People and companies want to adapt to the climate risks they face from global warming. Venture capitalists are injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into climate intelligence as they build out a rapidly growing business of climate analytics—the data, risk models, tailored analyses and insights people and institutions need to understand and respond to climate risks.

Climate information should be regarded as a public good. Otherwise it will contribute to a world in which information about the unfolding risks of droughts, floods, wildfires, extreme heat and rising seas are hidden behind paywalls.【G1】_________________________________________

It will compound disadvantage and leave the most vulnerable among us exposed.

Despite this, global consultants, climate and agricultural technology start-ups, insurance companies and major financial firms are all racing to meet the ballooning demand for information about climate dangers and how to prepare for them.【G2】_________________________________________

Private risk assessments fill that gap—but at a premium. An overreliance on the private sector to provide climate adaptation information will hollow out publicly provided climate risk science, and that means we all will pay: the well-off with money, the poor with lives.

Global warming is a collective tragedy, and so its solutions, especially around information for adapting to the risks it foreshadows, must be a public good. That is why governments must step up. People have a fundamental right to science. The climate science community needs to rapidly develop a publicly available alternative to paywalled climate information; failing to do so would be unjust and dangerous.

Climate risk information, especially information that helps communities manage impacts like floods and wildfires, should be as available as government weather forecasts. Governments should provide the resources so that this information can be obtained, assessed and acted upon by the public. Doing so is essential to our health, safety and collective well-being.【G3】______________________

Internationally, the nearly 200 countries that adopted the United Nations Paris climate agreement in 2015 committed, as the U.N. pointed out, to “strengthening the global response to climate change by increasing the ability of all to adapt and build resilience, and reduce vulnerability.“【G4】______________________________________

At the federal level, it would require establishing a national adaptation plan, revisited annually, to ensure communities around the United States have equal open-access to the tailored risk assessments they need to make long-term adaptation investments.【G5】_____________________________________Getting there will require greater federal investments in applied climate risk science, while ensuring that any publicly funded research is held to strict standards of openness.

As the private sector accelerates efforts to commodify climate information at the exact moment humanity most needs it, governments at all levels must expand efforts to make climate risk assessments and adaptation strategies widely available and understandable.

[A] At a minimum, it means that individuals could log into a website and quickly access a clear climate risk assessment for where they live based on validated, transparent and reproducible science without entering their credit card information to pay for it.

[B] While a lot of this information is public, it is often voluminous, technical and not particularly useful for people trying to evaluate their personal exposure.

[C] People and companies who can afford private risk assessments will rent, buy and establish homes and businesses in safer places than the billions of others who can’t.

[D] The privatization of climate information is already overturning the professional community, as scientists leave academia and national labs for high-paying start-up and consulting jobs; it’s a sensible move.

[E] Such a commitment implies that the information needed to adapt is a fundamental right for humanity.

[F] Local governments should establish climate adaptation clinics to engage directly with their communities, which provide both public weather forecasts and more detailed and customized forecasts to paying customers.

[G] Making this information a public good, available to all members of society for their benefit, would require a range of public efforts alongside the private ones.

【G5】