STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Hurricane Isaias is not the first big storm to threaten the Gulf Coast and is unlikely to be the last. So we have called Carolyn Gruber. She's deputy director of the Environmental Security Program at the Stimson Center, which is focused on international peace, security and governance, and she is focused on climate resilience. She used to be at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Welcome to the program.
CAROLYN GRUBER: Thanks for having me.
INSKEEP: OK, so folks can change the date of the football game, but what are some of the longer-term changes the Gulf Coast has made to be ready for a storm like this?
GRUBER: I think that's exactly the right question to ask. We have a real realization that we can't treat these as isolated individual events that are happening far away and apart from us. When a storm hits a coastline, it's not just damaging the environment of that specific place. I think it's important to understand that this triggers a bigger set of interconnected impacts that affect everything from public health to energy grids, just as Lauren was mentioning, and economic stability. And so coastal resilience is a really important player in building out how to reduce that vulnerability.
INSKEEP: Well, if we look at the Florida Panhandle, if we look at Alabama, are they in good shape for this?
GRUBER: Well, I think that's a good question. We are definitely seeing heavy investment in building resilience. I think it doesn't serve us to build back to what we would consider to be a vulnerable baseline, to basically put a piece of infrastructure back exactly the way that it was before the storm knocked it down or put it offline. And there are some excellent examples around the world and here in the U.S. in the southern - on the southern coast to look to as we creatively engineer our way out of vulnerability.
INSKEEP: I'm just thinking about some of the obvious things you can do. Your beach house can be on 10-foot stilts, to give an example.
GRUBER: That's right.
INSKEEP: Your power grid can be a little bit stronger, that sort of thing. Can you go on with some other things that are being done?
GRUBER: Exactly. To follow on Lauren's reporting from the refinery space, in the utility space there are some really great examples, especially in Texas and throughout the Gulf Coast, of doing things like moving power lines underground, elevating those substations, making them higher up off the ground and deploying mobile microgrids that can make that real and measurable difference in building the long-term resilience.
INSKEEP: You know, we have an interesting political situation in that one party embraces the reality of climate change, and the other party, as a matter of policy, denies the reality of climate change. And some political figures are afraid even to talk about what they know to be the truth about climate change. But are people still moving forward in a bipartisan way to deal with the resilience question, to deal with the adaptation question of this?
GRUBER: Yes, I think so. I think as we look at the full picture of what climate risk looks like, we have to think about how social, environmental, economic risks all come together and how they cascade and compound to really understand where to put what I believe are already limited resources into building that resilience, especially in coastal communities. We do a lot of work with coastal communities around the world. And adaptation, moving forward, adapting forward is something that they're interested in, they're looking to do, and they're looking to be creative, which is really important (ph).
INSKEEP: Are they looking to do it regardless of the local politics, regardless of their partisan affiliations?
GRUBER: Well, I think it matters because a lot of the coastal cities are really the drivers of economies, especially, for example, in the Gulf Coast. These are the - these cities are driving the local economy, whether it's through tourism, hotels, whether it's...
INSKEEP: Sure.
GRUBER: ...Through the refinery process. There's a lot of - there's a lot to say about the blue economy and its role and how to build it out in a way that reduces risk and increases our resilience.
INSKEEP: One other thing to ask about briefly - I was just in western North Carolina talking with people there, and that is where Hurricane Helene unexpectedly devastated people with massive amounts of wind and rain. Two years later, people are still in something of a recovery phase. Are inland areas as prepared as they could be for the potential of that happening again sometime?
GRUBER: I think the word preparation is key here. We have to - instead of panicking, we need to prepare and realize that this is something that is - it's going to happen again, and being able to be resilient, to adapt forward, to make a difference for the next time is important.
INSKEEP: Carolyn Gruber of the Stimson Center, thanks so much.
GRUBER: Thanks very much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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