PEIRCE - How will the world of American and global citistates look 5 or 10 years from now? What’s coming next?
Here are five themes I’ve suggested to Associates of the Citistates Group for discussions during our summer gathering this year. We will post some of our Associates responses in the next weblog.
(1.) Climate change. Concerns about global warming have escalated rapidly with new scientific projections, melting conditions in the Arctic and Antarctic, the recent Gore film, etc. If we assume this threat is real, how do regions prepare now? Or as King County (Wash.) Executive Ron Sims asks — assuming it’s 2050 — looking back, what should a region have been planning, choosing as action in 2006? (I also discussed the topic in a recent column).
A subtheme: In an increasingly hurricane-threatened world, in the wake of the Katrina debacle, how can/should regions plan for major natural disasters (and/or terrorist attacks, pandemics), and how should they relate to state and national governments in that effort?
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