Ed Blakely says planers should be sent to jail for allowing development in areas we all know are at great risk:
I advance this argument to get the attention of our planning profession, which has been complacent and diffident when we know better. We blame our political masters. But an engineer who knowingly gives bad advice losses his/her license. We have to wake up. Sandy should be our line in the sand. We cannot say we are agnostic about climate change and the forces of nature. We know all about these issues and we have a duty to communicate this information clearly and forcefully to our communities. Climate change may be unsettled in degree and direction or even cause. But the information on increasingly severe weather is settled science. Even skeptics agree on this. So, why should planners endorse developments in dangerous areas? Even a 1 in 100 (year-actually possibility) is too great a risk, particularly when a structure will not survive even a modest flooding or increase in real temperatures.