Over the next 50 years, coping with the impacts of climate change is going to become our number one capital expense.  Of course it needs its own department.  The sooner we start planning how and when to spend the money, the sooner we decide which communities to protect and which we abandon, the less difficult and contentious the debate will be.  It'll still be hard and expensive, just a little less hard and a little less expensive.  Here's what the Sierra Club is advising its members (CB word limit means I'll have to post the advice in two halves): "No one in Honolulu Hale is currently tasked with devising policies to preserve our natural resources for future generations. No one is working on plans to accommodate rising sea levels -which will be a foot higher than today in roughly 30 years and may be more than six feet higher than today by the turn of the century, according to the School of Ocean and Earth Science & Technology at UH."  (continues below...)