Weeks after parts of Texas, Florida, Georgia, many of the Atlantic islands and other regions were ravaged by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, in the wake of Hurricanes Jose and Katia and in the midst of Hurricane Maria, climate change has gained steam again in continued conversations about global warming and humans' interactions with the earth.
Included in those discussions are worries that parts of Florida are in danger as sea levels rise.
A new report by Business Insider lists 13 American cities that are "the best U.S. cities to live in to escape the worst effects of climate change."
"The bottom line is, it's going to be bad everywhere," Bruce Riordan, the director of the Climate Readiness Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, told Business Insider.
But “there are places that might at least temper the effects of climate change,” according to Vivek Shandas, an urban-planning professor at Portland State University.
Shandas and a group of researchers looked at a variety of factors, including policy and politics, community organization and infrastructure, to determine the cities safest from the dangerous effects of climate change over the next 50 years.
According to the report, the Pacific Northwest is the best U.S. region to live to escape the negative effects of climate change, according to Shandas, who said that “their infrastructure tends to be newer and more resilient to major shocks” like heat and rising water.
Austin, Texas, about 160 miles from Houston, which was hit hard by Hurricane Harvey, is also among the top 13 cities -- in part because of durable infrastructure as well as plans to combat carbon dioxide levels and offset emissions.
"We often write off the South as somewhere that's going get hammered by heat waves and hurricanes, but there are some really interesting places like Austin," Shandas told Business Insider.
Here’s the full list in no particular order:
- Seattle, Washington
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Austin, Texas
- Phoenix, Arizona
- Baltimore, Maryland
- Portland, Oregon
- San Francisco, California
- Minneapolis, Minnesota
- Ann Arbor, Michigan
- Madison, Wisconsin
- Chicago, Illinois
- Denver, Colorado
- Salt Lake City, Utah
Read more at Business Insider.
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