CityLab Daily: Pete Buttigieg’s Climate Vision

Weather the storm: Mayor Pete Buttigieg knows that climate change isn’t just a threat to coastal cities. Over the span of 18 months, his city of South Bend, Indiana, was struck by two historic floods—the kind of low-probability events that have become more common in a warming world. The 37-year-old presidential candidate’s approach to the climate crisis is “a mix of the urgent and the politically practical,” highlighting rural and non-coastal issues of environmental adaptation to bring more people into the possible solutions.

In an interview with CityLab’s Sarah Holder airing on television as part of a Weather Channel special this week, Buttigieg emphasized practical actions that might circumvent a partisan battle, pointing to the examples of local initiatives that have already progressed because officials “got tired of waiting for Washington.” Said Buttigieg: “There’s no time to argue over whether climate change is real. We’ve got to get to work on making something happen.” On CityLab: Pete Buttigieg’s Climate Vision: Local Fixes for a Planet in Crisis