Bill Barker, FAICP, FITE, of San Antonio and longtime member of the Sierra Club Alamo Group, will discuss how we must adapt to the climate-related hazards already facing our region of south Texas.

Program topic:
The 13-county Alamo Region faces intensifying climate-related hazards that demand coordinated adaptation planning across all levels of government. These hazards are not abstract future risks; they are already reshaping infrastructure vulnerability, water availability, ecosystems, military readiness, and public safety. The region’s greatest climate threats are four interrelated hazards: flooding, drought, extreme heat, and wildfires.
While reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions remains a moral and global responsibility, local resilience in our region will depend far more on adaptation investments than on local emissions reductions alone, since even immediate worldwide elimination of GHG emissions would not reverse accumulated atmospheric warming possibly for centuries.

About our presenter:
Bill Barker (BA in physics and MA in urban affairs) is passionate about helping San Antonio prepare for the challenging realities that changing climate is already bringing to our area. Having moved here in 1997 to be Planning Director for VIA Metropolitan Transit, he is currently an advisor to the Great Springs Project, and has served as Executive Director of Solar San Antonio, as a Project Manager in the City’s Office of Sustainability, and as Adjunct Associate Professor in the UTSA graduate urban and regional planning program. He is also on the Executive Committee of the Sierra Club Alamo Group.
Bill’s career started in mission simulation at NASA (Houston) for the Apollo lunar mission, and then took a terrestrial turn with the US Department of Transportation and North Central Texas Council of Governments. Bill has served as a consultant for public and private clients in seven states, Canada, and Mexico as well as the US DOE, DOT and USAID, and many other organizations. Bill is a Fellow of the Institute of Transportation Engineers and the American Institute of Certified Planners.

Read stories by Bill in the San Antonio Report: https://sanantonioreport.org/author/bill-barker/