Brown University’s, Timmons Roberts, brought the challenge of building resilience home at the Blackstone Parks Conservancy’s annual meeting in late March. He found a receptive audience already working to reduce stormwater runoff, one of the major ….
An internationally known expert on climate change, Timmons quickly reviewed the by now widely accepted impact of rising temperatures predicted for storms, biodiversity and human infrastructure. The impact could be severe not only on Rhode Island’s long coast line but on many major cities in the world.
The achievements of the Paris Conference he and 15 Brown students attended last December were significant, said Timmons, and a great improvement over the Copenhagen Conference of 2009 even though there were some drawbacks. Most impressive in his view was that fact that 196 nations committed to a multilateral agreement to reduce the expected temperature rise from 3.6 degrees Celsius to 2.7 degrees. “It’s hard to get 196 countries to agree to anything.”
Though a one-degree drop will not be sufficient to prevent some of the dire effects of climate change, it’s still “a lot,” said Timmons, and the agreement to review each country’s progress every five years is significant. The lack of enforcement is a serious… but still, “It was a big deal” and “it might work!”
Jane Peterson
