Watch the full Local Focus interview for Bruno Petrenas' views on the city's biggest issues, and our less important quickfire questions.
Civil engineer and former president of the New Zealand Automobile Association, Bruno Petrenas is running for Palmerston North City Council.
Petrenas says he began working to make infrastructure more resilient to climate change over 30 years ago but claims he was laughed at because people "didn't think that was going to be an issue".
Now that the world has caught up, Petrenas believes adaptation should take priority over mitigation of climate change.
"No matter how hard you try to save on the carbon issue, there's such a lag period now that we have a problem on our hands."