6.4. SR 12-19-2016 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Executive Summary While human -driven climate change is projected to develop very dramatically in coming decades, climate change itself is not new. History can therefore offer some insights into how changing climates have impacted people in the past, and what kinds of changes climatic influence has made to human social, economic, and political development. Precipitation levels adjust as climates change, which has brought destructive effects including floods, droughts, storms, and changes in average amounts and variability of rainfall. This has led to economic damage, increases in emigration, and deaths. Less dramatically, changing rainfall patterns have produced damages to crops, causing rising food prices and even famine, soil erosion, flood risk, lower biodiversity of areas, and water polluted by runoff. Temperatures have fluctuated in human history, with a medieval warm period followed by a colder "Little Ice Age" from about 1300-1850. The impacts of such changes varied by region, with the key variables not climate itself but how societies reacted to change. Health has often been impacted by changing climates. Currently, Elk River is likely to see increased in many climate -linked health hazards, such as air pollution, and mosquito-borned diseases. Climate change has prompted migration throughout all of human history, even aided human evolution itself and in our spread throughout the world. In historical time climate -linked droughts, floods, and other changes have prompted migration, both sudden and gradual. In the future it is critical that municipal governments such as the Elk River take into consideration issues such as migration, especially considering recent international declarations that migration is one means of adapting to climate change. Cities in Minnesota need migrants in order to meet labor demands. Some of these migrants will be related in some way to climate.