Republic file photo Columbus City Hall is shown in downtown Columbus.
COLUMBUS, Ind. — Columbus, Bloomington and six other Indiana communities will work with Indiana University to understand the local impacts of climate change and plan for the future.
The university announced last week that Bloomington, Carmel, Columbus, Gary, Monroe County, New Albany, South Bend and Terre Haute have been chosen to participate in IU’s 2023 Resilience Cohort. The Columbus Board of Works will consider approving a contract related to this program during a 10 a.m. meeting today, which will be held in the council chambers of Columbus City Hall.
The annual cohort program, led by IU’s Environmental Resilience Institute (ERI), is intended to help local governments prepare for and address the challenges of climate change. Columbus, Bloomington, Carmel and Gary were previously part of the initial cohort in 2019, with each community completing an inventory of its greenhouse gas emissions.
According to a 2018 report from the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment, Indiana has already warmed more than one degree Fahrenheit in the last century, and temperatures are projected to rise about five to six degrees by midcentury, with “significantly more warming by century’s end.”
“This shift brings with it a myriad of changes with potentially severe consequences for agriculture, public health, infrastructure, wildlife, and water quality,” said IU officials. “Though progress is being made locally and globally to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts of climate change will be felt by Hoosier communities for generations.”
For more on this story, see Tuesday’s Republic.
