Can Climate Adaptation Bridge the Divide in Our Nation After the Election?

With the transition to Donald Trump in the White House and Republican control of Congress, federal initiatives and incentives for climate change mitigation will likely come to a hard stop for at least the next four years.

Yet nature will not take a break. The trend lines are clear: hurricanes, wildfires, extreme heat, drought, flooding and other climate-related disasters will continue to happen with greater frequency and strength. And then there are bomb cyclones. What next? The attention paid to adapting to this new normal has not picked up enough momentum, and while no single place in the U.S. is immune to the extreme weather fueled by climate change, the Mississippi River basin needs significant attention.

The basin, which spans 31 states and covers much of America’s Heartland and the Deep South, provides water to millions of people, produces food consumed around the world and enables transportation that is core to the global economy. Those parts of the country have endured crushing impacts from climate change and generally receive categorically less funding for climate adaptation than the coasts on the eastern and western seaboards.

They are also broadly politically red states of the American sunbelt and rustbelt. Here, The loss of manufacturing jobs, sluggish economic mobility and the cumulative impact of political neglect, whether real or perceived, have taken a toll.

But I see an opportunity at the confluence of those circumstances. If we focus on climate adaptation, nature can serve as a source of prosperity and abundance–and also improve some of the underlying conditions that have led to political polarization.

The GOP stronghold in Washington will most likely cut taxes and spending and turn its eyes to creating jobs through tax breaks to catalyze private sector growth. Adapting to climate change means building a lot of new infrastructure–and, in the coming years, aligned policies can incentivize small businesses to build this infrastructure that prevents the need for massive spending on disaster response. These businesses would leverage federal tax cuts to find state funding and recruit a workforce from the working class voter base. The administration is clearly going to also emphasize reducing federal spending, and there is no better way to do that than through public-private partnership. New private sector investments in adaptation could lower costs and federal spending associated with disaster relief.

In summary: Adaptation means economic growth, jobs, communities that are better prepared for disasters–and less federal funding will be needed for relief and clean-up.

And at the center of it all is nature. Natural infrastructure such as restored and constructed wetlands is increasingly trusted by federal and state agencies for providing more long-lasting benefit than built infrastructure like sea walls, and is less expensive (bonus point for Republicans).

Look no further than my home state of Louisiana for evidence that natural solutions implemented through incentives and partnership work for everyone. The state is run by a Republican governor and represented by two Republican senators, and Trump won here by a wide margin. Visionary projects designed and managed by the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority are leveraging funding to use nature to protect communities, create jobs and sustain local economies. Moreover, the state just voted to pass an amendment that would direct revenue from off-shore renewable energy to fund climate adaptation work.

We can’t afford to ignore the risk of extremes–natural and political. Progress on adaptation is progress against climate change, extreme weather and the alienation of far too many Americans from government.