While COP26 talks climate, let's take action at home

As world leaders gather at COP26, we’ve reached a pivotal point in how we address our changing climate. Where we are – both how we think and how we act regarding climate – has evolved significantly over the course of these periodic meetings. Recent science and innovation have driven positive change that we should drive action – at the international level and for individual families.

The global climate conversation has long focused on mitigation, and as these leaders gather for COP26, it’s important to acknowledge the role we all can play with adaptation much closer to home. As Alice Hill writes in The Fight for Climate After COVID-19, “Solutions exist for solving the problems at our feet as do ideas for how to scan the horizons for what’s ahead” (p 210).

Last year delivered the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record, with the most named storms in history, the worst wildfire season ever, with a record-shattering 18 infernos of 100,000 acres or more across the West, and a Midwest derecho that was the most-costly thunderstorm in national history.

While natural perils last year were particularly bad, they were not anomalous. 2021 is now the seventh consecutive year in which ten or more billion-dollar weather and climate disasters have occurred in the United States. Climate change isn’t coming; it’s here. Climate change is surging through the front doors of Americans. We must adapt by making our families, businesses, and communities more resilient to a changing climate and associated weather.

As the world gathers to discuss climate mitigation at the global scale, there are things we can do as individual homeowners that can have a significant impact on the strength of our homes as the frequency and duration of severe weather changes.

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What is a Climate-Ready Home?

The core perils we study at the IBHS Research Center are wind, wind-driven rain, hail, and wildfire, which deepen our insights into how to help our homes better withstand the hurricanes, derechos, hailstorms, wildfires, and more we see today and will see tomorrow.

In choosing targeted research projects, we are driven by our mission of translating research into action. That means that we choose science that can shape building codes and standards, evolve our FORTIFIED program of beyond-code resilience standards, influence building professionals and products, improve consumer choices, and advance sound public policy solutions.

We share the findings of our research with the insurance industry and policy makers. We also publish guidance to homeowners directly through DisasterSafety.org and other public resources.

Our test protocols have led to the development of more resilient roofing choices for consumers. The retrofit/reroof we all do to our homes every 10-12 years – regardless of extreme weather – is an opportunity to protect your family against the wiles of Mother Nature. As folks on the Alabama coast learned during Hurricane Sally and as the neighbors on the Carolina coast saw during Hurricanes Florence, Dorian, and Isaias…a FORTIFIED Roof that can withstand 135-mph winds gives you a place to return after the storm…without disruption or a blue tarp.

IBHS work drove a broader recognition of the risk of burning embers from wildfires. As many as 90% of structures ignite during a wildfire because these small but veracious embers find a hospitable place to land, smolder, and then burn. We’re on the brink of launching the Wildfire Prepared Home that will be drive actions that narrow the path of destruction homes experience.

At a fundamental level, consumers deserve to have confidence that the time and financial investments they make in resilience will live up to their reasonable expectations. There are tangible, achievable things homeowners can do today to boost their resilience. Our research demonstrates how building science has advanced, providing cost effective strategies to reduce the impact of Mother Nature.

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Americans are not powerless against severe weather.

It is possible to reduce the damage inflicted today and in the future. Meeting this pressing need will require us to adapt our built environment to implement the science on a broad scale. We still have time to narrow the resilience gap and get better prepared for the impacts of a changing climate.

Over the past two decades, science and innovation have inspired the science that we need to guide and empower action worldwide. As Alice Hill writes, “With climate change, there is never going to be a vaccine” (p 209). So let’s start taking action right at our own homes. We need not be hopeless.