PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Earlier this month, the destruction from an extreme weather event was left right on the Philadelphia area's doorstep.
We don't have the power to prevent another Ida, but Dr. Franco Montalto from Drexel University told the KYW Newsradio In Depth podcast resilient and robust infrastructure planning can help us avoid similar damage.
When asked if he was optimistic we could get on the right path, he said he was generally an optimist.
"If I was not an optimist, I could not work in this field," said Montalto, "because it's certainly much easier to close your eyes and just hope that nothing bad happens."
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Montalto does believe that when bad things do happen, there's an ironic benefit.
"I do think that events like Ida, Isaias and Sandy ... and some of the wildfires out west, these types of events do capture the public's attention in ways that a scientist writing a paper does not. People are seeing that," he said.
"I think that that it's going to become increasingly impossible to ignore the need for change, to ignore what the climate is telling us."
Montalto also discussed the importance of climate scientists and engineers getting on the same page. You can hear that, above, in the full episode. You can also listen on the Audacy app or wherever you get your podcasts.