As sea levels rise, U.S. communities have several strategies to cope with the effects of climate change, the president of the National Academy of Sciences said yesterday.

There's triage for high-dollar assets, like airports and military installations and even the Statue of Liberty, Marcia McNutt said. But more and more, she added, “organized retreat” is a part of the conversation.

That strategy, once politically unpalatable, has emerged from the shadows in recent months as scientists, community leaders and governments try to figure out how to move people out of the way of coastal flooding and other hazards.

Such a strategy could start with building codes, McNutt told an audience gathered yesterday at the National Press Club for an event organized by the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. The event, which focused on adaptation to climate change, is part of a series highlighting the environmental and energy challenges and risks that the Trump administration must confront in the coming years, including adaptation to climate change.

Communities could require that people in hurricane zones rebuild their homes higher, for example, and with sustainable materials. Over time, that would change the economics of building in vulnerable zones. It would become unaffordable to live in dangerous areas, McNutt said.

Adapting to climate change is “very well-aligned with building a better world,” said fellow panelist Katharine Mach, a senior research scientist at Stanford and a visiting investigator at the Carnegie Institution for Science.

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