SARASOTA – “This is a climate shift that’s happened in nature but society has not yet caught up to it,” said Climate Adaptation Center, CEO, Bob Bunting.
Sarasota non-profit, the Climate Adaptation Center brought experts from science, engineering, business and government together for their annual Climate conference at the University of South Florida Sarasota Manatee campus.
“Time is really of the essence now, climate has changed so much already when most of the regulations that we live by today were made, the climate has shifted and it’s shifting really fast,” said Bunting.
The conference focused on the climate issues Florida faces today, including changing hurricanes, threats to our diverse ecosystems and rising sea levels.
“The rate of climate warming and sea level rise now is double what it was in 1990 and that’s why we’re having more hurricanes, can you imagine, we’ve had six major hurricanes since 2017 on the gulf coast and combined they created almost a half a trillion dollars in damage and hundreds of dead people,” said Bunting.
SNN Meteorologist and Anchor, Marco LaManno was one of the guest speakers at the conference discussing the 2022 inflation reduction act.
“There are people who want to be part of the solution but money issues are going to be prohibitive, any just big life issue that comes out of nowhere is going to be an issue, so what can make it easier for these folks, the thing that makes it easier is education, this is what you can do to be more energy efficient,” said SNN Meteorologist and Anchor, Marco LaManno.
“There’s lots of money out there right now and basically tax credits and income tax reductions if you climatize your house for example and that lowers our carbon footprint and that gives us more time to solve the climate crisis,” said Bunting.
For more information on the Climate Adaptation Center, you can visit their website here.