D. Home Means Nevada
Washoe County Quality of Life, Climate Impacts and Need for Action
Unfortunately, we can no longer take any of these benefits for granted. The impacts from our changing climate threaten the environment, public health, and economy that support our region. Reno is the fastest-warming city in the United States. Warming winter temperatures have resulted in more precipitation falling as rain instead of snow, which has caused declining snowpack in the Sierra Nevada. Predominant drought conditions are projected to be punctuated by more intense storms. In Nevada and elsewhere in the American West, wildfires are becoming more frequent and hotter, destroying homes, forests, and choking our region with dangerous smoke, sometimes intensely. The smoke, combined with rising heat and with the emissions from our building and transportation sectors, makes air pollution worse, and is associated with health impacts such as respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, asthma, cancer, increased emergency room visits, and higher mortality rates. See also here.
All these challenges cost our region estimated billions of dollars in emergency management, health care, and higher energy costs. And many of these impacts fall to those who can least afford to adapt — low-income and communities of color that have been overburdened and/or underserved in the areas of climate change, high energy burden, health, housing, legacy pollution, transportation, water and wastewater, and workforce development.
Although we don’t know what the future will bring, climate scientists project widespread, rapid and intensifying changes. The best ways to prevent the worst impacts on our communities is to work aggressively to minimize and prepare for those impacts by every means possible.
The intent of Washoe County’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) is to identify actions we can all take today to improve the health and quality of life of our communities, while addressing the worst impacts affecting our most vulnerable populations, who are most impacted by the burdens of a changing climate. We can prepare for an uncertain future by practicing sustainability: meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.