U.S. Cities Need Transportation Infrastructure Resilient to Climate Change
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says the federal government needs to improve transportation for climate resilience.
According to KUNR, “we’ve seen a lot of places where what used to be considered a hundred-year flood is now almost an annual event,” Buttigieg said. “So, we can’t just be instructing communities to put your road back just the way it was if it’s getting washed out every other year.”
Buttigieg said the U.S. Department of Transportation is spending $7 billion on projects across the country that address climate impacts.
“Sometimes it’s a new evacuation route, sometimes it’s moving a road higher in the face of sea-level change, sometimes it’s making a key supply chain more resilient to the risk of wildfires,” Buttigieg said. “The specific prescription will vary from place to place, but the common pattern is we need to recognize that good infrastructure in the 21st century has to weigh climate considerations that were not on anybody’s mind in the 20th.”
Buttigieg said that’s why the department is also working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions coming from transportation, which contributes the largest portion of America’s emissions (28%), according to federal data.