ABSTRACT
Climate Plans have been in place in the United States for over 25 years and that is long enough for them to have been challenged, abandoned, and reactivated. Climate change is happening fast, but it is happening fast in geological time. Understand the perspective of the opposition and learn to play the long game. This means having a long-term plan and long-term goals. Urban planners working under administrations that are ideologically or politically against climate change mitigation and adaptation learn to avoid using words like climate change and sea-level rise and to talk in terms of incidents, like wildfires, hurricanes, and flooding. Climate planning backlash is one reason why people should not be looking for one big climate policy – like carbon taxing on an international level or the requirement of solar panels on every new home on the local level – to save them.
