Plan B: Adapting to a warmer world

I really should've mentioned this "Marketplace" series earlier, but luckily we live in the age of TiVO and endless Web archiving -- which is to say that “Plan B: Adapting to a Warmer World,” a six-part special series on "Marketplace" from American Public Media, started airing yesterday, but you can catch up by reading and listening to the segments you've missed so far.

"Plan B" begins with the premise that we've already changed the world irrevocably, and thus works to answer the question: "what should we do to prepare ourselves to live in a warmed world?" These aren't the doom-and-gloom stories of what could happen due to climate change; these are post-climate change stories of adaptation and innovation.

Yesterday's segments, for example, covered water issues. In Australia -- where people have seen such drastic climate changes already that a new term, Solastalgia, was coined to name their despair -- rainfall is so scarce that desalination is all the rage. And Aussies are willing to pay up to make that desalination process green -- even if the average family will have to pay an additional $150 a year. "The Australian public is obsessed with its climate footprint," says "Marketplace's" Nate DiMeo. "It's been forced to be."

The stories so far are all quite amazing -- and rather hopeful. There's an atmospheric scientist who wants to use wastewater from shrimp farms in Mexico that currently pollute the environment to instead irrigate and create green pastures -- and make money while doing it. There's a town in the Netherlands where houses are built to float; most of the Dutch already live below sea level, and climate change could  raise water levels an additional 25%, after all.

Tomorrow's reports will look at some new, big ideas -- like projects to save animals facing extinction or strange, scientific “geo-engineering” initiatives. Hear them on "Marketplace" and "Marketplace Morning Report," locally broadcast on KCRW 89.9 and KPCC 89.3. Or if you end up missing those, catch up later on the Web.

Photo of a drying Murray River, the longest river in Australia, by Mundoo via Flickr