Councilor Kelley a. Three separate issues in Assessment get conflated and lead to public focus on sea level rise/storm surge, which appears to be the last of the three issues to arrive b. Major climate change related concerns do not get much attention i. Spread of diseases via insects and rodents ii. Spread of alien invasive plants ili. Impact on longer hotter periods potentially leading to more civil unrest iv. Increased freeze/thaw cycles impacting streets and requiring different construction techniques c. Terms used in presentations such as "renal failure" are not understood by the general public d. Impacts of climate change, such as flooding, are not depicted in a way that people can readily associate with how they live their lives e. Selling climate change preparations is like selling insurance. We need to get much better at it if people are going to buy into what might be extreme measures to protect both public and private property 2. Overview from City Staff a. How three major themes were picked b. When will assessment be finalized c. What is the status of a response plan d. What we might do now to address more probable threats i. Alewife flooding & possible moratorium or temporary mitigation requirements for new construction 3. Public comment 4. Discussion a. Follow up-once staff have engaged people/organizations on this issue, what is the next b. Training for City Staff-"selling" climate change resilience is going to be tough, we need to become good salespeople. What are our plans to become better at this? Communications work/improvement- Mitigation/offset investments e. Expansion of threat assessment to include vector borne diseases and other emerging climate-change related threats besides flooding and heat