| Summary: | Senior Couple Walking in London by Themeisle used under CC ZERO 1.0 When climate disasters like wildfires, flooding, heat waves, or polar vortexes grip communities, they hold a sharper threat for older adults, whose numbers in the US and Canada are growing. And even beyond these more headline-grabbing events are the everyday activities that may prove more challenging for older adults to perform independently in a warmer world. In Cascadia, that might look like being able to afford air conditioning to keep cool as the summers get hotter. Or so one can close the windows against wildfire smoke to keep indoor air safer for breathing, especially for those with respiratory ailments. Housing expert and community resilience advocate Danielle Arigoni argues in her new book that adapting our communities to better serve the needs of older adults - generally defined as those 65 and older - in fact makes our communities safer, more livable, and more climate-resilient for everyone. Climate Resilience for an Aging Nation draws on her long experience in urban planning and community development to offer a new process and framework for how towns and cities can approach both disaster recovery as well as everyday decisions about how they’ll build and change. Sightline interviewed Danielle about her findings. Her book is available from publisher Island Press and other places books are sold. I was compelled to dive into this topic after seeing some statistics that showed older adults dying at much higher rates than the rest of the population in a slew of disasters: Hurricanes Katrina, Florence, Maria, Ian, and Ida. But also in Winter Storm Uri, the California Camp Fire, and then again in the Pacific Northwest heat waves of 2021 and 2022. In all these cases (and more), older adults represented upwards of 50 percent, two-thirds, or even 85 percent of the people who died. When you think about the fact that Katrina was nearly 20 years ago—when 70 percent... |