The Bluegrass may seem immune from climate change dangers. But that’s more denial. | Opinion

For many of us that routinely follow climate change, it feels like we live in a parallel universe alongside everybody else.

Admittedly, its counter-intuitive to think that within a spell of glorious weather that something insidious might be happening at the same time. However, one would hope that our recent long string of warm weather in January might be seen as nature’s way of telling us something is not quite right! And how about those now year-round green lawns in Lexington?

Reinforcing this tendency in central Kentucky is the recent wave of countless fronts of highly destructive weather that almost always blow around us to no avail.

To be clear, this is based more on perception than may be borne out by the data. And in any event, we are not entirely immune to the impacts of continued global warming as recent straight-line wind storms have caused significant property damage as well as earlier ice storms and the like — but nothing on the scale of recent devastation around us or the far ends of Kentucky.

And too, the Bluegrass region will very likely experience more severe heat waves and/or precipitation that will affect local farming, human health, transportation, and energy demands — particularly during heat emergencies — think hospitals, the county jail, etc. Outside the Appalachian range, the likelihood of increasingly destructive weather and its cascading effects will interfere with most every aspect of daily life. Particular impacts locally would be supply-chain interruptions, increased in-migration, impaired first-responder capabilities, etc.

One easily foreseeable consequence of this emerging situation is the risk of a significant mass in-migration. This could result from increasing frequency of turbulent weather that causes affected people to search for safer climes. The Lexington area may suddenly look as an even more attractive place to relocate and, incidentally, home of a world-class health care center!

Failing that, we would deal with the full range of weather impacts like much of the rest of the country. Either way, it seems only logical that the city with the oldest managed urban growth boundary to at least examine what might happen as the climate emergency accelerates. This would begin with a systematic assessment of Lexington’s vulnerabilities to a rapidly changing climate. And then, subsequently, we should prepare a resilience plan that might best address those vulnerabilities.

With that in mind, the city ought to hold off on its plan to expand the Urban Services Boundary pending the results of such a study and resilience plan. Of course plan implementation would need to very flexible and heavily monitored for an evolving situation. To quote Winston Churchill, “plans are of little importance but planning is essential.”

Despite the best science, no one can say with certainty how high average global temperature will go. A World Meteorological Organization forecast is that we have an even chance that we may reach 1.5° Celsius in at least one year this decade,[1] and that is the very least temperature rise we can reasonably hope for.[2] But even that minimal increase will be about 35% warmer than today! The sad news is that should greenhouse gas emissions continue uncurtailed, AGT will likely continue to climb much higher this century.

In the final analysis it’s a simple risk assessment. Based on whatever you know about the situation, what do you think is the chance that climate change will get increasingly more severe, 5%, 10%, 25%? If you think the chance is zero – end of story. However, if you think there’s a percentage of a chance of it happening, even a small one, is it worth the risk to not at least examine our potential vulnerabilities and how to best address the situation?

The younger your age, the more you have more at stake. But in any case, rest assured that for your kids and grandkids, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Henry Jackson is a retired LFUCG strategic planning manager and climate stabilization advocate.