Our coasts are in danger. We're doing the wrong things to get ready. See why at CivicCon.

Professor Rob Young is an expert on how climate change, sea level rise and storm impacts will affect America's coastal cities.

Perhaps more importantly, he shares his expertise with communities to help them stay economically and environmentally sustainable even as our shorelines change.

"First thing I would tell you, at the end of the day, is most decisions (affecting sustainability) are made at the local level," Young said. "The decisions that will impact the community's future vulnerability, or resilience, or exposure to hazards are made at the local level by planning boards and elected officials within the town or county."

At a CivicCon event Monday evening in Pensacola, Young will be talking about steps our community can take to be ready for the future.

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Young is a professor of coastal geology at Western Carolina University and the director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, which studies sea level rise at coastal cities in Florida, the Carolinas and Georgia and advocates for responsible strategies to promote the long-term sustainability of the nation's coastal ecosystems.

He co-authored "The Rising Sea," which chronicles what is projected to happen based on scientific predictions of dramatic sea level rise between now and the end of the century.

As part of his work, Young also partnered with the National Park Service to lead a project mapping and evaluating the vulnerability of each coastal asset of the park service, encompassing thousands of buildings and other pieces of infrastructure around the country.

"We are putting numerical vulnerabilities on everything going from the Statue of Liberty, to the Fort Pickens Road, to totem poles in Sitka, Alaska, and then helping the park service develop short- and long-term plans for managing that infrastructure as sea level continues to rise and in response to storms," Young said. "So that's the kind of project that's sort of in our sweet spot, is taking science and using it for good cause."

At CivicCon, Young will be discussing some of the risks associated with sea level rise and, particularly pertinent in our area, storms from the Gulf.

"The Florida Panhandle has the giant bull's-eye on it for Gulf hurricanes, for sure," Young said. "I often like talking about storms a little bit more than I do sea level rise, because sea level rise ... has been so politicized and the two need to be planned for in in different ways.

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"A storm can destroy just about any of your infrastructure (as soon as) this summer, whereas sea level rise is sort of a slow degradation of your community's ability to operate, to get people around. A gradual increase in high tide flooding can shut down roads and transportation arteries, make neighborhoods difficult to live in."

Along with data on how environmental changes are impacting communities, Young will also be addressing what communities can do to protect themselves without breaking the bank. For instance, in Florida, some planners have used vulnerability assessments to reduce the risk to new buildings by raising utilities out of the flood zone, which requires small expenditures but gives a substantial reduction in sensitivity.

"A little bit of what I'll be talking about is that we spend a phenomenal amount of public money on 'resilience,' in the coastal zone today, and so much of that money is not fixing the problem, (is) kicking the ball down the road and is really doing the wrong thing in so many places."

Young's free, open-to-all CivicCon presentation will be 6 to 7:30 p.m. May 9 at The REX Theatre, 18 N. Palafox St. in Pensacola.

Registration is available by searching "CivicCon" at eventbrite.com. The event will also be livestreamed on the News Journal's Facebook page and at pnj.com.

CivicCon is a partnership of the Pensacola News Journal and the Studer Community Institute to make our community a better place to live, grow, work and invest through smart planning and civic conversation.

For more information about CivicCon, visit pnj.com/civiccon.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Climate change expert Rob Young presenting at CivicCon in Pensacola