Extreme Cities Reveals How Cities May Fare in a Time of Climate Chaos

Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change, by Professor Ashley Dawson (College of Staten Island and The Graduate Center, CUNY), reveals the stark future the world’s coastal cities will face unless we take action to counter the effects of climate change.

As Dawson recently told CUNY’s Book Beat podcast, “We’re looking at potentially catastrophic levels of climate change and sea-level rise if we keep on the track we’re on right now.”

The facts are grim. Reports leading up to last year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, showed that even if most major countries keep the promises they made under the Paris Agreement — a scenario that appears highly unlikely — the earth’s temperature will wind up 3 degrees centigrade hotter by 2100.

The book draws in part on Dawson’s experiences in New York during 2012’s Hurricane Sandy. The hurricane caused more than 40 deaths and inflicted $19 billion in damages to the city’s infrastructure and to property owned by residents and businesses.

Extreme Cities — named a top book of 2017 by Publishers Weekly, which described it as a “forcefully argued and eye-opening polemic” — establishes Dawson as a powerful new voice on climate change.