We are experiencing interlocking and mutually reinforcing crises. Some, like COVID-19 and the resulting recession and massive unemployment, are sudden, like falling off a cliff.
Others, like droughts, floods, fires, sea level rise, and severe storms and mass extinctions caused by climate change, we are experiencing slowly like the frog in the proverbial pot; or explosively, like a punch to the gut.
The infrastructure crisis undergirds the COVID-19 and climate crises and saps our ability to be resilient. The lack of robust, well designed, operated and maintained infrastructure—including roads, bridges and tunnels, water and energy facilities, mobility and transit projects, levees and sea walls, and communications networks but also schools, hospitals, and public and private buildings—is both a threat and damage multiplier. Better infrastructure softens and manages impacts, and also can create jobs and help address structural racism and inequality.
National Resources Defense Council
by Douglass Sims
July 01, 2020