Climate Adaptation
An Opening for Climate Adaptation?
Marco Rubio seems willing to admit that climate change exists and is causing real problems. That’s a start.
During an interview with ABC’s Jonathan Kent, Marco Rubio made a very interesting statement about climate change. He took the standard anti-science position about the causes of climate change. “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,” he said. He went on …
Continue reading “An Opening for Climate Adaptation?”
CONTINUE READINGSea Level Rises, Premiums Not So Much
Congress apparently just couldn’t resist restoring subsidies for coastal homeowners.
The President has now signed an important modification of the flood insurance program. The changes are hard to understand, in part because the bill changed an earlier 2013 law that itself amended the basic statute. So you have to work through the whole sequence to see what is going on. Before I go into more …
Continue reading “Sea Level Rises, Premiums Not So Much”
CONTINUE READINGIs Climate Change a Bulldozer or Bullet Train?
How fast will climate change happen? Maybe faster than we expect, according to the National Academy of Sciences.
We’re in the early stages of climate change — just how much depending in large part on whether we control our emissions. But how quickly will this happen? Is it a bulldozer we can dodge or a bullet train that’s too fast to avoid? That makes a lot of difference in terms of our ability …
Continue reading “Is Climate Change a Bulldozer or Bullet Train?”
CONTINUE READINGPrivate Flood Protection
Private flood control is no substitute for government action.
Last week, the NY Times had a story about Verizon’s new flood barrier for its Wall Street building, which is a designated landmark. On one level, it’s a pretty cool project — a portable barrier designed to keep out the water during a hundred-year storm (plus 2-feet for storm surge plus an extra foot to …
Continue reading “Private Flood Protection”
CONTINUE READINGPoll Shows Vast Majority of Americans Favor Sea-Level Rise Adaptation. Now, Time to Start Planning.
Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment and the Center for Ocean Solutions recently released the results of a survey finding that the majority of Americans favor proactive sea-level rise adaptation actions. According to the survey results (margin of error: +/- 4.9% at the 95 percent confidence level), 82 percent of the Americans surveyed said …
CONTINUE READINGRewarding Climate Adaptation Heroes
Earlier this week, Mother Jones posted a piece on how the public rewards politicians for disaster response instead of disaster prevention: Politicians get much more credit for their reaction to disasters like Sandy than they do for trying to ensure disasters don’t cause so much damage in the first place. The post cites a 2009 …
Continue reading “Rewarding Climate Adaptation Heroes”
CONTINUE READINGEPA Tackles Climate Adaptation
For the first time, EPA has addressed the issue of climate change adaptation in a letter from Administrator Lisa Jackson. The contents of the letter are not startling: mostly instructions to carry out existing policies or government recommendations on climate change. Two points are worth noting, however. First, the Administrator directs the agency to produce …
Continue reading “EPA Tackles Climate Adaptation”
CONTINUE READINGClimate Adaptation Across the Pond
In the U.K., climate adaptation is mandated by statute, with primary responsibility in a single government agency and specific implementation requirements for local authorities. In the U.S., we can only envy the extent to which even the current Conservative government is taking the issue of climate change seriously. A 2005 Climate Change Programme report helpfully …
Continue reading “Climate Adaptation Across the Pond”
CONTINUE READINGPutting the English on Climate Adaptation
As part of a research project on climate adaptation, I had occasion to look at what the British are doing. The Adaptation Subcommittee of the Climate Change Committee has done some excellent work to address adaptation issues. Besides planning, the Subcommittee has begun to assess progress to date, finding some improvements in capacity building but …
Continue reading “Putting the English on Climate Adaptation”
CONTINUE READINGThe Feds Take On Climate Adaptation
On October 14, the White House’s Climate Change Adaptation Task Force released its recommendations to President Obama for how agencies can better prepare the United States to respond to the impacts of climate change. Once again we are reminded of how important it is to have an Administration that takes climate science seriously. According to …
Continue reading “The Feds Take On Climate Adaptation”
CONTINUE READING