strategies to limit the effects of

climate change that was a goal of a

statewide conference held to assess how

prepared we are to handle it what policy

decisions could slow it and what could

happen if we don't senior correspondent

Brenda Flanagan reports on peril and

promise the challenge of climate change

the seniors in our populations five

years after sandy remained incredibly

vulnerable in New Jersey to power loss

and water damage to their homes george

diferdinando sounded the alarm at a New

Jersey conference of climate change

experts the Rutgers School of Public

Health professor says the number one

cause of emergency room visits after

Sandy wasn't injuries

it was homebound seniors who didn't have

electricity for oxygen and had nowhere

else to go

New Jersey five years after sandy does

not have an effective regional and

statewide sheltering plan so your aunts

and uncles mothers and fathers are not

assured of sheltering if they lose power

or get flooded out

at the conference sponsored by the

Rutgers climate Institute in the

blaustein school scientists pointed to

the increasingly destructive power of

recent hurricanes and connected the dots

to a rapidly warming world here's a map

showing days above a hundred degrees

through the year 2010 and in a high

emissions business-as-usual scenario for

greenhouse gases this is what the map

will look like by the end of this

century the audience literally gasped

New Jersey's mean temperatures rapidly

increasing our ocean levels steadily

rising and that's bad news it will not

take such an unusually powerful storm

like sandy to produce the same kind of

coastal impacts residents along jersey

shore can see their future along the

Texas and Louisiana coast said climate

Institute co-director Tony broccoli if

you go to those places what you'll see

are houses up on pilings and evacuations

that happen whenever a storm threatens

it's a really a question of survival for

many people like you see in the

Caribbean today

losing their entire homes and islands to

climate change so this is what Rob Nixon

calls the slow violence of climate

change right so we need to make it so

that something that's real to people

that people here understand what's gonna

happen where they live

one survey showed only 43% of New Jersey

residents think global warming will harm

them personally planner said state and

local officials need to talk to

scientists about climate impact and

coordinate their response to

transportation health and other critical

issues keynote speaker Mindy lover of

Ceres emphasized aggressive goals we

know what's going on in Washington

that's not where we're going to see the

action we're seeing it in states and

states are stepping up they're competing

for new companies new business amazon's

gonna make a decision shortly on where

that new facility goes there's no reason

New Jersey wouldn't be an ideal

opportunity but they've got to show

they're willing to leave unfortunately

and regrettably the Christie

administration did pull back a recent

poll showed 71% of New Jersey residents

want the next governor to be a leader on

climate change because they say property

and lives are at stake in Hillsborough

I'm Brenda Flanagan NJTV news

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