[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CONFRONTING CLIMATE IMPACTS:
FEDERAL STRATEGIES FOR
EQUITABLE ADAPTATION AND RESILIENCE
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE
CLIMATE CRISIS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
MARCH 9, 2022
__________
Serial No. 117-15
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
www.govinfo.gov
Printed for the use of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
47-690 WASHINGTON : 2022
SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE CLIMATE CRISIS
One Hundred Seventeenth Congress
KATHY CASTOR, Florida, Chair
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon GARRET GRAVES, Louisiana,
JULIA BROWNLEY, California Ranking Member
JARED HUFFMAN, California GARY PALMER, Alabama
A. DONALD McEACHIN, Virginia BUDDY CARTER, Georgia
MIKE LEVIN, California CAROL MILLER, West Virginia
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota
JOE NEGUSE, Colorado DAN CRENSHAW, Texas
VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
------
Ana Unruh Cohen, Majority Staff Director
Sarah Jorgenson, Minority Staff Director
climatecrisis.house.gov
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS OF MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Page
Hon. Kathy Castor, a Representative in Congress from the State of
Florida, and Chair, Select Committee on the Climate Crisis:
Opening Statement............................................ 1
Prepared Statement........................................... 3
Hon. Garret Graves, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Louisiana, and Ranking Member, Select Committee on the
Climate Crisis:
Opening Statement............................................ 4
WITNESSES
Dr. William Solecki, Professor, Department of Geography and
Environmental Science, Hunter College--City University of New
York
Oral Statement............................................... 7
Prepared Statement........................................... 8
Dr. Lara Hansen, Chief Scientist & Executive Director, EcoAdapt
Oral Statement............................................... 12
Prepared Statement........................................... 13
The Honorable Matthew Jewell, President, St. Charles Parish
Oral Statement............................................... 21
Prepared Statement........................................... 22
Dr. Lauren Alexander Augustine, Executive Director, Gulf Research
Program, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and
Medicine
Oral Statement............................................... 25
Prepared Statement........................................... 27
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Letter from the Union of Concerned Scientists outlining their
recommendations to the Select Committee on ways Congress can
help advance climate adaptation and resilience, submitted for
the record by Ms. Castor....................................... 47
Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working
Group II, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and
Vulnerability Summary for Policymakers, submitted for the
record by Ms. Castor........................................... 49
Report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
and the U.S. Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flood Hazard Scenarios
and Tools Interagency Task Force, Global and Regional Sea Level
Rise Scenarios for the United States, submitted for the record
by Ms. Castor.................................................. 49
Article by Oliver E.J. Wing, et al., ``Inequitable patterns of US
flood risk in the Anthropocene,'' submitted for the record by
Ms. Castor..................................................... 49
Report from the United Nations Environment Program, Spreading
like Wildfire: The Rising Threat of Extraordinary Landscape
Fires, submitted for the record by Ms. Castor.................. 49
Press Release from the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
``FEMA Updates Its Flood Insurance Rating Methodology to
Deliver More Equitable Pricing,'' submitted for the record by
Ms. Castor..................................................... 49
Blog Post from Watts Up With That, ``The big list of failed
climate predictions,'' submitted for the record by Mr. Palmer.. 49
APPENDIX
Questions for the Record from Hon. Kathy Castor to William
Solecki........................................................ 52
Questions for the Record from Hon. Mike Levin to William Solecki. 54
Questions for the Record from Hon. Kathy Castor to Lara Hansen... 55
Questions for the Record from Hon. Mike Levin to Lara Hansen..... 57
Questions for the Record from Hon. Garret Graves to Hon. Matthew
Jewell......................................................... 58
Questions for the Record from Hon. Kathy Castor to Lauren
Alexander Augustine............................................ 59
CONFRONTING CLIMATE IMPACTS:
FEDERAL STRATEGIES FOR EQUITABLE ADAPTATION AND RESILIENCE
----------
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9, 2022
House of Representatives,
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis,
Washington, DC.
The Select Committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:34 a.m.,
in Room 210, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Kathy Castor
[Chair of the Select Committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Castor, Bonamici, Huffman, Levin,
Casten, Escobar, Graves, Palmer, and Carter.
Ms. Castor [Presiding.] So good morning, everyone. Thank
you for joining us for this hybrid hearing on ``Confronting
Climate Impacts: Federal Strategies for Equitable Adaptation
and Resilience.''
First, let me say that our hearts are with the people of
Ukraine this morning who are living through unimaginable
circumstances. And as Democrats, as Republicans, as Americans,
we stand on the side of freedom and democracy, and I know we
will work together to hold Russia and Putin accountable and to
support the brave Ukrainian people. And as we continue to help
the people of Ukraine, we must also keep working to respond to
the worsening impacts of the climate crisis. Today, we will
hear about the need to develop a national adaptation and
resilience strategy that focuses on a way to activate all
sectors and levels of government to deliver actionable climate
risk science, information, and tools by also helping drive the
funding and investment for vulnerable communities.
So I will recognize myself right now for a five minute
opening statement.
For decades, scientists have warned us that our reliance on
fossil fuels is filling the atmosphere with heat trapping
pollution, raising global temperatures and fueling extreme
weather. They warned us that rising temperatures would lead to
worsening disasters, stronger heatwaves, and longer droughts,
and those predictions are now our reality. Families and
businesses are dealing with the costs and the consequences of
climate inaction, and while we can still avoid the worst
effects of climate change, some effects now are unavoidable.
But it is not too late, however, to avoid some of the worst
scenarios if we act now.
While we take ambitious steps to keep climate change from
getting worse, we must also urgently confront the impacts that
are already here. That means developing a national adaptation
and resilience strategy, one that delivers actionable tools and
resources to frontline communities across America. It means
taking global action to helping communities develop climate
resilient economies. It means safeguarding our food and our
farmers, and it means investing and strengthening housing and
infrastructure, directing growth towards safer ground, and
prioritizing investments to our most vulnerable people. We must
engage in the adaptation planning designed with local partners,
engaging them early and meaningfully so that we can benefit
from their insight and experience, and we must do this in ways
that are equitable, sustainable, and urgent.
It is one thing to read about climate impacts in a
scientific report. It is quite another to feel them in your own
neighborhood, but that is what is happening across America.
Just last year, climate-fueled disasters affected 1 in 10
American homes, according to an analysis by CoreLogic, and in
the summer, the Pacific Northwest experienced a deadly heatwave
with record shattering temperatures of more than 110 degrees.
The Southwest is in the midst of a 20-plus-year mega drought,
the region's most severe in the last 1,200 years. And over the
next 30 years, the National Ocean Service estimates that
flooding will be 10 times as common in communities, like my own
in the Tampa Bay area where sea level could rise as much as 12
inches.
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change presents one of the starkest warnings to date.
Even if we meet our most ambitious climate goals, the world's
leading scientists predict that we will suffer losses. We may
lose most of the world's tropical coral reefs by the end of
this century as well as much of our glaciers and polar ice. We
will continue to lose species and ecosystems at a rapid clip.
And if we don't act decisively, we will face widespread human
suffering with destabilized food production, water scarcity,
and a global economy plagued by uncertainty. It is a dire
economic picture that we simply cannot allow to happen.
However, the IPCC report also contains a message of hope and of
urgency. Every dollar we spend today on adaptation and
resilience can save us between $4 and $7 in the future, and
investing in resilient infrastructure can save lives and lessen
the impacts of extreme weather.
That is why we worked to pass President Biden's Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law, which includes the largest investment in
resilient physical and natural infrastructure in American
history. The infrastructure law invests over $50 billion to
protect against droughts, heat, floods, and wildfires. It
includes $1 billion for FEMA's Building Resilient
Infrastructure and Communities, as well as $3.5 billion for
Flood Mitigation Assistance. And it makes historic investments
in wildfire resilience, water infrastructure, transportation
planning, and grid resilience. But there is still progress to
be made because, today, the United States has no comprehensive
Federal approach for climate adaptation and resilience planning
that builds on what is happening at the local level. The
results of an inefficient ad hoc system will exacerbate the
risks in our local communities. It will exacerbate risks to our
economy and the people we represent.
So today, we will hear from experts on how Congress can
help Americans adapt to climate impacts in a way that is
equitable for every community. We will talk about the tools
needed to help communities manage unavoidable climate impacts,
and we will explore ways to boost resilience across the nation.
I am really looking forward to our conversation today. Thank
you.
And at this time, I will yield 5 minutes to Ranking Member
Graves for his opening statement.
[The statement of Ms. Castor follows:]
Opening Statement of Chair Kathy Castor
Hearing on ``Confronting Climate Impacts: Federal Strategies
for Equitable Adaptation and Resilience''
March 9, 2022
As prepared for delivery
For decades, scientists have warned us that our reliance on fossil
fuels is filling the atmosphere with heat-trapping pollution, raising
global temperatures, and fueling extreme weather. They warned us that
rising temperatures would lead to worsening disasters, stronger heat
waves, and longer droughts. Those predictions are now our reality.
Families and businesses are dealing with the costs and the consequences
of climate inaction. And while we can still avoid the worst effects of
climate change, some impacts are now unavoidable. It is not too late,
however, to avoid some of the worst scenarios--if we act.
While we take ambitious steps to keep climate change from getting
worse, we also must urgently confront the impacts that are already
here. That means developing a national adaptation and resilience
strategy, one that delivers actionable tools and resources to frontline
communities across America. It means taking global action to help
communities develop climate-resilient economies. It means safeguarding
our food and our farmers. And it means investing in strengthening
housing and infrastructure, directing growth toward safer ground, and
prioritizing investments for our most vulnerable people. We must also
engage in adaptation planning designed with local partners, engaging
them early and meaningfully, so we can benefit from their insight and
experience. And we must do all this in ways that are equitable,
sustainable, and urgent.
It's one thing to read about climate impacts in a scientific
report. It's quite another to feel them in your own neighborhood. But
that's what's happening across America. Just last year, climate-fueled
disasters affected one in ten American homes, according to analysis by
CoreLogic. In the summer, the Pacific Northwest experienced a deadly
heatwave with record-shattering temperatures of more than 110 degrees.
The Southwest is in the midst of a 20-plus-year megadrought, the
region's most severe in the last 1,200 years. And over the next 30
years, the National Ocean Service estimates that flooding will be 10
times as common in communities like my own, where sea level could rise
as much as 12 inches.
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change presents one of the starkest warnings to date. Even if we meet
our most ambitious climate goals, the world's leading scientists
predict we will suffer losses--we may lose most of the world's tropical
coral reefs by the end of the century, as well as much of our glaciers
and polar ice. We will continue to lose species and ecosystems at a
rapid clip. And if we don't act decisively, we'll face widespread human
suffering, with destabilized food production, water scarcity, and a
global economy plagued by uncertainty. It's a dire economic picture
that we simply cannot allow to happen.
However, the IPCC report also contains a message of hope--and of
urgency. Every dollar we spend today on adaptation and resilience can
save us between $4 and $7 in the future. And investing in resilient
infrastructure can save lives and lessen the impacts of extreme
weather. That's why we worked to pass President Biden's Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law, which includes the largest investment in resilient
physical and natural infrastructure in American history. The
Infrastructure Law invests over $50 billion to protect against
droughts, heat, floods, and wildfires. It includes $1 billion for
FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, as
well as $3.5 billion for Flood Mitigation Assistance Grants. And it
makes historic investments in wildfire resilience, water
infrastructure, transportation planning, and grid resilience.
There is still progress to be made. As of today, the United States
has no comprehensive federal approach for climate adaptation and
resilience planning. That results in an inefficient, ad hoc system--one
that exacerbates risks to our communities, our national economy, and
our national security. In order to fully meet this challenge, we must
create a national adaptation and resilience strategy that prioritizes
vulnerable populations and transitions them away from the riskiest
areas. We need to significantly increase technical and financial
assistance to vulnerable communities around the world. We need to
establish a Climate Risk Information Service to deliver actionable data
and tools. And we must ensure federally-funded projects conform to the
latest codes and standards for resilience and energy efficiency.
Today, we'll hear from experts on how Congress can help Americans
adapt to climate impacts, in a way that's equitable for every
community. We'll talk about the tools needed to help communities manage
unavoidable climate impacts. And we'll explore ways to boost resilience
across the nation. I look forward to our conversation.
Mr. Graves. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you all for being
here. The witnesses and the members, thank you for being here.
You know, resilience is important, and I am very proud we
have a great local leader, Parish President Matt Jewell, here
from St. Charles Parish. The rest of you have counties, you all
haven't caught on yet, but he is the leader of one of our units
of local government, our counties, and a guy that was out there
waist deep, neck deep in water from Hurricane Ida, throwing
sandbags, trying to save his community. Resilience is
absolutely critical in Louisiana. And he is going to talk today
a little bit about Risk Rating 2.0, about this change within
FEMA that has been made that causes extraordinary rate
increases in flood insurance for people in his community and in
adjacent communities, going somewhere from $560 a year to
$7,000, we believe even $9,000 in a year. I don't know. This is
insane what is going on. What we need to be doing is protecting
communities.
But, Madam Chair, I actually want to go in a little bit
different direction today. We are sitting here talking about
resilience. This is the Climate Committee. We are supposed to
be dealing with climate issues, and all this committee has been
doing, all this Congress has been doing is sitting here talking
about how we are going to move to renewable energy solutions.
That is what we are going to do. We are going to move to
renewable energy solutions. We are going to chart this new path
on energy. Look at what is happening right now as a result of
completely failed governance, a lack of an energy policy.
``No'' isn't an energy policy. Opposing everything isn't an
energy policy.
Look at what is happening today as a result of all of these
people out there saying these things that are not tethered to
science, are not tethered to data, and the people in the media
that are being entirely complicit with it. It is not funny
anymore. We have reached maximum gasoline prices. Emissions are
going up. We are going from buying oil from Russia to, oh,
look, we are going to pivot to Iran and Venezuela. I have
people calling me, in fact, including people that are
constituents of President Jewell. They are saying I can't
afford to fill my car to go to work. It is not funny.
We are not achieving any objectives that you are trying to
achieve. None. Emissions are going up as compared to President
Trump. Prices are insane, and we have energy insecurity. There
is not an energy strategy. We need to be talking about
something that is rational, something that is science based,
and we are not. We are continuing to talk about how you are
going to ride the unicorn to the dance with Bigfoot. This is
insane. It doesn't make any sense.
We have 38 billion barrels of reserves in the United
States, 38 billion barrels of technically proven reserves of
oil. We have our European friends that have made dumb
decisions, like closing nuclear plant after nuclear plant,
therefore, becoming more dependent upon Russia. We have natural
gas here. We have trillions and trillions of cubic feet of
natural gas that we can produce here. If the Biden
Administration will approve more of the export terminals, we
can send it over to Europe to help address their issues. Here
is a fact that I have said in this committee over and over
again: producing gas, natural gas, in the United States has a
lower environmental footprint, lower emissions than virtually
any other country in the world.
Do you know the production in the United States that is
effectively the cleanest with the lowest emissions? It is
producing in the offshore, off the coast of where President
Jewell represents, the area where we represent, lowest
emissions in the world, some of the lowest emissions, but, no,
we are going to turn to Vladimir Putin? We are going to turn to
Iran? We are going to turn to Maduro and Venezuela. We are
going to turn to the Saudis. Who thinks this makes sense? We
have higher prices, higher emissions, and less energy security.
This guts our economy. There is not a strategy. No is not a
strategy.
Back to the offshore production, what was one of the first
actions of this Administration? Signing an executive order
saying we are not going to do any new leases, so now there is a
lawsuit. They told them they had to do it, then told them they
don't have to do it, and the Administration is just sitting
there on it. We have the solutions in the United States. At the
State of Union Address the other night, the President said,
``We want to buy America.'' We want to buy America or American.
We have energy right here. We had energy security, we had
energy independence, and it was given up through a failed
strategy.
I want to be clear, Madam Chair: solar, wind, nuclear,
hydro, geothermal, wave, all of them play a role, every single
one of them, but ``no'' is not an energy strategy, and look at
what we are doing to this country. This is a disaster. And this
shouldn't be a partisan fight, but we can't continue to sit
around here and talk about things that are completely
illogical, irrational, and are causing the impact to the
American people that we are seeing today.
I yield back.
Ms. Castor. All right. I thank the gentleman from
Louisiana. By the way, I am going to go ahead and introduce our
witnesses, but we will be going into recess at some point
because we are going to take a vote today on banning oil and
gas exports from Putin, from Russia. So I know you may want
to----
Mr. Graves. I can't wait.
Ms. Castor [continuing]. Correct your remarks when you say
we are dealing with Putin, and oil and gas, because we are
going to ban oil and gas exports, just like President Biden
said.
Okay. So I want to welcome our witnesses today. We have an
outstanding panel.
Dr. William Solecki is a Professor in the Department of
Geography and Environmental Science at Hunter College in City
University of New York, an expert in urban environmental
change, resilience, and adaptation. Dr. Solecki founded the
CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities, which works to makes
cities part of the solution to sustainability challenges. He
was an author of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change Working Group II ``Summary for Policymakers,'' and
chapters on climate risk cities, and the coordinating lead
author of the U.S. National Climate Assessment chapter on
``Urbanization, Infrastructure, and Vulnerability.''
Dr. Lara Hansen is the Executive Director and Chief
Scientist at EcoAdapt. Dr. Hansen leads EcoAdapt's work to
support professionals in adaptation and management sectors. She
serves on the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
and is a United States Environmental Protection Agency bronze
medalist. Dr. Hansen previously worked as the Chief Climate
Change Scientist for the World Wildlife Fund where she created
their International Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation
Program.
Would you like to introduce Mr. Jewell?
Mr. Graves. Sure. Madam Chair, we are joined again by St.
Charles Parish President Matt Jewell. President Jewell--I
remind you again we have parishes in Louisiana, not counties--
is the chief executive elected official for the parish.
President Jewell grew up in St. Charles Parish. He actually
worked up here and did staff work with Congressman Scalise,
worked for the United States Department of Energy, is a fellow
beekeeper, and I will tell you just a great guy that has the
heart and soul, complete passion for the parish and compassion
for the people that he represents. And I think you will see in
his testimony today what a great resource and perspective he
will be providing to the committee.
Ms. Castor. Thank you. And Dr. Lauren Alexander Augustine
is the Executive Director of the Gulf Research Program at the
National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. An
expert in water, natural disasters, and resilience, Dr.
Augustine currently oversees the management and use of criminal
settlement funds directed to the National Academies from the
Deepwater Horizon disaster. She previously led efforts to build
community resilience at the Resilient America Program and as
the Country Director for the African Science Academy
Development Initiative.
Welcome to all of our panelists, and without objection, the
witness' written statements will be made part of the record.
With that, Dr. Solecki, you are now recognized to give a 5-
minute presentation of your testimony. Welcome.
Dr. Solecki. Great. Thank you. Can you guys hear me?
Ms. Castor. Yes, we can.
Dr. Solecki. Okay. Thank you.
STATEMENTS OF DR. WILLIAM SOLECKI, DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY AND
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, HUNTER COLLEGE, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW
YORK (CUNY); DR. LARA J. HANSEN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND CHIEF
SCIENTIST, ECOADAPT; THE HONORABLE MATTHEW JEWELL, PRESIDENT,
ST. CHARLES PARISH, LOUISIANA; AND DR. LAUREN ALEXANDER
AUGUSTINE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GULF RESEARCH PROGRAM, NATIONAL
ACADEMIES OF SCIENCE, ENGINEERING, AND MEDICINE
STATEMENT OF DR. WILLIAM SOLECKI
Dr. Solecki. Ms. Castor, Ranking Member Graves, and members
of the Select Committee, thank you for inviting me today, and
thank you for your commitment to the climate change issue. What
I am going to do is speak about the report and some of the
findings from it.
A key statement that comes out of the summary for
policymakers from that report released last week is that the
cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change
is a threat to human well-being and the health of the planet.
Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief
and rapidly closing window to secure a livable future. The
report content really highlights an advanced understanding of
climate change driven impacts, including many significant
shifts that increase the risks faced by the world's ecosystems
and society. Simply put, climate change at the national and
global scales is not something that can be ignored, it is not
going away, and the impacts are going to become increasingly
worse. But as was noted, we have a clear window of opportunity
to act, particularly in this next decade.
The report presents a clear and compelling assessment of
widespread global impacts of climate change. Evidence also
continues to strengthen the assessment that the impacts will
increase significantly if and when global warming exceeds 1.5
degrees Celsius, or about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, with
approximately about 1.1 degree of warming already observed. For
North America, some of the key impacts observed in the report
include the following: climate change has negatively impacted
human health and well-being; food production is increasingly
affected by climate change; extreme events and climate hazards
are adversely affecting economic activities across the U.S. and
have disrupted supply chain infrastructure and trade; North
American cities and settlements have been impacted increasingly
by severe and frequent climate hazards and extreme events,
which have contributed to infrastructure damage, livelihood
losses, damage to heritage resources, and safety concerns; and
terrestrial, and marine, and freshwater ecosystems are all
being profoundly altered by climate change across the region.
The report also assesses what to expect in the near future
in terms of future risk but also talks more specifically about
where and why adaptation is being effective or not. And one of
the things that is really relevant here is that there is some
good news. The good news is that more and more adaptation
strategies are being planned, developed, and implemented. Many
pilot projects and local experiments are ongoing, and various
types of infrastructural, technological, and societal
ecosystem-based adaptations are being developed, which provide
a basis for ongoing improvement and scaling up. Also, many
enabling factors that promote adaptation have been defined in
the assessment as well. These include a focus on inclusive
governance access to financing, access to new and cutting edge
knowledge, as well as decision making that focuses on issues of
equity.
The bad news, though, is that what we also find with
respect to adaptation is that, in some cases, it is not
sufficient to meet the challenge of climate change, what we
define as an adaptation gap. In other cases, it is leading to
unintended outcomes or maladaptation. Also, we find that a lot
of adaptation lacks coordination, monitoring, and evaluation,
and, in some cases, it is losing its effectiveness with respect
to shifts in climate change already ongoing.
What I would like to do in my last minute or so is to sort
of talk about some of these opportunities for taking advantage
of this window that we now have present to us. One is to
enhance conditions for adaptation; two, to focus on enhancing
synergies and co-benefits of adaptation that reduce
maladaptation; enhance our monitoring and evaluation capacity;
incorporate adaptation into the everyday practice, particularly
with the development of sector- and geographic-specific
relevant metrics, standards, and codes; prepare for shocks that
are, in some cases, outside the remit of the jurisdiction of
agencies and learn from them as best as possible; and also
develop a suite of policies that are flexible, adaptive, and
also present a diverse set of strategies. And finally, one of
the key results is this issue of more fully integrating and
connecting adaptation, and mitigation, and development, and the
recognition that this sort of interleaving of these three key
aspects provide great opportunities for climate solutions in
the future.
Thank you.
[The statement of Dr. Solecki follows:]
Testimony of William Solecki, Ph.D., Professor
Dept. of Geography and Environmental Science, Hunter College-City
University of New York
U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working
Group II Report: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability
March 9, 2022
Chair Castor, Ranking Member Graves, and members of the Select
Committee, thank you for inviting me here today and for your commitment
to the climate change issue.
The key concluding statement from the IPCC Working Group II Report,
Summary for Policymakers released on Monday February 28, 2022 is that,
the cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a
threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further
delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing
window to secure a liveable future.
The report highlights an advanced understanding of climate change
driven impacts, including many significant shifts that increase the
risks faced by world's ecosystems and society. Simply put, climate
change at the national and global scales is not something that can be
ignored, it is not going away, and the impacts are going to become
increasingly worse, but we do have a clear window of opportunity if we
are able to act in the near term, especially in the next decade.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ This statement includes a distillation of the key points from
the IPCC Working Group II Report with interpretation and review by the
author. The full report can be found at https://
report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg2/pdf/IPCC_AR6_WGII_FinalDraft_FullReport.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The report presents a clear and compelling assessment of the
widespread global impacts of climate change. Impacts are being observed
everywhere on the globe. This is a significant advance over the
previous IPCC report released in March of 2014. Key issues now noted
include compound and cascading risks, a wide spatial variation in the
level of risk, and deepening vulnerability of ecosystems and society.
For example, 3.3 to 3.6 billion people now live in global hotspots of
high vulnerability to climate change. These are across large parts of
Africa, as well as South Asia, Central and South America, small islands
and the Arctic. Coastal tidal sites and small islands are also
especially at risk and vulnerable. Evidence continues to strengthen
assessment that climate impacts will increase significantly if and when
global warming exceeds 1.5+C (2.7+F) with approximately 1.1+C of
warming already observed.
In North America, key impacts include the following observations.
Climate change has negatively impacted human health and wellbeing; food
production is increasingly affected by climate change; extreme events
and climate hazards are adversely affecting economic activities across
the U.S. and have disrupted supply-chain infrastructure and trade;
North American cities and settlements have been affected by increasing
severity and frequency of climate hazards and extreme events; which
have contributed to infrastructure damage, livelihood losses, damage to
heritage resources, and safety concerns. Terrestrial, marine, and
freshwater ecosystems also are being profoundly altered by climate
change across the region. Given these observations, the report assesses
what we can expect about the near-term future risk (current to 2040)
and beyond, and where and why climate adaptation might be effective or
not.
1. Near-term future risk (2021-2040) and beyond
In Chapter 14 of the report key near-term future risks for North
America are assessed (Note--confidence levels from the report are
included). Climate hazards are projected to intensify further across
North America (very high confidence). Heat waves over land and in the
ocean as well as wildfire activity will intensify; sub-Arctic snowpack,
glacial mass and sea ice will decline (virtually certain); and sea
level rise will increase at geographically differential rates
(virtually certain). Humidity-enhanced heat stress, aridification, and
extreme precipitation events that lead to severe flooding, erosion,
debris flows, and ultimately loss of ecosystem function, life and
property are projected to intensify (high confidence). With respect to
specifics, health risks are projected to increase this century under
all future emissions scenarios (very high confidence). Climate-induced
redistribution and declines in North American food production are a
risk to future food and nutritional security (very high confidence).
Escalating climate change impacts on marine, freshwater, and
terrestrial ecosystems (high confidence) will alter ecological
processes (high confidence) and amplify other anthropogenic threats to
protected and iconic species and habitats (high confidence).
2. Climate Adaptation--What is working, what is not, and what is needed
Climate adaptation is a broad term associated with development of
actions including policies and strategies that reduce the exposure,
risk, and vulnerability of communities, assets, and economies and
ecosystems to climate change. The good news is that the assessment
reported that adaptation strategies are being planned, developed, and
implemented to a greater and greater amount. Many pilot projects and
local experiments are ongoing and exploring various types of
infrastructural, technical, societal and ecosystem-based adaptation,
providing a basis for ongoing improvement and scaling up. The bad news
is that the scale of adaptation is not sufficient to meet the challenge
of climate change, is in some cases leading to unintended outcomes, is
not well coordinated, monitored or evaluated, and is at risk of rapidly
losing its effectiveness because of shifts driven by climate change
itself. Several key terms and concepts assessed in the report and
presented below are relevant to this discussion.
2.1 Adaptation gap--The capacity to adapt to climate change is
highly variable and there are increasing gaps between adaptation action
taken and what's needed. Action on adaptation has increased but
progress is uneven and societies are not adapting fast enough. This
adaptation gap is largest among lower income marginalized communities.
At the current rate of planning and implementation, the adaptation gap
will continue to grow. In cities for example, we see globally that the
gap between what can be adapted to and what has been implemented is
uneven. The gap is larger for the poorest 20% of the population than
for the wealthiest 20%. Adaptation options can be taken in every region
and every sector to respond to climate change however, the assessment
finds that the effectiveness of some action declines with increased
warming, in turn, also creating a wider adaptation gap.
2.2 Hard and soft limits to adaptation--The capacity to adapt to
climate change is associated with limits. Adaptation limits point to
conditions at which an actor's objectives (or system needs) cannot be
secured from intolerable risks through adaptive actions. Hard
adaptation limits are present when no adaptive actions are possible to
avoid intolerable risks. Soft adaptation limits are present when
options may exist but are currently not available to avoid intolerable
risks through adaptive action. Poverty and inequality both present
significant adaptation limits, resulting in unavoidable impacts for
vulnerable groups. In cities, soft limits to adaptation are associated
with low governance capacity, limited political commitment, limited
financial support, lack of reliable information, and the legacy of past
urban infrastructure investment that constrain how cities and
settlements are able to adapt.
2.3 Maladaptation--The report also found increased evidence of
maladaptation or adaptation actions that have unintended side-effects.
Maladaptation may lead to increased risk of adverse climate-related
outcomes, including via increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,
increased or shifted vulnerability to climate change, more inequitable
outcomes, or diminished welfare, now or in the future. One example to
highlight are hard infrastructure sea walls to protect against coastal
flooding that might be not sufficient to fully protect against
increased future risk of flooding. Also in the urban context, the shift
to increased air conditioning use to protect against heat stress will
increase GHG emissions. Overall, the report highlights that, cities and
settlements are best protected when they use a range of strategies to
adapt to climate change and hard infrastructure by itself can be
maladaptive or less effective over time. Adaptation strategies are most
effective when they are diverse and flexible in the face of dynamic
climate risk conditions. The report also highlights the value of
ecosystem approaches and nature-based strategies--i.e., green
infrastructure that could also be considered in the urban adaptation
portfolio.
2.4 Climate equity and justice--An emerging significant finding in
the report is the critical role that justice and equity \2\ play in the
levels of climate vulnerability, adaptation and broader scale
responses. Vulnerability of populations to climate change differs
substantially among and within regions, driven by patterns of
intersecting socio-economic development, unsustainable ocean and land
use, marginalization, historical and ongoing patterns of inequity, and
governance. Inequity and poverty lead to soft adaptation limits,
resulting in disproportionate exposure and impacts for most vulnerable
groups. Furthermore, adaptation planning and implementation that do not
consider adverse outcomes for different groups can lead to
maladaptation, increasing exposure to risks, marginalizing people from
certain socio-economic or livelihood groups, and exacerbating inequity.
Conversely, inclusive governance that prioritizes equity and justice in
adaptation planning and implementation leads to more effective and
sustainable adaptation outcomes. Integrated and inclusive system-
oriented solutions based on equity and social and climate justice
reduce risks and enable climate resilient development.
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\2\ In the report, justice is concerned with setting out the moral
or legal principles of fairness and equity in the way people are
treated, often based on the ethics and values of society. Social
justice comprises just or fair relations within society that seek to
address the distribution of wealth, access to resources, opportunity
and support according to principles of justice and fairness. Climate
justice comprises justice that links development and human rights to
achieve a rights-based approach to addressing climate change.
2.5 Enabling conditions for climate adaptation--To accelerate and
sustain adaptation requires political commitment and follow-through
across all levels of government through legal, legislative and
regulatory pathways; clear goals, defined responsibilities and
commitments; access to and mobilizing adequate financial and technical
resources; decision-support tools, cutting edge, actionable knowledge,
and monitoring and evaluation to track progress; and inclusive
governance that prioritizes equity and justice in adaptation planning
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and implementation.
2.6 Monitoring and evaluation of adaptation--Monitoring and
evaluation (M&E) are key for iterative climate risk management, in
particular tracking adaptation progress and learning about adaptation
success and maladaptation. M&E application in the past five years has
increased at the local, project and national level, but is still at an
early stage and underutilized as a way to assess adaptation outcomes at
longer timeframes. About one-third of world's countries have undertaken
steps to develop national adaptation M&E systems, but fewer than half
of these are reporting on implementation. The relative strength and
weaknesses of different M&E approaches and their applicability have not
been systematically assessed, but the diversity of approaches being
used could provide a more comprehensive assessment of national and
global adaptation progress.
3. Window of opportunity and integrated flexible adaptation response
While the report highlights growing climate risk facing ecosystems
and society and the challenges associated with ongoing response
efforts, the assessment also reveals a series of conditions, situations
and pathways that provide increased effectiveness of climate
adaptation. The report documents an existing yet rapidly closing window
of opportunity to act to limit the most adverse climate change impacts.
Action in the next ten years will be crucial. To take full advantage of
this window of opportunity, one can consider rapidly enhancing current
adaptation practice and simultaneously advancing adaptation practices
and link them with strategies to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas
emissions and prospects for economic development that will promote
sustainable development. Given the rapidly increasing climate risk and
complex and diverse local conditions, it is important to advance
policies and practices that are flexible and adaptive to specific
contexts. Overall, taking integrated action for climate resilience to
avoid climate risk requires urgent decision making regarding the new
built environment and the retrofitting existing designs, infrastructure
and land use. The assessment defines a series of conditions associated
with taking advantage of the current window of opportunity.
3.1 Advance enabling conditions for effective adaptation--The
promotion of adaptation enabling conditions including political
commitment and follow-through, institutional frameworks, policies and
instruments with clear goals and priorities, enhanced knowledge on
impacts and solutions, mobilization of and access to adequate financial
resources, monitoring and evaluation, and inclusive governance
processes can lead to more effective and equitable adaptation outcomes.
3.2 Focus on synergies and co-benefits--Investments in effective
adaptation can be expected to reduce risks and damages as well as
generate multiple benefits including improved productivity, innovation,
health and wellbeing, food security and biodiversity conservation.
3.3. Develop monitoring and evaluation capacity--Monitoring and
evaluation (M&E) of adaptation are critical for tracking progress and
enabling effective adaptation. Although most of the monitoring of
adaptation is focused towards planning and implementation, the
monitoring of outcomes is critical for tracking the effectiveness and
progress of adaptation. M&E facilitates learning on effective
adaptation measures, and signals when and where additional action may
be needed. M&E systems are most effective when supported by capacities
and resources and embedded in enabling governance systems.
3.4 Connect climate adaptation, climate mitigation (reducing GHG
emissions) and economic development--Climate adaptation is essential to
reduce harm, but if it is to be effective, it must go hand-in-hand with
ambitious reductions in greenhouse gas emissions because with increased
warming the effectiveness of many adaptation options declines and risks
maladaptive responses. These climate adaptation and climate mitigation
efforts also can be linked with economic development strategies,
together called climate resilient development, and can advance
sustainable development.
3.5 Incorporate climate action into the everyday--Incorporating
adaptation into departments', agencies', and offices' everyday decision
making increases the capacity of cities, rural areas and regions to
provide services and adapt to climate change for the wellbeing of all.
A key element of this everyday practice is the development and
implementation of sector and geography specific climate change relevant
metrics, standards and codes.
3.6 Prepare for shocks and stresses and take advantage of them--
Unprecedented extreme weather events (e.g., extreme heat wave and
precipitation events) and chronic climate risk (e.g., increasingly
frequent mean monthly high tide flooding) present challenges often
beyond the remit and jurisdiction of federal, state and local agencies.
These conditions present catalyzing opportunities for advanced post
event government review and coordination of follow-on research,
learning, and knowledge generation activities.
3.7 Develop a flexible, adaptive, and diverse portfolio of
adaptation strategies--Adaptation in the United States and world will
depend largely on the resilience of natural, social and physical
infrastructure. Strategies that review and incorporate a range of hard
and soft adaptation actions are often most effective, and avoid
adaptation lock-in. In cities and settlements, a range of green and
blue adaptation strategies are being implemented and now critically
assessed. For example, in our cities and elsewhere, trees can provide
shade, vegetation can have a cooling effect, green areas can provide
drainage and flood water storage and urban agriculture can provide
food. Coastal wetlands can protect against coastal erosion and flooding
associated with storms and sea level rise.
Ms. Castor. Thank you, Dr. Solecki.
Next, Dr. Hansen, you are recognized for 5 minutes to
present your testimony.
Dr. Hansen. Good morning.
Ms. Castor. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF DR. LARA J. HANSEN
Dr. Hansen. Good morning, and thank you, Ms. Castor,
Ranking Member Graves, and members of the Select Committee for
inviting me to speak on Federal strategies for climate change
adaptation.
I have had the honor to visit the Hill to discuss climate
change 3 times before. First in 2004, pregnant with my son, I
shared hopeful examples of climate change adaptation from
around the world and urged action to keep climate change to
less than 2 degrees Celsius because adaptation and mitigation
are both necessary to solve the climate crisis. Back then, I
joked with colleagues that all the practitioners in our field
could fit in one elevator. In 2007, I was invited back to
testify on the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems.
My son was 3 years old. I applauded Congress for penning
several bills to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I repeated
the need to keep climate change to less than 2 degrees Celsius
and added a request for the creation of a national adaptation
policy with an extension agency to provide technical support.
The following year, two colleagues and I founded EcoAdapt,
a nonprofit devoted to innovating and supporting implementation
of adaptation in the United States, a kind of ad hoc extension
agency. In 2019, I was invited back to speak on opportunities
for adaptation on our public lands. I again requested that we
work to keep climate change to less than 2 degrees Celsius and
create a national adaptation plan with an extension agency. By
this time, EcoAdapt was running the world's largest online
adaptation database, CakeX.org, and the National Adaptation
Forum, which had over 1,200 participants that year. The field
now had more people than could fit in an elevator but still not
big enough to meet the scale of the challenge we faced. By the
way, the forum will be in Baltimore this October--I hope that
some of you can attend and share the progress that you are
making on climate change.
In each of your districts, decisions made every day are
vulnerable to climate change. If these decisions are not
evaluated through a climate lens, we will end up with a failed
infrastructure, risking lives and livelihoods, damaging our
environment, and hindering our ability to thrive economically,
socially, and ecologically. Simply put, explicit consideration
of climate change and our actions today is vital for our lives
tomorrow. As lawmakers, you have the power to do something
about this.
Based on over 20 years of professional experience in the
field of adaptation, I recommend the following. One, create and
implement a national adaptation plan that requires the
evaluation of climate change impacts on all funding and
regulatory decisions. Two, create a national adaptation
mitigation extension agency to provide technical support to
public and private parties at the Federal, state, and local
levels, be it a national climate service or an effort being
developed by NOAA called the Climate Smart Communities
Initiative. Whatever its name, it should be sufficiently funded
to coordinate and leverage existing public and private
adaptation tools and resources to build capacity and deliver
climate information to user communities.
Three, require that Congress and all Federal agencies
undertake their mission with an awareness that the climate is
changing. This means agencies entrusted to protect our people
and resources must evaluate climate change vulnerability such
that they can act to reduce climate risk. That should be how we
do business. We must ensure that the most vulnerable
communities and individuals are given additional attention to
ensure our country does not have climate winners and losers. We
all have the right to be protected from the harms of climate
change, regardless of our race, gender, or economic status. We
must recognize the interconnectedness of systems. Cities cannot
exist without water, energy, and food, which comes from the
natural systems that surround them. This requires holistic
plans that include protecting adequate and appropriate space
for ecosystems to function under changing conditions. We must
ensure that agency and congressional staff have the training to
understand climate change when doing their jobs. Without that,
we cannot expect our Federal Government to take effective
action.
Four, reevaluate acceptable levels of non-climate stresses.
The effects of pollutants and other environmental and community
stresses can be compounded by climate change. We need to ensure
that regulatory and planning responses take that into account
so that we can achieve our desired goals to protect the health
of people and the environment. And, of course, since my child
is now a teenager, I often know that I need to repeat myself to
get action, such as, ``Please empty the dish rack,'' so here it
goes. Five, please keep global climate change to well below 2
degrees Celsius. Actually, we now know that 1.5 degrees Celsius
is a more prudent target. We need to reduce our consumption of
fossil fuels to stop making the problem worse. The cost of
inaction is unaffordable for us and our children.
My son is now a high school junior making plans for college
and a career path. He says he is interested in climate science
for his future and that of all of our children. I cannot
properly articulate the hope that I entrust in this Congress
and this committee. Please take action to increase our
likelihood of good outcomes. This and every future generation
is depending upon you. I hope that my son is not on the Hill in
10 years with the same list of requests. Thank you.
[The statement of Dr. Hansen follows:]
Testimony for the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
on
Confronting Climate Impacts: Federal Strategies for
Equitable Adaptation and Resilience
March 9, 2022
Dr. Lara J. Hansen
Chief Scientist and Executive Director
EcoAdapt
Planning for and responding to the effects of climate change are
essential to our nation, and the world's, long-term stability and
sustainability. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Sixth Assessment Report Working Group 2 Climate Change 2022: Impacts
Adaptation and Vulnerability \1\ is not the first we are hearing about
the current, promised and potential impacts of climate change on our
communities and the ecosystems that surround and support us. For
decades we have turned a blind eye to the scientific literature and
first-hand accounts of the need to take action on climate change as the
harm grows and the risk increase for those communities and ecosystems.
In my testimony I will introduce you to the ways we can increase the
resilience of our nation to the damaging effects of climate change and
what is needed to make this happen.
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\1\ IPCC, 2022: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and
Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [H.-O. Portner,
D.C. Roberts, M. Tignor, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegria,
M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Loschke, V. Moller, A. Okem, B. Rama
(eds.)]. Cambridge University Press. In Press. https://www.ipcc.ch/
report/ar6/wg2/
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I would like to begin by providing some context. I am the head of a
small non-profit organization that is filling a very large gap--
creating a climate-savvy society by innovating, facilitating and
training practitioners in adaptation solutions. EcoAdapt's \2\ sole
focus is to ``meet the challenges of climate change.'' That means
helping everyone from foresters and marine protected area managers to
city planners and public health officials apply a climate lens through
which to evaluate their work and develop solutions that will allow
success in meeting their mandate even as the world is changing around
us. We do this through four programs. Our State of Adaptation program
takes a research approach to assessing what activities people are
undertaking, what is working and what is preventing success. Our
Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange \3\ is the largest adaptation
resource database. It is available via an online, open access portal
(CAKEx.org) that is accessed by thousands of people from around the
world each month. Awareness to Action is our workshop methodology that
has provided hands-on training in climate change adaptation to over
6,000 individuals representing hundreds of organizations and agencies
across the country (and a few around the world). Finally, our National
Adaptation Forum \4\ is a biennial convening of adaptation
professionals that affords the opportunity for the exchange of ideas
and the innovation of the next generation of climate solutions. The
next Forum will be held in Baltimore this October. I hope you can join
us.
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\2\ EcoAdapt: http://ecoadapt.org/
\3\ Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange: https://www.cakex.org/
\4\ National Adaptation Forum: https://
www.nationaladaptationforum.org/
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In the past two decades, I have learned a lot about good adaptation
practice--on the ground and through government support. I'd like to
share some of that with you today. My hope is that you will see the
importance of championing this type of work in your own Districts and
through the federal mechanisms that can help to make all of our lands
and communities climate savvy. The effects of climate change that are
being felt today will continue and intensify for decades and centuries
to come, yet every day we are afforded the opportunity to make
management and planning decisions that either help us prepare for these
changes or leave us more and more vulnerable. I urge you to lead us
onto a path toward a better future. A path on which we take both
mitigation (reducing the greenhouse gases that cause climate change)
and adaptation (preparing for and responding to the climate change
impacts that are unavoidable due to past emissions) seriously. These
are not choices to be played against each other--both are necessary
responses to climate change. Doing one without the other will lead us
to our own peril.
Ignoring climate change is not an option. It was not an option the
first time I testified before a Congressional committee (Senate
Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation) in March of 2004,
almost exactly 18 years ago, when atmospheric CO2 was 378
ppm and global temperature had increased 0.6 degrees Celsius. Yet we
did not take action. It was not an option when I testified in 2007 to
the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation's
Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, when
atmospheric CO2 was 386 ppm. And still we did not change our
trajectory. It was not an option when I testified in 2019 and
atmospheric CO2 was 410 ppm and global temperature has risen
one degree Celsius. And it is still not an option today when
atmospheric CO2 has reached 418 ppm and global temperatures
have risen 1.1 degrees Celsius. I am back today hoping that we are
ready to fully address this unprecedented problem with the level of
action it requires. The best place to start is somewhere, so let's see
what we can do today.
How can we create a durable nation in the face of climate change?
There are clear actions we can be taking to increase our national
resilience. To understand why they are needed we can look to how the
impacts we are already experiencing and are projected to experience are
affecting communities and resources across the country. In this same
hearing there will be two speakers from the Gulf Coast, so I will share
examples from other regions of the country--not only the impacts that
are being felt, but some responses to those impacts.
Fire. Perhaps the most far-reaching effects of climate change have
been those of wildfire. Not only have the size, heat and speed of these
fires been terrifying, and the damage to life, property, economies and
ecosystems been felt deeply where fires occur, but the smoke is having
impact at the continental and often global scale. In summer 2020 a
colleague and I were collaborating on a project--me on Bainbridge
Island in Washington, him in rural Maine--yet we were both inside our
houses with windows closed and air filters running to reduce the
effects of the smoke-filled air that surrounded our homes. Over the
past several years, millions of Americans have experienced these
impacts for often weeks at a time--risking serious health impacts with
extended outdoor smoke exposure. Many communities are developing plans
for how to ensure healthy air in schools when late summer fire season
and back to school intersect. Many schools have not historically had
air conditioning systems but such equipment is now becoming necessary
as windows cannot be left open to cool classrooms on hot late summer
days. Obviously adding air conditioning and air filtration systems to
schools costs money, as does powering and maintaining them. Money that
most school districts, especially those already underfunded, do not
have. Additionally, how do we ensure the energy used to power these
cooling and air filtration systems does not result in emissions that
further compound the problems these actions are working to ameliorate?
Those hot late summer days are also becoming more common as the
number of days above 95 degrees Fahrenheit is increasing, meaning more
of them occur beyond what is traditionally thought of as peak summer.
Heat is often described as the invisible aspect of climate change and
may be among its most deadly with more constant stress to people and
ecosystems then episodic events such as storms or floods. In our daily
lives, hearing that global temperatures have increased a bit over 1.1
degrees Celsius does not sound like much. Difference in temperature
from day to night is often much more than that. However, that's not
what this increase is all about. This is the global average
temperature. That means the temperature that makes life possible on our
planet. Even small increases in global temperature dramatically change
the way our earth systems work. An increase in temperature of 1 degree
Celsius can cause coral reefs to bleach, glaciers and ice shelves to
melt, ocean currents to change, and evapotranspiration to change. This
affects things as basic as our food and water supply. Dealing with heat
is an opportunity for knowledge exchange, with examples from warmer
climates being of great use to those in warming locations.
Drought. Much of the country has seen long-term or new seasonal
drought over the past two decades. From Atlanta to Seattle, the Great
Lakes to Los Angeles, there have been droughts that have upended local
planning. These have implications of delivery of drinking water,
meeting agricultural needs and supporting ecosystems--with lake levels
and soil moisture dropping. Communities are taking action to increase
water efficiency in building code, encouraging drought tolerant
landscaping to reduce the need for irrigation, and increasing local
storage capacity. In agriculture, crops are changing, and in forestry,
new tolerant species are being planted for restoration and harvest. To
make these modifications effective, local planners need information,
such as what drought projections looks like more than one year out, and
what species will be most appropriate for landscaping and restoration
efforts when combining multiple future climate impacts (temperature,
drought, seasonal flooding).
Sea level rise and inland flooding. While discussed by other
speakers at this hearing, these are not just issues of the Gulf Coast
of the United States. Increasing frequency and magnitude of flooding
have been seen around the country in recent years as changing
precipitation patterns overwhelm often channelized freshwater systems.
Sea level rise is being felt as direct encroachment of water, saltwater
intrusion to aquifers, and increasing rates of erosion along all
coastlines. Sea level rise is a train wreck in slow motion. Why do we
continue to develop our coastlines when we know the projections of sea
level rise will be a meter or more in many places? On the island where
I live, just like most communities across the country, we have not
changed our zoning to recognize the reality of climate change and new
structures continue to be constructed in harm's way by public and
private interests. Federal dollars allocated for local transportation,
water treatment and any other activity are not required to consider the
impacts of climate change before they are distributed, creating
countless bad investments.
Ocean Acidification. While we can't see it, ocean acidification is
another aspect of climate change that is complicating our lives. The
damage done to ecosystems and fisheries by changing ocean pH will have
knock on effects to society. Ocean acidification is expected to
diminish coral reef growth, systems already being adversely affected by
increasing ocean temperatures. This combination will diminish reefs
further reducing the protection they provide to coastlines in Florida
and Hawaii, as well as U.S. territories and associated states. Ocean
acidification will affect fisheries, including many that are important
to tribal, indigenous and other subsistence cultures. There is also the
potential for ocean acidification to affect coastal water quality in a
manner that will complicate our ability to meet desired standards
associated with wastewater treatment and contaminated site remediation.
While we need better information about what works as effective
adaptation in all sectors, ocean acidification is an area where much
exploration, innovation and evaluation are needed.
Interactive effects. Climate change is not occurring in a vacuum.
Rather it is another suite of stressors on top of an array of stressors
already affecting our people, communities, industries and ecosystems.
As a result it will exacerbate the impacts of those stressors, and
often also be exacerbated by those stressors. An example of such a
multiple stress that was mentioned above is contaminated lands, such as
brownfield sites, which when flooded (due to freshwater flooding or sea
level rise) can lead to remobilization of contaminants or damage to
remediation efforts. \5\ Invasive species can also interact with
climate change. Similarly, invasive grasses, for example, alter the
availability and continuity of fire fuels, contributing to more severe
wildfires. There are resilience opportunities in taking action to
substantially reduce the presence of these other stressors (e.g.,
cleaning-up contaminated sites, removing invasive species) in order to
decrease the potential adverse impacts of climate change, but only if
these actions are taken at a level that genuinely reduces the harm
caused when climate change is added.\6\
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\5\ Mielbrecht, E. and K. Tarrio. 2019. Massachusetts Climate
Change & Hazardous Waste Site Screening. EcoAdapt.,
https://www.cakex.org/sites/default/files/documents/
MA%20Climate%20%26%20Contaminants%20Screening%20Report%20FINAL%206Dec201
9.pdf
\6\ Hansen, L.J. and J.R. Hoffman. 2011. Climate Savvy: Adapting
Conservation and Resource Management to a Changing World. Island Press,
Washington DC.
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It is also essential to understand that climate change affects us
all, but some people and places will be more deeply impacted than
others based on where they are and the resources available to them. In
fact for these people the disproportionate burden of other stressors
will make the impact of climate change even more devastating. There is
great opportunity for federal action to ensure that the needed
resources are readily available and that potential harm is limited to
the degree possible.
Planning for the future, not the past. Those who work in climate
change often point out what may sound obvious--the past is not an
option. However when you realize that most planning and management
decisions are made based on past patterns of development, economic
trends and local preferences, you also realize that we are rarely
planning for the future. A simple example of this can be seen in
natural resource management where a vital tool for habitat protection
is habitat restoration. The very premise of restoration is to restore
the site with the flora and fauna that previously inhabited the
location prior to some injury (e.g., fire, oil spill). Yet in many
cases the species that used to live there will no longer find it
hospitable given changes in temperature and precipitation patterns, or
sea level rise. Similarly designing stormwater infrastructure for past
run-off levels in areas likely to see dramatic increases in large
precipitation events would not be a prudent investment. An example of
progress in this area was the course correction by FEMA to no longer
require rebuilding damaged structures just as they had been which would
have made them just as vulnerable as they were, increasing the
likelihood of repeated damage.
The need for regional coordination. Improving coordination helps
increase the resilience of people and landscapes by providing
opportunities for leveraging resources (e.g., funding, data, people
time), building buy-in and support for plans and on-the-ground
projects, improving communication about planned and ongoing activities,
and providing a shared understanding of threats, solutions, and
priorities. For example, the Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project is
a partnership effort between the State of Arizona, City of Flagstaff,
and Coconino National Forest to help reduce the risk of devastating
wildfire and post-fire flooding in neighboring watersheds.\7\ In 2010,
the Schultz Fire in Coconino National Forest severely burned thousands
of acres of steep terrain; over 20 major flash flooding events occurred
after the fire, destroying community drinking water sources and costing
over $130 million in damages. Increased fire severity and extreme
precipitation events are projected to continue with climate change,
requiring targeted forest restoration work and collaboration to reduce
the risk of fire and flooding and subsequent impacts on the community.
This project is one of only a handful of examples where restoration
work on a national forest is being funded primarily by a municipality.
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\7\ Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project: http://
flagstaffwatershedprotection.org
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In coastal systems, sea level rise is causing saltwater intrusion
into freshwater ecosystems and aquifers resulting in habitat
conversion, infrastructure loss, and in some cases, forced relocation
of coastal communities, such as in Alaska (e.g., Native Alaska Villages
of Kivalina and Newtok) and Washington State (e.g., Hoh Tribe). The
primary adaptation approaches employed to address sea level rise,
flooding, and erosion issues include: engineered structures (rip rap,
bulkheads, tide gates), natural and nature-based approaches (natural
habitats such as wetlands or engineered natural features such as living
shorelines), and policy and regulatory techniques (tools that either
prevent infrastructure in at-risk areas, such as conservation
easements, managed retreat; or modify how activities are implemented to
reduce risk such as rolling easements, minimum development buffers,
real estate disclosures).\8\ Natural and nature-based approaches are
increasingly used in the United States, especially in lieu of
structural approaches that are experiencing limited and declining use,
largely due to their cost, lifetime, and the potential for negative
ecological consequences. New and novel approaches, including
prioritizing, protecting and restoring coastal wetlands with room to
migrate inland as sea levels rise, as well as purchasing the land to
create new opportunities for coastal habitat migration, are also
important.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Gregg R.M., W. Reynier, L.J. Gaines, and J. Behan. 2018.
Available Science Assessment Process: Sea Level Rise in the Pacific
Northwest and Northern California. Report to the Northwest Climate
Adaptation Science Center. EcoAdapt (Bainbridge Island, WA) and the
Institute for Natural Resources (Corvallis, OR).
What do we need to make adaptation possible for all?
Adaptation is necessary not only for our cities, counties and
states, but it is also needed for the management and protection of the
natural systems upon which we rely. Our rivers, lakes, aquifers,
oceans, estuaries, forests, grasslands, deserts and even our
agricultural lands give us clean water, raw materials, clean air, and
food, as well as also being home to our nation's biodiversity of which
we are the stewards. We cannot protect our communities from the impacts
of climate change if we are not protecting the very resources we rely
upon.
As I was sharing examples of the impacts and actions above, I was
outlining the categories of actions that are needed to make adaptation
happen. These include:
1) Capacity building
2) Mandate
3) Access to data
4) Access to funding
5) Assessing adaptation effectiveness
6) Ways to share adaptation knowledge
7) Holistic action
Capacity building: While climate change is a ubiquitous challenge
to every facet of our lives, society and nature, most people have no
idea how it affects their ability to do their jobs or how to make
decisions in a climate savvy manner. This will require basic applied
education that reaches broadly, as well as in depth educational
modification for how everyone from engineers to game wardens to factory
supply managers apply adaptation in their trade. Not to be left out of
this educational need is congressional and agency staff in our state
and federal governments. We need to make consideration of climate
change as common place as consideration of funding or staffing. To do
this we need to actively provide training across the country. Perhaps
akin to public health or emergency preparedness campaigns wherein
general awareness as well as local technical expertise are both
strengthened. A National Climate Service, which could be created from
many existing pieces both within and outside of the federal government,
is desperately needed. One the greatest resources we have to address
climate change is the collective capacity of scientists, planners and
managers in our federal, tribal, and state agencies and nongovernmental
institutions. The knowledge, experience, and ingenuity brought by our
federal partners cannot be undervalued as a key part of the solution to
climate change. To capitalize on this asset, we need increased
capacity, coordination, and collaboration among and between federal
agencies and their non-federal partners, including tribal nations,
nonprofits, businesses, community groups, and academic institutions.
Mandate: Everyday decisions are made that are vulnerable to climate
change when there are virtually no requirements to consider climate
change. Federal dollars are spent to build new infrastructure but there
is no climate lens to ensure these projects can endure for their
projected lifetime without succumbing to damage from climate change.
For example, development in flood plains, ill-suited for extreme
weather events, on eroding coastlines, reliant on aquifers which are
being infiltrated by rising seas, in areas prone to wildfires and mega-
droughts should be disincentivized. In our State of Adaptation Program
interviews, we have found that leading motivations of adaptation action
are clear mandates, laws and policies. Therefore it would be advised to
create a mandate requiring the avoidance or reduction of climate change
vulnerabilities in any and all federal funding mechanisms. These
mandates and policies should require agencies to work across
jurisdictions to increase the likelihood of success. An essential
requirement will be to incorporate climate change into all governmental
or governmentally-funded planning efforts. This can take the form of
discrete ``climate action or adaptation plans'' or the direct
integration of climate change into existing planning processes. For
example, EcoAdapt, in collaboration with numerous other partners,
worked with the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary (located
along the north-central California coast and ocean) to evaluate
vulnerability of their species, habitats, and ecosystem services to
climate change and create a Climate Adaptation Plan.\1\ The region's
natural resources and the services they provide are vulnerable to
increasing ocean temperatures, sea level rise, and extreme weather
events (winds, waves, storms). The plan integrates climate adaptation
into existing management frameworks and recommends over 75 adaptation
strategies for regional management agencies to take to enhance coastal
resilience, including implementing living shorelines, protecting and
restoring habitat, limiting human disturbance, addressing invasive
species, promoting education, and investing in science needs.
Access to data: Good decisions can be made when good data are
available. Fortunately, good data for climate change exist. We must
ensure that these data are accessible, understandable, applicable and
used by everyone. Great strides have been made to ensure ease of
access. Tools such as Climate Explorer, \9\ Sea Level Rise Viewer, \10\
CoralReef Watch \11\ all make data easily accessible to and for any
interested user. There are still often gaps that prevent users from
knowing these data exist or how to apply them. These gaps could be
addressed with improved capacity (as described above), data tools to
cover more issues (e.g., drought, wildfire, interactive impacts such as
contaminant remobilization), and more centralized access points to the
full range of data and tools available for making climate savvy
decisions. Currently each federal agency has their own lists of tools
and data, often not easily navigated by users. Interfaces such as the
Climate Resilience Toolkit, \12\ ARC-X, \13\ and the Climate Adaptation
Knowledge Exchange \14\ all are a great start but are all wildly
underfunded to meet the need and not broadly discoverable. Of course
the ability of these interfaces to deliver good data is incumbent on
our continued commitment to data--monitoring the effects of climate
change (in the field and remotely from space), updating and maintaining
state-of-the-science models and projections, and interpreting these
data for the broad array of uses that required them.
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\9\ Climate Explorer: https://crt-climate-explorer.nemac.org/
\10\ NOAA Sea Level Rise Viewer: https://coast.noaa.gov/
digitalcoast/tools/slr.html
\11\ NOAA Coral Reef Watch: https://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/
\12\ Climate Resilience Toolkit: https://toolkit.climate.gov/
\13\ Environmental Protection Agency Climate Change Adaptation
Resource Center: https://www.epa.gov/arc-x
\14\ Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange: https://www.cakex.org/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Access to funding: There is no avoiding it, climate change will
cost us money. And inaction will only cost us more. Making funding
available for climate action (mitigation and adaptation) is insurance
to prevent more costly expenses due to damage in the future. It should
also be noted that by requiring a climate lens to evaluate the
comparative vulnerability of different actions (e.g., where to site a
road to avoid flooding, how to build houses to reduce energy costs in a
warming world, when to undertake habitat restoration projects to avoid
extreme weather damage, who to include in planning processes to ensure
all vulnerabilities are identified, what land use practices can best
reduce wildfire hazards for people and wildlands) we can ensure that
all tax dollars spent are adaptation dollars. This will avoid funds
being spent for no long-term gain, while increasing benefit through
avoided climate change impacts and cost saving when fewer subsequent
expenditures are needed to correct for short-sighted misallocations.
Adaptation is a multi-phased process that includes scientific
assessments, planning, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation.
Funding directed to just one of these phases will not deliver the
results needed to comprehensively address climate change. Therefore, it
is imperative that the federal government increase its capacity to
provide sustained funding to all stages of the adaptation process,
particularly to implementation where upfront costs tend to be higher.
Emphasis must also focus on increasing the capacity of state and local
governments, as well as boundary organizations, such as nongovernmental
partners, to execute climate adaptation work. These organizations are
sources of highly specialized and locally relevant expertise, and
execute on-the-ground work from technical decision support to
facilitating community discourse through workshops. Additional funding
sources include foundations and local and state governments. However,
many of these initiatives have resulted in piecemeal, fragmented, and
disparate approaches, as well as a lack of movement beyond assessment
and planning. Federal finance plays a key role in funding all phases of
the climate adaptation process. In fact federal funding that is used to
support projects that are not inherently taking climate change into
account is likely to be money misspent--unable to create the benefits
it was intended to achieve when the effects of climate change erode the
target efforts.
Assessing adaptation effectiveness: It is clear that inaction is no
longer an option, which makes it even more essential that we know which
actions will offer the greatest likelihood for positive outcomes. With
limited money, staff, resources and time, the more we can learn about
what works the better. To do this we need to actively monitor the
effectiveness of the implementation of processes, tools and actions to
decrease our national vulnerability. This means being willing to learn
what doesn't work as well as what does. It requires providing funds to
not only create data infrastructure, train the workforce and implement
the adaptation actions, but also to track and test each of those steps
to ensure they are delivering on their promise. There is often an
assumption that with climate change adaptation we will not know what is
working until decades from now. While there certainly will be greater
clarity on the effectiveness of our actions in the future, we are not
without methods to learn early and modify in the short-term to increase
our chances for success in the long-term. We need a national database
that monitors and tracks adaptation efforts, with researchers dedicated
to analyzing the findings to inform our next iterations of what is good
adaptation.
The importance of making informed decisions to alleviate the
environmental, social, financial, and emotional costs of climate change
cannot be overstated. Climate change presents a variety of impacts to
which we must respond. Several adaptation case studies and guidebooks
have been released in recent years with recommendations of suitable
adaptation actions to address different climate impact concerns.
However, determining when, where and how a particular action may be
best implemented is more difficult to discern. Synthesizing what has
worked and what has not worked, as well as why, can help identify
potential modifications to current practices and facilitate
understanding of the consequences of decisions. Further, science- and
evidence-based decision-making supports better outcomes, while reducing
costs and lowering the risk of implementing policies that may be based
on well-intentioned but insufficient research. In addition to improving
overall practice, a better understanding of which actions can be most
effectively applied in different settings helps identify and leverage
funding opportunities and create new or enhance existing partnerships
to advance climate adaptation. EcoAdapt has embarked on an effort to
evaluate the body of scientific knowledge supporting specific climate
adaptation actions to determine the conditions under which particular
actions may be most effective for achieving management goals. Since
2014, we have assessed wildfire, sea level rise, and drought adaptation
options. This work needs to expand beyond these three topics, not to
mention being better funded.
Sharing adaptation knowledge: Learning from the past and ongoing
efforts of others, as well as from research is fundamental to ensuring
effective, successful adaptation outcomes can happen in a timely
manner. Federal (Climate Resilience Toolkit) \15\ and nongovernmental
(EcoAdapt, Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange, \16\ Georgetown
Adaptation Clearinghouse) \17\ knowledge brokers play central roles in
gathering, synthesizing, and contextualizing science into digestible
and actionable information sources. Since 2009, EcoAdapt has engaged in
a sustained research initiative to identify, evaluate, and assess
climate adaptation activities in planning and underway. This includes
identification and synthesis of best available science on historic,
observed, and projected future climatic changes and impacts, extensive
reviews of federal, tribal, state, and local climate change planning
documents, over 4,000 interviews with practitioners in order to
identify trends and barriers to climate adaptation action, and over 400
case studies now housed on the Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange.
As with other aspects of climate data, we need to improve access and
discoverability of these repositories and their holdings.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ Climate Resilience Toolkit: https://toolkit.climate.gov/
\16\ Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange: http://www.CAKEx.org
\17\ Georgetown Adaptation Clearinghouse: https://
www.adaptationclearinghouse.org/
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Holistic action. Woven through all of the above must be approaches
that think holistically and act equitably. Climate change affects
everyone everywhere, but the impacts are not felt equally. The ability
of historically disenfranchised and underserved communities to adapt to
climate change will be stymied by underperforming infrastructure,
underfunded institutions, absent services, fewer safety nets such as
insurance, and numerous other existing stressors that will be
exacerbated by or exacerbate climate change. At the same time,
protecting our public lands is a critical part of an adaptation
strategy that not only safeguards these areas and the ecosystems that
inhabit them, but also the ecosystem services upon which our citizens
rely. Investment in the protection of public lands may be our best path
to enduring access to clean air, clean and plentiful water, flood
control, wildlife habitat, improved mental health, spiritual heritage,
and recreational enjoyment. Finally, collaboration across jurisdiction
and between sectors will help avoid solutions that work at cross-
purposes while maximizing efficiency of limited resources. All of
abovementioned elements could be part of a National Adaptation Plan or
a National Climate Strategy. Completed under the auspices of a
coordinated approach there is certainly a greater likelihood for
success in ensuring the many facets of society and ecosystems are
supported, that resources are applied equitably, that training is
consistent, goals can be established, and progress can be tracked.
Currently climate change adaptation is unfunded, uncoordinated and
largely wishful thinking. Without clear adaptation goals and the tools
to achieve them we cannot expect good long-term outcomes for our
country or our planet.
To meet the needs of your constituents, we need Congress to become
well-versed in understanding the full range of issues inherent in
effective adaptation, to fund adaptation, to require adaptation within
all federal action, and to ensure that the enabling conditions required
for adaptation to happen are in place (e.g., data collection and
dissemination, training, removing barriers to local action, research).
This can be undertaken in a piecemeal approach but to meet the
challenge of climate change with the timeliness that is required, a
better approach would be a coordinated federal approach funded and
staffed at the scale befitting the consequences for everyone in every
one of your districts.
Concluding Thoughts
The problems presented by climate change are vast and the solutions
are innumerable and long overdue. With a challenge as urgent and
pervasive as climate change, any delay in action is harmful. We have
been underachieving for decades. Further prevention of progress will
result in backsliding with irreversible and in some cases deadly
consequences. What we need is for leadership to step forward. This
Congress has the ability to right the ship and advance climate action
like never before--at a rate appropriate for the scale and speed of
this problem. Key items for prioritization include:
Increase investments in science- and evidence-based
approaches to climate adaptation while allowing for flexibility to
identify, develop, and test promising, novel approaches. This includes
not just funding for modeling and data collection, but also increased
funding for implementation of adaptation actions which include
evaluation of effectiveness, and capturing and sharing those lessons
learned.
Increase coordination and collaboration between federal
entities and non-federal partners (including international partners) to
advance climate adaptation objectives. For example, the majority of
federal dollars goes towards fire suppression rather than prevention
activities. Getting fire back onto the landscape (both natural and
prescribed burns) to support ecological functions is critical,
especially as a means to reduce wildfire risk. This includes supporting
tribal cultural burning practices across the landscape.
Reduce the rate and extent of climate change by reducing
our reliance on fossil fuels that are polluting our air and water,
damaging habitat, harming our health, decreasing our national security,
preventing our development into growing job sectors and causing climate
change, which is threatening our survival.
Congress' power to appropriate funds can be wielded as one of the
most effective tools to ensure the prioritization of climate adaptation
overall. \18\ Appropriations should be viewed through a climate lens to
ensure that the agencies, departments, and research programs most
qualified and poised to meet the climate challenge are adequately
funded, and that any investments of tax payer dollars are not mis-spent
on efforts that are likely to be undermined by the effects of climate
change. We need simultaneous action at the scale required to solve the
problem on climate change mitigation and adaptation. Approaches like
the recent Infrastructure Bill and Build Back Better present the types
of opportunities we need to seize to take action at a sufficient scale
to integrate investments in climate adaptation across all agencies to
address the effects of climate change we are and will experience due to
the past emissions we did not curb.
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\18\ For an additional list of opportunities to promote adaptation
through Congressional action, see the Climate Policy Menu: http://
climatepolicymenu.org/adapt/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I invite the current Congress to have the fortitude your
predecessors have lacked. The time to take meaningful action on climate
change to protect our nation and our neighbors around the planet is
upon us. It is your job as elected officials to recognize the scope of
this crisis and make the changes that are needed. Be brave. Be bold.
Take action today for a better tomorrow for all.
Ms. Castor. Thank you, Dr. Hansen.
Next, Mr. Jewell, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Welcome.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE MATTHEW JEWELL
Mr. Jewell. Good morning. Ms. Castor, Ranking Member
Graves, members of the committee, thank you for allowing me to
appear in front of you today. My name is Matthew Jewell, and I
am the President of St. Charles Parish, Louisiana.
Southeast Louisiana is an incredible place to live. Its
natural beauty, rich resources, and the economic engine that is
the Mississippi River provide the foundation of our $87 billion
economy. However, what truly makes Louisiana incredible is our
people. Louisianans are some of the most resilient people you
will ever meet. For centuries, they have called Louisiana home,
and they have stood steadfast as they have faced hurricanes,
land loss, and now a global pandemic. Through it all,
Louisianians continue to rebuild, adapt, and overcome despite
the challenges.
Southeast Louisiana's economy accounts for about 36 percent
of the state's total GDP. Last year, we exported $105 billion
of goods and services from the region. The state ranks 3rd in
the U.S. in natural gas production, and it has 20 percent of
the nation's oil refining capacity. In St. Charles Parish
alone, we have 14 industrial sites ranging from oil and gas,
chemical, and even a nuclear power plant which produces 1.1
gigawatts of carbon free electricity, which is enough to power
over 750,000 homes.
Most recently, Louisiana was devastated by Hurricane Ida, a
strong Category 4 hurricane. Our communities came together with
our industry partners. We picked up the pieces, and we are
getting back to work. This is what we do. Nevertheless, it is
getting more difficult to be resilient due to policies coming
out of Washington, D.C. Bureaucratic hurdles have made it
increasingly difficult and costly to construct flood protection
and coastal restoration projects. Additionally, new policies
around FEMA's Flood Insurance Program have begun to put an
economic constraint on people living in the region. To reverse
these impacts, we must begin by cutting the red tape on coastal
restoration projects designed to restore our wetlands to their
natural state, and time is of the essence.
Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost more than 2,000 square
miles of land, an area roughly the size of Delaware. To solve
this, we need an all-of-the-above approach to coastal
restoration, which involves dredging, marsh restoration,
shoreline protection, and, where they work, freshwater and
sediment diversions to restore the natural process which
created the land where we live. Passing legislation, such as
the bipartisan SHORE Act, will allow places like Louisiana to
continue to advance critical storm protection and coastal
restoration priorities for our vulnerable communities and
habitats. The SHORE Act puts into law that the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers shall prioritize coastal restoration and eliminate
the legal and regulatory hurdles that have caused delays in
implementing these types of projects. Raising or eliminating
the cap on GOMESA revenues would provide the funding needed to
make these projects a reality as it is currently the state's
only consistent funding source for the coastal program. As we
discuss resiliency, we must also consider economic resilience.
FEMA's Risk Rating 2.0 puts an unbearable financial burden
on homeowners. Under FEMA's new risk rating policy, we have
seen new home policies that were traditionally as low as $600
jump upwards of $8,500. These increases, coupled with the
highest inflation our nation has seen since 1982, is not
economically sustainable. We need more investment in flood
protection to mitigate risks, not policies that are going to
force Americans to abandon their homes. Federal investment in
projects like the Upper Barataria Risk Reduction System will
protect hundreds of thousands of people, property, and billions
of dollars of infrastructure vital to our national economy. The
Corps of Engineers chief's report says the benefits produced by
this project are cost-effective. However, on the other hand,
FEMA's flood insurance policies threaten to force people out of
the area. We have seen flood protection projects like these
work firsthand. I agree with the Section SPM.C.2.1 of the most
recent IPCC report which indicates that, ``Structural measures,
like levees, have reduced the loss of lives,'' and that
``enhancing natural water retention, such as by restoring
wetlands and rivers, can reduce flood risk.''
In closing, Southeast Louisiana is a critical part of our
national economy. Together, local, State, and Federal
governments can work to ensure we focus on making changes that
will complement the resilient people of Louisiana. I thank you
for your time, and I look forward to answering your questions.
[The statement of Mr. Jewell follows:]
Testimony by
Matthew Jewell
St. Charles Parish President
To the U.S. Congress and Select Committee on Climate Crisis
Confronting Climate Impacts: Federal Strategies for Equitable
Adaptation and Resilience
Wednesday, March 9, 2022
Good morning.
Chairwoman Castor, Ranking Member Graves, members of the Committee,
thank you for allowing me to appear in front of you today.
My name is Matthew Jewell, and I am the President of St. Charles
Parish, Louisiana.
South East Louisiana is an incredible place to live. Its natural
beauty, rich resources, and the economic engine that is the Mississippi
River provide the foundation of our $87 billion economy. However, what
truly makes Louisiana incredible is her people.
Louisianians are the most resilient people you will meet. For
centuries they have called this place home and have stood steadfast as
they have faced hurricanes, land loss, and now a global pandemic.
Through it all, Louisianians continue to rebuild, adapt, and overcome
despite those challenges.
LOUISIANA ECONOMIC IMPACT
South East Louisiana's Economy accounts for about 36% of the States
total GDP. Last year we exported over $105 billion of goods and
services from the region. The state ranks 3rd in the country for
natural gas production and 20% of the national oil refining capacity.
In St. Charles Parish alone, we have 14 industrial sites, ranging from
oil and gas, chemical and even a nuclear power plant which produces 1.1
gigawatts of carbon-free electricity, enough to power over 750,000
homes. Additionally, St. Charles Parish is home to Diamond Green
Diesel, the largest renewable diesel plant in North America and the
second-largest in the world. The fuel produced at this facility reduces
greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80% as compared to traditional diesel
fuel.
The region also benefits from the Port of South Lousiana, which is
the second largest port in the country by total tonnage and largest
port complex in the western hemisphere. Additionally the benefit of
muti-modal trasporation including all six class one railroads, multiple
interstate highways, and an international airport creates additional
competitive opportunities for this region.
RESILENCE
Lousiana is no stranger to hurricanes and tropical storms. Most
recently, Louisiana was devastated by Hurricane Ida, a strong category
four hurricane. Ida was the strongest storm to impact St. Charles
Parish and caused significant damage to four parishes leaving thousands
of residents without safe drinking water and power for weeks.
Days following the storm, St. Charles Parish was still flood
fighting in low-lying areas like Bayou Des Allemands where we worked
with the National Guard to prevent water from breaching the current
levee. Securing resources, including fuel, was challenging yet
essential to keeping vital services like our emergency operations
center and our water and sewer systems operational. Our communities
came together with our industry partners, picked up the pieces, and got
back to work.
Nevertheless, it is getting more difficult to be resilient due to
policies coming out of Washington, D.C.
Bureaucratic hurdles have made it increasingly difficult and costly
to construct flood protection and coastal restoration projects.
Additionally, new policies around FEMA's flood insurance program have
begun to put an economic constraint on people living in this region.
To reverse these impacts, we must begin by cutting the red tape on
coastal restoration projects designed to restore our wetlands to their
natural state, and time is of the essence. Since the 1930s, Louisiana
has lost more than 2,000 square miles of land, an area roughly the size
of Delaware. To solve this, we need an ``all the above'' approach to
coastal restoration which involves dredging/marsh restoration,
shoreline protection, and where they work, freshwater and sediment
diversions to restore the natural process which created the land where
we live.
SHORRE ACT
Passing legislation such as the bi-partisan SHORRE Act will allow
places like Louisiana to continue to advance critical storm protection
and coastal restoration priorities for our vulnerable communities and
habitats. The SHORRE Act puts into law that the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers shall prioritize coastal restoration and eliminate legal and
regulatory hurdles that have caused delays in implementing these
projects.
The SHORRE Act would also allow the Corps to provide leadership to
conduct the Lower Mississippi River Comprehensive Management Study. The
study would enable the Corps to use the best available science to
manage the river and use holistic approaches to enhance the resilience
and sustainability of natural systems.
Additionally, the bill would allow the Corps to work directly with
states, localities and other non-Federal sponsors to request project
designs that directly address problems such as extreme rainfall and
increasing sea level rise.
GOMESA (Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act)
Raising or eliminating the cap on GOMESA revenues would provide the
funding needed to make these projects a reality as it is currently the
only consistent funding for the state's coastal program.
The Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act (GOMESA) of 2006 created a
revenue-sharing model for oil- and gas-producing gulf states. Under the
act, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas receive a portion of
the revenue generated from oil and gas production offshore in the Gulf
of Mexico. The act also directs a portion of revenue to the Land and
Water Conservation Fund.
Under GOMESA, Gulf Producing States split 37.5% of qualified OCS
Revenues, and the Land and Water Conservation Fund gets 12.5%. The
Remaining 50% of GOMESA revenues remain with the federal government.
As it stands, the amount of funding that Louisiana uses to address
coastal needs, will not be enough to meet the scale of the challenges
our state faces. Making long-overdue improvements to GOMESA is needed.
The RISEE Act would establish several dedicated streams of funding
for coastal infrastructure and resiliency in order to protect
vulnerable communities and businesses most impacted by rising sea
levels and coastal erosion. The legislation creates a new revenue
sharing model from federal offshore wind revenue generation between the
federal government and coastal states beyond six nautical miles from a
state's coastline. The bill makes improvements to the National Oceans
and Coastal Security Fund (NOCSF), and also dedicates a portion of wind
energy revenues to the NOCSF. Finally, the bill reforms the Gulf of
Mexico Energy Security Act (GOMESA) to allow for a greater state share
of revenue from Gulf energy production.
RISK RATING 2.0
As we discuss resiliency, we must also consider economic
resilience. FEMA's Risk Rating 2.0 puts an unbearable financial burden
on homeowners. In 2012, St. Charles Parish was one of the epicenters of
the Biggert-Waters Act. Residents received unadfordable policies that
threatened to render them bankrupt and their homes worthless. Our
community banded together with our Congressional delegation which was
able to roll back the law. Now, under FEMA's new risk rating policy, we
have seen new home policies that were traditionally as low as $600 jump
upwards of $8500. These increases, coupled with the highest inflation
our nation has seen since 1982, are not economically sustainable.
According to FEMA's national rate analysis, 80% or more of policies
in Louisiana will see increases. The current rates we are seeing are
astronomical and will be detrimental to the future development of
communities.
Phase 1 of Risk Rating 2.0 began in October 2021 for new policies.
New policies affect people who are building or have recently completed
a new home construction. These new policy quotes have already caused
many residents to cancel new construction plans. Phase 2 will begin in
April 2022 and will affect existing policy holders. Policy increases
are capped at 18% and will end up at what FEMA has determined is an
actuarial rate.
UPPER BARATARIA BASIN RISK REDUCTION SYSTEM
We need more investment in flood protection to mitigate these
risks, not policies that will force Americans to abandon their homes.
Federal investment in projects like the Upper Barataria Basin Risk
Reduction System will protect hundreds of thousands of people,
property, and billions of dollars of infrastructure vital to our
national economy. The Corps of Engineer's Chief's report says the
benefits produced by this project are cost-effective. However, on the
other hand, FEMA's flood insurance policies threaten to price people
out of this area.
Last month, Lt. Gen. Spellmon, USACE Commanding General and 55th
Chief of Engineers approved the Chief's Report for the Upper Barataria
Basin (UBB) Louisiana Feasibility Study, paving the way for the project
to move forward.
The multi-year project protects 800 square miles from storm surge
for six parishes, including St. Charles Parish. The proposed structural
alignment consists of 30 miles of levees spanning from the Davis
Diversion to Highway 308 in Lafourche Parish, floodwalls, barge gates
and drainage structures.
The Upper Barataria Basin Study received authorization in 1998;
however funding was not made available to the project until 2018. The
$1.55 billion investment is anticipated to take three years to complete
once approved by Congress.
Thanks to the efforts of members of our Lousiaian delegation,
Congress signed a $2.5 billion Hurricane Ida relief bill that included
$8 million for the preconstruction engineering and design phase on the
UBB project, which can begin this year. For the first time ever, a
project with a signed Chief's report can begin the engineering process
prior to being fully funded by Congress which will expedite the
project.
We have seen these systems work firsthand. I agree with section
SPM.C.2.1 of the most recent IPCC report, which indicates that
``structural measures like levees have reduced loss of lives'' and that
``enhancing natural water retention such as by restoring wetlands and
rivers . . . can further reduce flood risk.''
In closing, Southeast Louisiana is a crucial part of our national
economy and is worth saving. Together, local, state, and federal
governments can work to ensure we focus on making changes that will
complement the resilient people of Louisiana. Thank you for your time.
I look forward to answering any of your questions.
Ms. Castor. Thank you very much. Next, Dr. Augustine, you
are recognized for 5 minutes for your testimony. Welcome.
Dr. Augustine. Is that better? Okay.
STATEMENT OF DR. LAUREN ALEXANDER AUGUSTINE
Dr. Augustine. Thank you for inviting me to testify today.
My name is Lauren Alexander Augustine, and I am the Executive
Director of the Gulf Research Program at the National Academies
of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The Academies have done
much work on climate issues that may be of use to this
committee, but today, the views I represent are my own.
So equity, resilience, and adaptation, these are important
and pressing issues of our time, and I am going to talk about
three things in the 4 minutes and 30 seconds left. I am going
to talk about the interconnected pieces that drive resilience,
what resilience is and how it works, and the fierce urgency of
now.
So the interconnected pieces are the environment, the
economy, and the people, just as Mr. Jewell just said. And on
the environment, the scientific consensus is unequivocal that
climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and planetary
health, but we can see some of these changes for ourselves.
Just over the past few years, storms have been getting more
frequent, more intense, more expensive. The hurricane season in
2020 was the most active in U.S. history. Hurricanes Michael in
2018 and Ida in 2021 are two of the five strongest storms in
U.S. history, and now 2017 is the most expensive hurricane
season in U.S. history, removing 2005 with Katrina, Rita, and
Wilma, and pushing that to second.
So these hurricanes mostly happened in the Gulf of Mexico
where oil and gas is an economic powerhouse for the region and
the country. And in all of my community resilience work, one
thing is true: a healthy economy is foundational for
resilience. So in 2019, almost all of the offshore oil and gas
in the U.S. came out of the Gulf of Mexico. More than half of
natural gas and about half of the nation's crude oil are
produced in that region. Even still, we see Louisiana and Texas
planning to greatly reduce their greenhouse emissions and
dependence on fossil fuel. In fact, Louisiana just published
its first climate action plan last month to achieve net zero
greenhouse gas emissions for the entire state economy. As these
changes occur, we must ensure that the economic engines remain
strong.
And then, there are the people. Climate change is a threat
and risk multiplier. This means that they magnify the
inequities that already exist in society on race, income,
language, mobility, such that those who are disadvantaged, they
see their disadvantages compound when disasters strike. There
are other vulnerabilities as well. A hundred million people
live on the coast on U.S. 60 in the path of hurricanes, and
people continue to move to the coasts. So we see these kind of
stack up in pricey ways. The five states around the Gulf of
Mexico--Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida--
they account for more than 60 percent of the disaster relief
funds in the whole country. So if we can find a workable
balance in this region, we can find a solution for the country.
So what is resilience? In my view, resilience is like a
zipper, and we have heard about the pieces here: the economy,
the people, the data. But when all of this is undone, they
don't do much good to anybody. It is when they are connected
that it turns into something useful, strong, and protective. So
the environment, the energy, are like teeth on a zipper, and
the top end is like the Federal resources and authorities, but
the base of the zipper, the part that gets it all started, it
is the local communities. And so the GRP, specifically, in
science, kind of more generally, are like the slider and the
pull that connects the local communities to the Federal
resources and vice versa.
So we did this in November 2021, just a couple months ago.
We organized what we called the serious game around Federal
investments on infrastructure, for more resilient
infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico. And we brought the local
Gulf experts together with Federal representatives to address
questions like bang for your buck on Federal investments on
infrastructure, and how do we work with Federal funds to make
sure private assets don't become public liabilities. It was a
really successful event, and we are going to run it again in
the Gulf region this spring because we need these examples of
effective connections across science, across communities, and
across the Federal agencies.
So in my last 30 seconds, let me just talk about this
fierce urgency of now. Dr. Solecki and everyone on the panel
thus far have talked about this window is closing, but I just
want to kind of emphasize that if it is closing, it means it is
still at least a little bit open. And so we can act and we can
act now, and the future generations are depending on what we do
today. They are going to know what we knew, when we knew it,
how we chose to act. And we could wait and take no action, or
we can start now to ensure equity and resilience for all. We
have strong science. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity
of an infusion of resources, and we have a collective
motivation to design communities, energy, economies that bend
towards resilience for all. We want, in other words, in 100
years, the people of that time to look back on us today and say
that we did the right thing.
I thank you very much for this opportunity to testify.
[The statement of Dr. Augustine follows:]
Dr. Lauren Alexander Augustine
Executive Director, Gulf Research Program, National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Written Testimony
House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
09 March 2022
Ms. Castor, Ranking Member Graves, and members of the Select
Committee:
Thank you for inviting me to testify today. My name is Lauren
Alexander Augustine, and I am the Executive Director of the Gulf
Research Program at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering,
and Medicine. The views I express today are my own and not the views of
the National Academies as an institution unless otherwise noted.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak about equity, resilience, and
adaptation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Working Group II Report warns that climate change will impact more
people in ``grave and mounting'' ways. So, the question before all of
us is how can we avoid ``grave and mounting'' outcomes and instead
achieve equity and resilience as we adapt to climate change.
There are three main elements to my testimony today that could help
reduce the costs of disasters and improve the safety and resilience of
the citizenry. First, I will talk about the components of equity and
resilience: environment, energy, economy, and people. None of these
components are static; and, they interact in ways that impact and are
impacted by each other. The second part is about integrating across
levels of government to connect communities to the knowledge and
resources they need. Finally, there is a fierce urgency of now. We have
a rapidly closing window of opportunity in which to reduce our planet-
warming emissions and make investments today that will create a more
prosperous, healthy, and equitable future for all Americans. Now is a
once-in-a-generation opportunity to bend the arc towards equity and
resilience.
Elements of Equity and Resilience
An effective and equitable resilience strategy will require managing
environmental, economic and demographic risks.
The environment and climate, our economy, and where and how our
populations live are basic elements that determine to what extent our
communities will be equitable, adaptive, and resilient.
On environment and climate transitions: the scientific evidence is
unequivocal that climate change is a threat to human well-being and
planetary health. The IPCC Working Group II Report on Impacts,
Adaptation and Vulnerability is clear and dire in its predictions as to
how climate change will be seen and felt. It is the latest in a series
of reports from scientific experts and academies around the world about
the impacts climate change will bring. We can already see some of these
changes. In 2017, the US saw its costliest hurricane season, pushing
2005--the infamous year with Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma--to
the second most costly; 2021 was the third costliest. In 2017,
Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria and the California wildfires
affected 47 million people, some 15% of the US population (Hill, 2021),
and those three hurricanes rank in the top 5 costliest hurricanes in
the United States history (NOAA, 2022).
Climate change means that we can expect to see a rise in the number
of billion-dollar disasters, as well as the likelihood of modest or
even smaller events occurring in rapid sequence, the aggregate of which
can create more damage, costs, and trauma than a single large event.
Compounding and sequential disasters will look like the 2020 hurricane
season, the most active Atlantic hurricane season ever in the United
States. In that season, a record 11 hurricanes made landfall in the
United States; a record five (5) named storms made landfall in the Gulf
of Mexico states; and ten storms underwent rapid intensification, a
process that requires extremely warm water (near or above 30 +C, 86
+F). Climate change also led to several anomalous events in 2021, like
the hurricane-force winds in April that capsized the Seacor Power lift
boat and killed 13 people; deadly tornadoes in December that killed 100
people in Kentucky; and Hurricane Ida--which devastated Grand Isle,
Louisiana--claimed 75 lives along its five-day path to Philadelphia and
New York City where it resulted in deadly flooding.
These are some of the dramatic events, the ones that capture
national attention and make headlines. There are also gradual
environmental changes in the form of sea-level rise, incremental
increases in ``nuisance flooding,'' coastal land loss, land subsidence,
heat waves, and, of course, the slow march of drought. Combined with
aging and deteriorating infrastructure, it is easy to understand the
dire warnings in the IPCC Working Group II Report cautioning that some
areas will become ``uninhabitable.''
On economic transitions: thanks to COVID-19, we all have a new
sense of how quickly societal fortunes can shift and what a ``new
normal'' can look like. One thing remains true: a healthy economic base
is one of the capitals of community resilience. In a primary driver of
our economy, the energy sector, key transitions are underway. These
include a shift from oil and gas production to exportation driven by
high domestic onshore production; a dramatic decline in production of
both oil and gas in shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico since 1996; a
significant increase in the production of oil in deeper waters in the
same time;\1\ and a transition to clean energy in electricity
generation and transportation. These transitions will manifest in how
and where we travel, and what the future workforce needs could be. For
example, major multinational energy companies, such as BP, Shell and
Total, have recently made commitments to achieve net-zero in their
internal emissions around mid-century and are shifting their core
businesses towards a more balanced portfolio that includes renewable
sources.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Burgess, G.L., K.K. Cross and E.G. Kazanis. 2020. Estimated Oil
and Gas Reserves Gulf of Mexico OCS Region, December 31, 2018. Bureau
of Ocean Energy Management, New Orleans, LA.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 2019, 99.3% of the oil and 99.5% of the natural gas produced in
the US offshore was from the Gulf of Mexico,\2\ and the region's energy
dominance will continue for the near future. Even still, major
hydrocarbon-producing states like Louisiana and Texas are beginning to
plan for a future with substantially less greenhouse gas emissions and
less economic dependence on fossil fuels. In fact, Louisiana published
its first Climate Action Plan this year that outlines major strides to
achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions for the entire state economy
(Climate Initiatives Task Force, 2022). It is clear that changes in
these and in other sectors will continue. The challenge is to ensure
these changes occur in ways that allow our economic bases to remain
robust--even dominant--as a foundation to resilience will require.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ U.S. Energy Information Agency. www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/
pet_crd_crpdn_adc_mbbl_m.htm Aaron O'Neill. https://www.statista.com/
statistics/269967/urbanization-in-the-united-states/ February 2, 2022
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On population transitions: Where communities are located, how land
is used and developed, and population density and demographics all
affect how extreme weather impacts people. Disasters do not
discriminate, but low-income populations, racial and ethnic minorities,
the elderly, renters, non-native English speakers, children, and those
with mobility challenges are disproportionately affected (NASEM 2019).
Climate change is a threat- and a risk-multiplier. In other words,
disasters magnify the inequities that exist in societies such that
those who are already at a disadvantage see their disadvantages
compound when disasters strike. Population density drives much of the
impact, losses, and costs of climate change, which is why urban areas
have the deepest pockets of vulnerability due to the high
concentrations of people exposed to a single event. More than 82% of
the US population lives in urban areas today, reflecting a gradual but
steady increase from the 73% urban population 20 years ago \3\. Nearly
100 million Americans live in coastal areas (including coasts of the
Gulf and Great Lakes), and 60 million of those people live in the areas
most vulnerable to hurricanes (US Census, 2019). Development patterns,
impervious surfaces, and building materials--these all influence
whether our built environment will help us or hurt us when the weather
turns extreme in terms of flooding, heat, and wind. In short, the ways
and places in which we live are likely to continue to impact and be
impacted by our changing environment (NOAA, 2021).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Aaron O'Neill. https://www.statista.com/statistics/269967/
urbanization-in-the-united-states/02 February 2022
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thus, the mix of people, economy, and the environment shape the
changes coming our way. At the Gulf Research Program, we seek to find
balance and alignment across the diverse priorities and challenges of
the environment, energy, and the people of the Gulf Region under
conditions of change and uncertainty. The five states around the Gulf
of Mexico--Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida--account
for more than 60% of the federal disaster relief fund expenditures. If
we can find a workable balance in this region across energy, the
economy, the environment, and people, this region could serve as a
model for other parts of the country.
Resilience is Like a Zipper
An integrating approach that works across levels of government to
connect communities to the knowledge and resources they need is
essential.
Resilience is many things: a spring (physics), a curve (Madni et
al, 2020), even a set of community assets (NASEM 2019). I think of
resilience like a zipper: there are many dimensions and pieces to it
(the teeth) that when undone do not do anyone much good. But together,
it connects distant ends with lots of steps and pieces in between them
into something useful, strong, and protective.
One end of this zipper is the officials and communities at the
local level and the other end is the national guidance and federal
resources. Resilience emerges in the connecting of these ends when
local communities are able to harness support from all levels of
government--under a mix of policies and practices--to plan and prepare
for, absorb, respond to, and recover from disasters and adapt to new
conditions (NASEM 2012). The Stafford Act provides guidance,
authorities, and resources for essential support functions in
responding to a disaster, but this focus on post-disaster funding may
inadvertently contribute to the chronic underfunding and inadequate
investments in local and state authorities for preparedness and
adaptation (Hill, 2022). So, another function of the zipper is to
connect post-disaster resources with those related to planning,
mitigation, and adaptation.
The Gulf of Mexico region provides excellent examples for how this
kind of resilience zipper can work. The Gulf Research Program (GRP) was
created with an endowment from the criminal penalties from the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and our charge is to use science,
engineering, and medicine to enhance offshore energy safety,
environmental protection, and community health and resilience to
benefit the people of the Gulf. Our role is like the slider and the
pull on a zipper; the environment, energy, and climate dimensions, as
well as the data and resources associated with them, are like the
teeth; the top end has the federal resources and authorities; and the
base and the foundation of the zipper, is the local communities. The
GRP, specifically, and science, more generally, can help interpret and
translate data; connect the federal family of resources with local
priorities; and build capacity in the region for local solutions to
address the issues related to offshore energy, the environment, and the
people.
Data and information. If the IPCC Working Group II Report tells us
anything, it is that a strong scientific evidence base supports their
dire warnings and predictions. Sometimes, it is hard to know what to do
with data in the contexts of smaller geographies, regional dynamics, or
resource-constrained decision making. Organizations like the GRP can be
very helpful in working with local entities to interpret, translate,
and apply data. Let's take sea-level rise in the Gulf of Mexico region:
later this century, changes in sea level relative to the land will be a
significant factor affecting coastal ecosystems and communities in the
Gulf. More reliable projections of relative sea-level rise are needed
for natural-resource management, restoration, and ensuring the
resilience of Gulf communities (NASEM 2018). The GRP works at the
regional scale to interpret, translate, and describe sea level
variation and rise specifically within the Gulf of Mexico. Ultimately,
the GRP's work will apply this understanding to more reliable forecast
models and projections, making the science and data more relevant and
useful to local and regional decision makers.
Federal agencies as a resource. The federal agencies provide
structure, guidance, and yes, sometimes limitations, to local
activities related to building equity and resilience. The GRP will
connect and facilitate the best and the most helpful elements of
federal resources to local resilience efforts. For example, through the
GRP regional sea-level rise work, we require our partners to work with
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Sea Level
Change Team or NOAA's Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and
Services (CO-OPS) to capitalize on those federal programs' deep
datasets, responsibilities, and institutional knowledge for more
accurate regional sea level predictions. To ensure that the base of the
zipper is included, the GRP further requires these models, projections,
and information products to be useful to end-users, including decision-
makers, natural-resource managers, and state and local entities. Other
federal agencies are also resources to the Gulf, given the billions of
dollars the region receives in disaster funds each year, plus the
substantial flood protection and navigation infrastructure in the
region. In November 2021, the same day President Biden signed the
Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act into law, the GRP
held a ``serious game'' workshop on federal infrastructure investments
in the Gulf of Mexico region for Gulf-based experts and federal
agencies. It was viewed as highly successful, and we plan to rerun the
``serious game'' in the Gulf region this spring.
The more we all can connect the resources and authorities of the
federal agencies with the needs, expertise, and capacity at the
regional and local scales, the easier it will be to bend the climate
arc toward equity and resilience.
The Fierce Urgency of Now
We have a window of opportunity to make investments today that will
create a more prosperous, healthy, and equitable future for all
Americans.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of the ``fierce urgency of now''
in his famous ``I Have a Dream'' speech; in his Nobel Peace Prize
acceptance speech he added, ``. . . Our very survival depends on our
ability to . . . adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face
the challenge of change.'' When we talk about climate, equity and
resilience, Dr. King's words from a generation ago ring prophetic now.
The climate is changing, and the future looks grim and the challenges
are mounting. The IPCC report warns that our window of time to act is
closing, but it is still open. The time to act is now. The generations
of the future depend on our actions today, and they will know what we
knew, when we knew it, and how we chose to act.
The good thing is that we are positioned to start this work: we
have information, resources, and motivation to make sure we avoid the
worst of the predicted changes. The scientific community has generated
rich data that describe and explain how physical and natural
environments are changing, economic and other forces that drive those
changes, and consequences of those changes. Models exist to help us
understand how dynamics shift in future scenarios under different
conditions. Social scientists have quantified ways that social inequity
is entrenched in many of our laws, policies, and allocation of
resources. They have given voice and an evidence base to the acute
vulnerabilities faced by the elderly, poor, ethnic and racial
minorities, and disenfranchised people in communities around the
country and around the world. Federal, state, and local governments are
embarking on long and sometimes uncomfortable investigations into how
their policies affect people unevenly, as some policies can benefit one
set of people, have no effect some, and can even bring harm to others.
Reports like the IPCC Working Group II Report, the National Academies'
reports on Urban Flooding (NASEM 2019) or Community Resilience (NASEM
2019), and numerous peer reviewed journal articles help frame these
issues in a holistic, connected way. We cannot say we do not know.
The key is to start with the fierce urgency of now. The Gulf region
is a good place to start. The Gulf of Mexico region faces acute and
costly risks, sea-level rise, climate change that produces more intense
hurricanes, and aging or abandoned infrastructure both on- and off-
shore. The communities most at risk are those that are least equipped
to withstand the current and future challenges they face. With the
bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, we have the promise
of a once-in-a-generation infusion of funds to improve critical
infrastructure. These funds are designed to reach communities through
existing federal programs, layered with the Justice40 Initiative to
ensure that 40 percent of these funds benefit disadvantaged communities
that have been historically marginalized \4\. Examples of funds that
could be used to make a real difference in how communities approach
climate risks include: HUD's Community Development Block Grants (CDBG)
series; FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grants and Building Resilient
Infrastructure and Communities programs; Army Corps of Engineers'
Climate Preparedness; NOAA's coastal resilience programs, and many
others. The GRP aims to work in a small number of pilot communities
around the Gulf region to connect the local capacity, expertise, and
priorities; scientific information; and federal resources to build
equitable and resilient infrastructure for communities to withstand and
thrive in the face of climate change. GRP brings expertise in physical
sciences, engineering, environment, health, and social justice and acts
as a neutral convener. As such, we engage communities, facilitate
plans, and work with federal agencies and local communities together to
build resilience, support the economy, reduce inequities to withstand
expected effects from climate change.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ On January 27, 2021, President Biden signed Executive Order
(EO) 14008, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, creating
the government-wide Justice40 Initiative.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The past few years have previewed what living with climate change
could be, and it portends a difficult and expensive future. Billion
dollar price tags have accompanied fires in the west, a crippling ice
storm in Texas, deadly heat in the Pacific Northwest, and, of course,
record hurricane seasons, all while the world was under the vice-grip
of COVID-19. One option: we could wait to take action, or we could
start now. We can use our 2022 situated knowledge to create smart
approaches that bend our future arc towards equity and resilience.
Developing a coherent and robust response to the challenges and threats
posed by climate change is within our grasp. The work of this committee
demonstrates that there is necessary common ground for constructive
action to effectively prepare for an uncertain future. We can use the
best science and predictions to design infrastructure, energy options,
and development for the future so that, in the words of General Thomas
Bostick, 53rd Chief of Engineers of the USACE, ``in 100 years, people
will look back on what we did today, and say we did the right thing.''
I thank you again for this opportunity to appear before you and all
of the members of the Committee today on this panel.
References
Hill, Alice C. 2021. The Fight for Climate After COVID-19. Oxford
University Press.
Madni, Azad & Erwin, & Sievers, Michael. (2020). Constructing
Models for Systems Resilience: Challenges, Concepts, and Formal
Methods. Systems. 8. 3. 10.3390/systems8010003.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2012.
Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative. Washington, DC: The
National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/13457.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018.
Understanding the Long-Term Evolution of the Coupled Natural-Human
Coastal System: The Future of the U.S. Gulf Coast. Washington, DC: The
National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25108.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019.
Building and Measuring Community Resilience: Actions for Communities
and the Gulf Research
Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
https://doi.org/10.17226/25383.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019.
Framing the Challenge of Urban Flooding in the United States.
Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/
25381
Monica Vidill, March 7, 2018. https://blogs.worldbank.org/
sustainablecities/why-engaging-women-and-children-disaster-risk-
management-matters-and-how-it-makes-difference
Ms. Castor. Thank you very much. Now we will move to member
questions. I will recognize myself for 5 minutes for the first
round. Thank you all for your outstanding testimony.
Dr. Augustine, you are right to highlight what the IPCC,
the world's top scientists, recently said, and that last report
was eye opening, that there is a rapidly closing window for us
to act. And I love what you highlighted, that there are such
knowledgeable people all across the country in communities that
are ready to look for the best bang for the buck. We don't have
unlimited resources to do this. We have got to be smart and
targeted, and right now, climate and adaptation planning across
the country is done on an ad hoc basis. It is very inefficient,
as Dr. Hansen has said and has given us some good
recommendations. I traveled to Norfolk at the invitation of
Congresswoman Elaine Luria, and Don McEachin, and Bobby Scott,
and they are kind of leading the way on their community
planning. In the Tampa Bay area at home, we are. I have seen
Miami-Dade, but there are so many communities that do not have
the resources. They may not have even a Chief of Police, and
they are the ones that really need help.
So let me start with Dr. Hansen and then I will go back to
Dr. Augustine. We have put in some money in the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law for FEMA Building Resilient Communities, but
we don't want to be in emergency response mode. We want to be
proactive up front. What is the proper structure, what agencies
need to be involved, and then how do we empower communities
across the country? This cannot be top down. It has got to be
from the bottom up, listening to folks like Mr. Jewell and
other local officials and experts, on how we plan to adapt.
What do you say, Dr. Hansen?
Dr. Hansen. Thank you. This really needs to be an across
government approach. Every agency needs to be requiring that
for Federal dollars to be spent, that the climate risk was
evaluated and the spending that is taking place is, in fact,
not dramatically vulnerable to climate change. But that also is
going to require local planning that has a climate lens as
well. So we absolutely don't want it to come to FEMA having to
do repairs. Fortunately, FEMA now has a different course of
action than it used to. Previously, FEMA would require that you
build back in the same location, the same way, in order to get
those funds. We need to make sure that everything that we are
doing from here forward is climate smart, and that it is built
to last. So that has to be literally across the board, every
agency, everything they are doing.
Ms. Castor. Okay. Dr. Augustine, thank you for your work in
the wake of the worst environmental, economic catastrophe, the
Deepwater Horizon. I still remember it very well. Even though
oil didn't wash up on the coast of Florida in my neck of the
woods, boy, it devastated our economy, and we are still living
with the environmental impacts as well. So climate change is
similar. It is out there. It is causing horrendous damage,
raising costs. We know we have to reduce our reliance on fossil
fuels over time, but we would have to adapt as well. What is
going on at the local level? What do you recommend to us to
empower local communities so that we do have that grassroots
approach that they are making the decisions on when funding
comes down to adapt? How do we make sure that they are kind of
leading the way while Federal resources flow from agencies?
Dr. Augustine. I think this is a great question, and I
would say that the appetite is very strong at the local level.
It is amazing. Public servants, like Mr. Jewell and others at
this local level, really want better information. They want
actionable information. They want me and my science community
to provide information that they can use, that can be
understood, that relates to where they live. Not to put words
in your mouth, but this is what we hear. And so one of the
things that comes to mind is that we do start at that local
level to the degree that we can, and, in my experience, there
are many communities that are crying out for help. They want
some people to help them interpret data, translate information
that seems quantitative or even confusing, and they don't know
what to do with it.
So with that, I can go back to my little zipper analogy
because there are a lot of Federal resources, most that come
after a disaster. You know, the really long and strong money
that comes after a disaster but if we could find ways to bring
in the pre-disaster options, you know, and it crosses the
Federal agencies, some in NOAA, some in HUD, some in DHS. I
mean, they are kind of all over the place, but there are
abilities to get that mitigation money, that adaptation money,
and link that with the post-disaster recovery and relief money.
Ms. Castor. Thank you. Mr. Graves, you are recognized for 5
minutes. Oh, excuse me. Mr. Carter, good morning. You are
recognized.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Madam Chair, and let me begin, Madam
Chair, by saying that I echo the comments that were made by the
Ranking Member earlier today. And I can't help but say that
what we are going through in this country right now is totally
ridiculous, and the Ranking Member was right. What has it
resulted in, this failed policy of this Administration? Higher
prices, higher emissions, and energy insecurity. All of this
did not have to happen. All of this could have been avoided.
So, again, I just want to say that I echo the comments of the
Ranking Member and thank him for those comments earlier.
President Jewell, two things I want to disclose before I
start. First of all, I was a mayor in another life. I served at
local level, I served the state level, now I serve at the
Federal level, so I know exactly what you are experiencing
here. Secondly, and most importantly, two of the most precious
people in my life live in Jefferson Parish in Metairie, a 1-
year old and a 3-year old, two granddaughters there, so this is
very important to me. They just bought a new house in Metairie,
and I know exactly what you are talking about when you are
talking about the price of flood insurance. So I just want to
make sure you understand where I am coming from here.
You talk about Risk Rating 2.0 and how it will put an
unbearable financial burden on homeowners and actually cost up
to, I believe it is $7,000, maybe even $8,500. Can you just
expand on that a little bit more?
Mr. Jewell. Yeah. Thank you, Congressman Carter, for that
question, and let me just say that St. Charles Parish borders
Jefferson Parish. We are about a 10-minute drive from Metairie.
And what is interesting that we are seeing around these new
policies, not just in St. Charles Parish but in Jefferson
Parish where they are actually protected by the HSRR System,
which is the Hurricane Storm Risk Reduction System that was
designed by the Corps of Engineers. It is a 100-year storm
protection system. Under the old NFIP that played a very big
role under how much you paid for flood insurance, if you are
protected from that 100-year storm, you don't have that same
risk. And what we are seeing now is that policies in St.
Charles, policies in Jefferson, or even behind that Risk
Reduction System, are seeing these huge hikes. And what we are
seeing is that for new home policies, so these policies that
were traditionally maybe in X zone, and for members who don't
know, an X zone is an area on a flood map that is considered to
have very little to no flooding risk. Usually it means you have
a higher elevation. We are seeing even policies in those areas
that were around $500 under the old NFIP system, now as high as
$3,500, so a huge jump.
And what happens is for people who are planning to build a
house, myself included, you can't plan for this change, and you
end up paying tens of thousands of dollars just in insurance,
and it becomes unaffordable. So we really would love for FEMA
to come back to the table and work with us on this issue
because right now, this policy is threatening to stop further
expansion in this region, and for existing policies, they are
going to start going up.
Mr. Carter. So basically, what you are talking about is the
difficulty in navigating the Federal Government and agencies
within the Federal Government.
Mr. Jewell. Yes. You know, it is really incredibly hard to
navigate the Federal Government because they are looking at
things through different lenses. I mentioned in my testimony
the paradox between FEMA and the Corps of Engineers. I
mentioned a $1.5 billion levee project called the Upper
Barataria Risk Reduction System, and on one hand, the Corps is
saying that this $1.5 billion investment is worth it. It
actually has a return on investment in 50 years at $30 million
dollars a year. But on the other hand, FEMA is basically saying
there is going to be nobody to protect because we are going to
force people out of this area. So it is incredibly hard not
only to navigate just the permitting and the environmental
regulations around these projects but also to have FEMA on top
of that making unaffordable policies on our residents.
Mr. Carter. Okay. Real quick. I got about 1 minute left. In
your testimony, also you mentioned nuclear technology in St.
Charles Parish. And in my home state of Georgia, we are working
to get Plant Vogtle reactors, the only two reactors currently
under construction in the United States right now, we are
working to get them up and running. Can you talk about the
benefits of nuclear energy as part of an overall strategy for a
clean energy future?
Mr. Jewell. Yes. So, you know, nuclear has to be a part of
our energy mix. In my parish, we have the Waterford 3 Nuclear
Power Plant. Right next door, you have Waterford 1 and 2, which
are natural gas plants. So those intermittent sources come in
and help that baseload source in times of high demand. So, just
to put it in perspective, and I just find this stat
fascinating--one uranium fuel pellet, which is the size of a
pencil eraser, is enough to replace 1 ton of coal. It has the
same energy capacity as one 1 ton of coal, 149 gallons of oil,
or 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas. So Waterford 3 is in my
parish, and it produces 1.1 megawatts of carbon free
electricity, again, enough to power 750,000 homes. So, if we
want to reach our climate goals, I am fine, and I think
everybody in the country is fine, having all the renewable
intermittent sources, but you need that baseload generation,
that carbon free baseload generation of nuclear to have a
robust energy economy.
Mr. Carter. Thank you very much, and I will yield back. But
thank you, and I am pulling for you.
Ms. Castor. Next up, Congresswoman Bonamici, you are
recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much, Ms. Castor. Thank you to
all of our witnesses. We appreciate your testimony and your
expertise. I want to start by noting, especially in response to
some of Dr. Augustine's testimony, that yesterday in the
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, we heard from
NOAA, Department of Energy, NASA, and the GAO specifically
about their adaptation and resilience strategies, including
their interagency collaboration and the use of climate data in
agency planning, implementation, and outreach. And I just want
to put that on the record because there is a lot of connection
with what we are talking about today.
And, Dr. Hansen, I wanted to mention that when we do this
work, we think about our own children, but also future
generations. My son, who is now a 33, was born 2 months after
James Hansen--I don't know if you're related--then with NASA,
testified on the Hill, raising the alarm about Anthropogenic
Climate Change. That was in 1988, and he raised that alarm back
then. So my first question: the most recent IPCC report makes
it clear that we need immediate and significantly bolder and
more effective efforts to help communities respond to the
climate crisis. Successful adaptation efforts need to be region
specific while also incorporating the lessons learned at the
state, local, Federal, and international levels, and
information sharing is really essential.
So, Dr. Augustine, how can Congress leverage Federal
resources and knowledge to support what communities on the
ground need when it comes to adaptation and climate resilient
development?
Dr. Augustine. Well, thank you for that question, and there
are some options for Congress to be helpful here. I think
there's a role the local levels are looking for some
appropriations to get started. I think that there is a lot of
interest in getting Federal funds and getting applications and
proposals written, but, in some cases, the capacity is missing.
And so it is very enlightening to see the Justice40 Initiative
come through, that some of this money is targeted to the
historically marginalized communities. But there is a need for
some, I would call it almost, like, startup money. Not every
community can afford the big consulting firms to get a really
good proposal in. And so, if there are some funds that are made
available for communities to be able to build that capacity and
connect their needs with some of the big Federal resources that
are available, I think that would be a really big start.
Ms. Bonamici. That is a great suggestion. Thank you.
Dr. Augustine. Yeah, and I think that the last thing is
just to really encourage some sort of coordination across these
Federal programs. I mean, like you mentioned there is NOAA and
NASA.
Ms. Bonamici. Great. Great.
Dr. Augustine. And there are all these pieces, and it can
be confusing and overwhelming because of that.
Ms. Bonamici. Appreciate that, and I don't want to cut you
off, but I want to try to get another question in.
Dr. Augustine. Yes.
Ms. Bonamici. And this is going to be for Dr. Solecki. The
populations hardest hit by the climate crisis and with greatest
adaptation challenges are those that have experienced the
greatest marginalization. And we know climate change symptoms,
such as extreme heat and drought, disproportionately hurt lower
income communities, and primarily black and brown communities.
So, Dr. Solecki, you talked about maladaptation in your
testimony. If adaptive planning does not account for
inequities, how can that lead to maladaptation? And I want to
note that in Portland last year, it was 116 degrees, so in
answering this question, please use extreme heat as a starting
point.
Dr. Solecki. Sure. Well, thank you for the question. The
immediate response goes back to a comment made earlier about
climate change being a risk multiplier. So, in these
communities, marginalized or more vulnerable communities, you
know, the risk of climate change often concatenates with other
risks that we see. And in truth, there is a perception that,
you know, there are multiple sort of questions and threats sort
of facing these communities. So, with respect to, you know,
maladaptation, oftentimes we find, you know, adaptive
strategies, like urban greening and sort of enhancing the
quality of life in cities, in some cases lead to a green
gentrification, or sometimes defined as ``climate
gentrification'' where communities, neighborhoods become more
desirable and, in turn, higher rents, higher rates, and then
dislocation. So this is just, you know, one example that you
see in with respect to maladaptation and heat mitigation.
Ms. Bonamici. That is very helpful, and it looks like I am
just about out of time, so I yield back. Thank you, Madam
Chair.
Ms. Castor. Thank you. At this point, due to votes on the
floor, we are going to take a quick recess for 10 minutes so
folks can vote on this motion to adjourn. Then we are going to
come back and try to keep going before the next round of votes.
[Recess.]
Ms. Castor. The committee will come back to order.
At this time, I will recognize the Ranking Member for 5
minutes for questions.
Mr. Graves. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I want to
respond to your comment earlier about the Russian oil ban. So
you are right, there is a bill on the floor. I think I saw the
text on it at 1:30 a.m. It is 17 pages. There are about
probably 5,000 pages of text that was dropped last night at
1:30 a.m. that we are going to be voting on today that
appropriates approximately a gazillion dollars that no one has
read. So give or take a little bit. So let's talk about those
two things real quick.
Number one, on the Russian oil ban. I have proposed
amendments to bills in the Transportation Committee and the
Natural Resources Committee to ban Russian oil now for about 3
years, and every single Democrat on the committee has opposed
that legislation. So we are going to shut it down now. We are
going to ban Russian oil now because it is politically popular,
because what happened was, rather than producing energy
domestically, we instead, last year, nearly tripled the
importation of Russian crude oil into the United States--nearly
tripled it--which then funded, effectively, Putin's aggression
in Ukraine. The last time that Putin invaded Ukraine was
Crimea. That was back when we were similarly in a Democrat
Administration, and we were similarly dependent upon Russian
oil at a peak level. There is a trend there, Madam Chair.
So what we going to do now is we are going to ban it, but
we are going to ban it absent any type of strategy to backfill.
For the people that don't do this on a daily basis, Russian oil
is a heavier oil. You can't take light oil and send it to a
heavy refinery. You can't make some of the products that you
make from heavy oil with light oil. There is no backfill
strategy. So, yes, prices are going to go up. Yes, this was
totally, totally preventable, and it is a result of failed or
really just no energy strategy. Now, let's go over to the
5,000-page appropriations bill.
President Jewell, you represent St. Charles Parish, ground
zero for some of the incredible devastation from Hurricane Ida.
Let me see if I remember this right. So, on September 30th, we
appropriated funds for 2021 disasters, including Hurricane Ida,
about a month after the storm. To date--to date--not one penny
of the funds has even been allocated, which simply announces
how much of it is going to go to Louisiana for Hurricane Ida.
After they announced the allocation, they then have to do a
Federal Register notice that sits out there. You then have to
do an action plan on how you are going to spend the funds. The
action plan has to be considered and reviewed. Then you can
potentially start allocating funds.
Let me put it in perspective. In the 2016 flood disaster, I
think $1.7 billion was appropriated over 5 years ago. To date,
of $1.7 billion, less than $700 million of it has been
allocated to flood victims. So, the bill, the 5,000 pages
includes zero additional funds for Hurricane Ida victims, our
Democrat governor of Louisiana asked for approximately $3
billion in funds. How does that make you feel that we are
spending money on Haiti, we are giving funds to Ukraine,
humanitarian aid, which I support, but we are giving nothing to
the people that you represent?
Mr. Jewell. Well, thank you, Congressman. It is incredibly
disappointing to hear that. We definitely support the funding
going towards Ukraine, but it is incredibly important since we
are still in the midst of recovery in Louisiana, we still have
people living in temporary housing, people still actively
trying to fix their homes, that we get the funding necessary to
rebuild and to build back in a way that is going to be a little
bit more resilient than what we have seen in the past. And to
give you an example, we still have hospitals that have
temporary roofs on them. We still have government buildings in
my parish and other parishes that have temporary fixes and are
waiting to fully recover.
Mr. Graves. Yep. And you and I met with President Biden.
And I want to be clear, I appreciate the President working with
us on the first round of funding in terms of helping us get it
in the appropriations bill. But no funds have been actually
allocated or made available to the people that you represent.
So this hearing is about resilience. St. Charles Parish is in
the coastal zone, under the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act,
that parish is eligible for GOMESA aid, for aid that is tied
directly to energy production. When this Administration refuses
to do a lease sale, despite court orders at one point refused
to do a lease sale for additional offshore energy, which I will
reiterate, lowest emissions associated with domestic
production, your parish doesn't get money for GOMESA. What do
you use those funds for? What are you required to use GOMESA
funds for under the state's constitution?
Mr. Jewell. Yeah. Under the state's constitution, GOMESA
funds have to go towards things like flood protection and
coastal restoration, which are impacted by things like climate
change. And right now, St. Charles Parish is actually
leveraging the dollars that we do get to get a bond and work on
projects that are going to protect our residents.
Mr. Graves. So said another way, the lack of energy
production, the lack of following the law and doing new lease
sales, it makes your parish more vulnerable at a time when they
are trying to recover.
Mr. Jewell. Right.
Mr. Graves. Fascinating. Madam Chair, I am out of time, but
I think it is really important to note the relationships there.
I want to thank President Jewell, and I do have some questions
for the record for you on Risk Rating 2.0 and the implications
of your constituents. Thank you for your leadership efforts in
fighting that flawed policy.
Mr. Jewell. Thank you.
Ms. Castor. Next up, Representative Casten, you are
recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Casten. Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, I often find
myself trying to imagine a situation where every American woke
up every morning and got hit in the head with a hammer, and if
that happened, we would probably think, you know, we should
probably stop hitting people in the head with hammers.
Alternatively, we could, I don't know, spend a lot of money to
invest in helmet technology. And, President Jewell, you are
dealing with the consequences of climate change and the helmets
from levees, to flood insurance, and all the things you have to
grapple with. And I have a lot of sympathy with my friend Mr.
Graves because he represents a district where the economy
depends on hammer manufacturing. That is really hard, and we
have got to a grapple with that, but I want to focus on the
helmet because that was the subject of your testimony.
The IPCC report that recently came out described climate
change as, I think they said, ``The rate of climate change is
outpacing our ability to adapt.'' The NOAA report that just
came out said that we have got 2 feet of sea level rise on the
Gulf Coast by 2050. I am just curious, you sitting there as the
president of your parish, how many of the homes in your parish
are within 2 feet of sea level?
Mr. Jewell. I don't have that number off the top of my
head, but we do have a fair number of homes that are close to
sea level or just above.
Mr. Casten. Okay. So if I was to move to St. Charles Parish
tomorrow and try to get a 30-year mortgage, because by 2050,
that mortgage isn't going to be fully paid off, could I get a
30-year mortgage if I was to move to St. Charles Parish?
Mr. Jewell. You absolutely would be able to get a 30-year
mortgage, but you probably wouldn't be able to afford your
flood insurance.
Mr. Casten. Okay. And who is taking the risk of that
mortgage, because if you know it is going to be underwater in
30 years, who is holding that paper?
Mr. Jewell. The banks are.
Mr. Casten. Fannie and Freddie or the commercial banks?
Mr. Jewell. Commercial banks. I mean, there is still active
lending going on in St. Charles Parish, in coastal Louisiana
because we have made such investments, like in levees and flood
protection, to protect us. But where we are seeing a lot of the
inaction are on some of the big coastal restoration projects
because of the hurdles that we have to jump through.
Mr. Casten. Do you carry much debt in your parish?
Mr. Jewell. Do I carry much debt? No.
Mr. Casten. Yeah. Now, if you wanted to go out and get
long-term paper, you know, if you have got a road you need to
build where the cost of recovering that bond is going to get
beyond 30 years, can you get that debt?
Mr. Jewell. Absolutely.
Mr. Casten. What is happening there?
Mr. Jewell. No, absolutely. We just did a bond against our
GOMESA revenues, which is, I think, a 30-year payment as well.
But, again, that money is going into things like coastal
restoration, flood protection, and things like that.
Mr. Casten. Okay. Well, there was a CFTC report that came
out under the Trump Administration last year that looked at how
financial risk was rippling through our financial sector, and
they echoed your point. The commercial banks are still writing
those mortgages, but they are increasingly putting those on to
Fannie and Freddie. When I asked Chairman Powell last week if
Fannie and Freddie were changing their risk profiles, in
response to that, he said, no, but they should. I followed up
by saying, okay, I spent 20 years in the energy industry. I
built a lot of projects, raised a lot of money. Everything I
know about finances, it depends on informational asymmetry, you
know, the old joke that if you sit at a poker table and you
look around and you can't spot the fish, you had better leave
the poker table because you are the fish. And what that CFTC
report found was that the more likely you are to be in a flood
prone region, the more likely the banks are to offload that
risk on to Fannie and Freddie.
So our failure to remove the hammer is causing the
taxpayers to invest more and more in helmets, right? And the
fear I have, and I think it goes to what all our witnesses are
talking about, is that if we don't think about taking away the
hammers, right, if we only focus on the helmets, we simply
don't have enough money, right? And at some point, we are going
to have horrible conversations, and the people who are going to
lose are going to be the fish, right? The financial sector is
going to move, and we have got to focus on getting rid of those
hammers, and I understand that pain.
From a political perspective, with the time we have left,
help us understand what happens to you if you don't get the
money to invest in those helmets, if you have no choice but to
tell people, all I can do is abandon the provision of this
road, I can't rebuild that school, we simply can't protect that
home. What happens to you politically?
Mr. Jewell. Well, I think it is important to know that
Louisiana has a plan, and that is very important. We have a
coastal master plan that is a 50-year plan that is rooted in
science to rebuild our coast. What we need is, A, investment in
coastal restoration projects, which right now comes from the
funding of GOMESA, those outer continental shelf revenues. That
is the only consistent funding source for our coastal plan, so
an investment in that. And things like the RISEE Act will
increase that GOMESA revenue share, and they will also give us
a portion of offshore wind lease sales when that becomes viable
in the Gulf of Mexico, so having that funding source is what we
need. We need to increase that funding source, but we also need
to eliminate those regulatory hurdles so that we can start
doing these projects now because we are losing over a football
field of land every hour.
Mr. Casten. Well, I thank you for that. I am out of time,
but when I look at the sea level rise that we know is coming,
most of Louisiana south of I-10 is under water. And I want to
make sure that in our next redistricting cycle, my friend, Mr.
Graves, is still here and is not sitting there saying that my
district is now under water. I yield back.
Mr. Graves. The rest of us, too.
Ms. Castor. And I have also been concerned with changes in
flood insurance. There is a lot of uncertainty, but the NFIP
numbers the Ranking Member cited are not exactly accurate. No
policies will increase in 1 year at the rates that he stated
from $560 to $7,000 or $9,000 in 1 year because there are caps
in the law that prevent these big jumps in cost. I am very
concerned. I have a coastal district, so we checked it out. The
new price methodology in Risk Rating 2.0 implemented by FEMA
and NFIB would help decrease flood insurance premiums because
it is based on the risk per property rather than by zone, so it
makes for more equitable flood insurance and will prevent
especially lower income households from overpaying.
Within my district, 76 percent of policyholder premiums
would actually decrease or remain stable under the new Risk
Rating 2.0. In Ranking Member Graves' district, the information
we have is that 92.5 percent of policyholder premiums would
decrease or remain stable under Risk Rating 2.0, with estimated
decreases in premiums totaling over $13 million for single
family households. And the source is the FEMA NFIP data by Pew
and Reinsurance Association of America.
Mr. Graves. Will the gentlelady yield?
Ms. Castor. I will yield for a second.
Mr. Graves. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I want to
be very clear. A preferred risk policy, right now you can pay
between $500 and $600 a year. As of October 1st, for any new
policies, a new purchase or a new policy, if you have a home
that right now is paying $560 and it is sold, the new purchaser
will go to the numbers I cited. You are correct that as of
April 1st, under the second phase of the program, that is when
existing policy increases begin moving up, and, yes, there is a
rate cap of 18 percent a year. You are going to continue moving
toward that higher number. But just to be clear, my statement
was entirely correct because, number one, those who are subject
to the 18 percent cap, on April 1st, they are going to move to
that $7,000, $9,000 premium. Secondly, those who had a
purchase, or a new policy, they will immediately jump to the
new figure. There is not a rate cap per year. I yield back.
Ms. Castor. Next up, we are going to go to Mr. Huffman. You
are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Huffman. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, look, before I get
into my questions, let me just say that my colleague from
Louisiana is a good person. He is a good member of Congress. I
consider him a friend. But it is hard to listen to this well
traveled speech he has been giving on energy, and Putin, and
related matters, and it is not because he is right. It is
because he is wrong. And strong and wrong is still wrong.
Sanctimonious and wrong is still wrong.
Extreme fossil fuel dependency is how we got into this
mess, both the climate crisis, and Putin's war, and a whole
bunch of wars before that. Doubling down on decades of new
fossil fuel dependency cannot be the answer. And I agree with
my colleague that simply pivoting to petro-fascists in
Venezuela or Iran makes no sense. We can at least agree on
that, but neither does locking in decades of new fossil fuel
dependency on the United States and other oil producers at a
time when we have a climate crisis, and when that response is
going to make things quite profitable for the next petro-
fascist. As soon as this conflict is over, Vladimir Putin goes
right back to getting rich and having the resources to be a
global thug, or any number of other unsavory regimes that have
done the same thing.
We have got to get off this treadmill. It is not working
for us. And, frankly, if you are serious about confronting
Vladimir Putin, don't just repackage the same agenda that the
oil and gas industry has been pushing for these past few years.
It is not like they were serious about standing up to Putin.
They have actually been in bed with Putin over in Russia,
developing oil and gas, profiteering from Russian oil and gas,
so much so that they can barely figure out how to disentangle
themselves from Russia oil and gas right now in a sanctions
regime, so let's be serious about that. And by the way, one of
Putin's dear friends was our Secretary of State under the last
regime, or the last Administration rather. It seemed like a
regime.
So let's get back to questions because we do need to talk
about resiliency, and we might as well keep it focused right on
the Gulf Coast, right in Louisiana because that is ground zero.
We could talk about other places. In California, we have got
communities that have no good answer to sea level rise and
extreme weather. They are going to be dealing, whether they
like it or not, with managed retreat. We could talk about
places in Alaska and lots of other parts of the country, but,
Mr. Jewell, your area is as good as any because you are really
the tip of the spear. And, you know, I guess, if we could keep
the extreme weather and sea level rise from getting a lot
worse, maybe through all of these restoration strategies, and
restoring the function of the Mississippi River Delta, and
getting back those coastal wetlands, and barrier islands, and
mangroves, and everything else, maybe we could stop the loss of
all that land that you described and maybe get some of it back
for the good people of St. Charles Parish and other parts of
Louisiana. And I am very interested in working with you on that
and Mr. Graves on that.
But what if we don't stop the hemorrhaging? What if we do
see 2 more feet of this sea level rise by mid-century? What if
we continue to set off carbon bombs that increase our
dependency on fossil fuels? And, Dr. Augustine, I will invite
you to talk about this. I read an op-ed by General Honore a few
weeks ago in The New York Times, and he talked about, you know,
it is not just the BP oil spill. In the most recent hurricane,
there were all sorts of environmental damage from this
ubiquitous oil and gas infrastructure. Are we are going to
double down on that and not expect more and more and more
ecological damage, let alone the loss of communities and land?
So that is my question to each of you. What if we can't stop it
from getting a lot worse? What if we double down on all this
fossil fuel infrastructure? What is going to happen to that
part of Louisiana and other areas in the Gulf Coast?
Dr. Augustine. What happens if we can't stop it from
getting worse? That is a great question. It is the question
that we have before us, and I would say that we kind of have to
do two things at the same time right now. There are problems
today that need solving, and we can't divert all of our
attention away from those because people are here right now. At
the same time, we do have to look down the road. We have to get
past our myopia and think about these questions you are asking.
What does it look like on the coasts with 2 feet of sea level
rise, and what happens to those people who are living there?
And so I think that, just very quickly because I can see
that the clock is going in the wrong way, on the coast, we do
have to talk about either reinforcements, or we have to talk
about movement of people. This is a very loaded topic, and it
is very emotionally fraught. This is something that is part of
the toolkit. And as far as the infrastructure, there is so much
infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico, for example, from the oil
and gas enterprise. A lot of it is legacy, a lot of it is
abandoned, and then there is new stuff coming. And so there is
a big pipeline--no pun intended--that we kind of have to work
both ends of that. There is a lot of work to be done.
Mr. Jewell. Thank you, Congressman, for the question. In
the case of coastal Louisiana in the sediment starved estuaries
that we have, if we do nothing as far as coastal restoration
and flood protection goes, and, you know, our coastline
continues to wash away into the sea as it has since the 1930s
when the Corps of Engineers levied off the Mississippi River,
and that is why it is incredibly important that we invest now
in measures that are going to rebuild the coast. Again, our
coastal master plan in Louisiana, which is a $50 billion, 50-
year plan, is rooted in science and it is rooted around
Louisiana's economy. So I think that investing in that type of
plan, restoring that coastline, protecting those shorelines, is
what we can do now while we look to reach some of our future
goals.
Ms. Castor. Next, Representative Palmer, you are recognized
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Palmer. I thank the gentlelady from Florida and for our
witnesses appearing today. I have been in contact with people
in Ukraine by a Zoom call. I have had three of these, and we
are having this discussion about resilience here. And last
September, there was an article that came out about how
Europe's energy policies and our policies have given Putin the
upper hand. That was in October of last year. And I just want
to point out to my colleagues on this committee, you are having
this discussion about the dangers we face from your inflated
view of climate disasters. Inflated. Absolutely inflated, and
you are good on inflation. You are really good on inflation.
But there were more people killed in 2 weeks in Ukraine because
of these--I won't use profanity--these policies than died in
the United States from any natural disaster from 2010 to 2020.
And I just wonder what should have been presented to
Ukraine in terms of resilience. You talk about structural
damage in the United States, building losses, other
infrastructure losses because of natural disasters, and you
literally are watching on live television, cities being leveled
in Ukraine because of the asinine, short-sighted, ineffective
energy policies of this country, and, particularly, this
Administration and this Congress. And I just wonder what we
should be saying to the people of Ukraine, Mr. Jewell.
Mr. Jewell. Well, look, I think it is incredibly important,
and what we are seeing in Ukraine, it is incredibly important
now to not do an about face on our current energy mix. I think
oil and gas is going to be a part of our energy mix now and for
years to come. I mean, we are only seeing the demand for energy
go up over the next 25, 30, 40 years, so we should be showing
the world what needs to be done to invest in an all-of-the-
above strategy, and show the world what a robust energy economy
looks like by investing in things like nuclear and renewables,
and continuing with what we know how to do.
The people in Southeast Louisiana are experts at taking oil
and gas out of the ground and doing it safely and cleanly with
the best standards in the world. So we need to make sure that
our energy policies don't let other countries, who don't do
things to that high standard and who are not allies of the
United States, pick up that slack.
Mr. Palmer. There are now over 2 million refugees from
Ukraine flooding the borders of Poland to escape this disaster
inflicted upon them, and, I mean, it is a number of things. I
am not so naive to think that Putin might not have tried this,
but he certainly wouldn't have the resources that he has today
to carry out this invasion against Ukraine. I would point out
that more people died in 2 weeks in Ukraine than died in the
entire world from natural disasters in 2020, and you can pick
any random person in the world in the 1920s, and there was a
.01 percent chance of dying due to an extreme weather climate
event. Today, 2020, that is a .00025 percent chance of dying as
a result of extreme weather event, yet we are so wrapped around
the axle about this that it has blinded us to history. It has
blinded us to what is actually happening in the world, and we
are responsible for it.
I mean, one of my colleagues mentioned the predictions for
these disasters. I will just read one prediction to you that,
``The greenhouse effect will desolate the heartlands of North
America and Eurasia with a horrific drought, causing crop
failures and food riots. The Platte River in Nebraska would dry
up, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil
will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses, and
shut down computers.'' Dr. Augustine, do you agree that that is
going to happen?
Dr. Augustine. You are asking me a very hard question; that
is, I have no problem saying I am not really sure. But I would
say on your fatality statistics, we have come a long way, in a
good way, on reducing fatalities to extreme weather, and that
is a good thing. I think that it says a lot about how far we
have come that we are now measuring our losses in terms of
assets and economic losses.
Mr. Palmer. I have enjoyed your testimony because I think
you are a serious person, and I commend you for it. And I just
say that that was a prediction by Dr. Michael Oppenheimer in
1990, who predicted it would happen by 1995. And, Madam
Chairman, I would like to introduce into the record a list of
107 catastrophic predictions that haven't come true.
Ms. Castor. I will take that, and review it, and dispose of
the motion at the end of the hearing.
Mr. Palmer. Thank you.
Ms. Castor. Thank you. Next up, Representative Escobar,
welcome. You are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Escobar. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Thanks for
this hearing.
You know, as we talked about, and, clearly, that is what we
are going to talk about mostly today in this hearing, is we
talk about the crisis that we are facing in Ukraine with a
madman who has decided to invade a democracy and a friend, and
we talk about the oil dependency that we have had as a country.
And somebody mentioned the word history. Let's take a look at
history and the fact that we are still so dependent and even
addicted to fossil fuels, and no one on the other side of the
aisle is talking about how that has been the problem. Some of
the same people saying we need to drill more and we need to do
more drilling are some of the very same people who have stood
in the way of our ability to advance sustainable forms of
energy. And so, if we had led the way decades ago, as we should
have, we would not be in this position where we are debating
these issues. And one of my colleagues mentioned migration.
I am sorry. If you don't mind, Representative Graves, I
can't hear myself think with your talking. Thank you.
I live on the U.S. Mexico border. I represent El Paso,
Texas, and we have seen a record number of refugees, many of
them driven by the climate crisis. And so we can talk about a
multitude of problems that are fueled by our addiction to
fossil fuels, and the answer is not to drill more. The answer
is to finally work together. And I hope that we come to a point
where Democrats and Republicans alike can work together on
renewable energy so that we can finally end this addiction that
is at the root of so many of our problems. While some of my
colleagues want to continue to focus on more drilling, in my
community, we don't have that luxury. We are facing record
generational drought that is eliminating our green valleys. We
are living with record heat that is killing people. And so I
don't know how we are measuring death and how we are measuring
success, but I think all we need is common sense to see that
the impact is deadly, and we need to act.
So in my community, we are working on drafting a framework.
I brought together stakeholders who are going to help put
together a framework for all our local entities, for the public
sector, the private sector, for key stakeholders, on how we
begin to find a solution as we go forward in our own community
in the absence of real action on Capitol Hill. And these
climate action plans are really important, but they are
expensive, and they are hard. And so, Dr. Hansen, I am going to
ask you a question actually. You know, we are working on this
framework, as I mentioned, in my community, in my district that
will help be a roadmap, a guide for all folks who are wanting
to confront the reality ahead of us instead of arguing about
whether or not we should increase our dependency on fossil
fuels.
Dr. Hansen, how have your programs at EcoAdapt helped
environmental justice communities? You know, I mentioned how
expensive these plans are. I live in an economically
disadvantaged community. Also, what are some of the Federal
policies that we need to enact in order to continue helping
communities like mine so that they can manage their risks and
adaptation, and ensure that they are acting as quickly as
possible?
Dr. Hansen. Thank you, Representative Escobar. This is such
an important issue and at the heart of the points that I
brought up earlier. This is why we need a National Climate
Extension Service. We need a way to get resources and training
to members of all communities, especially communities that are
dramatically under resourced, especially communities where
there are a disproportionate number of people who will be
adversely affected. Coupled with that, again, has to be our
ability as a nation to have a national adaptation plan wherein
we only spend our funds on things that make us more resilient
and better prepared for climate change. That combination of
things will ensure that every action we take going forward is
an action that is preparing us for the realities of climate
change, and, as Representative Casten said, stopping to make
hammers that are causing us damage.
So if we can have those two pieces, we can provide regular,
steady, across the board resources to every community in the
United States, because right now, most communities in the
United States do not have the resources, the technical skills,
or the bandwidth to make this happen. I worked in communities
where, quite frankly, having an AmeriCorps volunteer creates
their entire capacity to take on this issue, and that is not a
lot of help, and it is a very short period of help. But having
that person who can be the lead, who can be asking the
questions, if that were also supported by all these other tools
I talked about, could really move us forward in a more
consistent way.
Right now, well-off communities have a better chance of
having the resources to hire the staff they need, have access
to the data, and have access to the resources to make the
changes. But if every dollar we were spending was being spent
on things that were climate ready as opposed to were climate
agnostic, we would be doing a better job.
Ms. Escobar. Thank you so, Madam Chair. I yield back.
Ms. Castor. Well, thank you very much, Members, and thank
you to our witnesses for their outstanding testimony today.
Without objection, I would like to enter into the record,
first, a March 2022 letter from the Union of Concerned
Scientists, outlining their recommendations to the Select
Committee on ways Congress can help advance climate adaptation
and resilience; second, a February 2022 report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II,
titled, ``Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and
Vulnerabilities Summary for Policymakers,'' which summarized
the report findings and the policy relevant recommendations to
address the impacts of climate change on ecosystems,
biodiversity, and human communities, and reviews the
vulnerabilities, capacities, and limits of the natural world
and human societies to adapt. Third, a February 2022 report by
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on the U.S.
sea level rise and coastal flood hazard scenarios, and an
Interagency Task Force report, entitled, ``Global and Regional
Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States,'' which
analyzed sea level rise scenarios out to 2150 and assessed
flood exposure to current conditions for the next 30 years.
Fourth, a January 2022 report by Oliver E.G. Wing, et al,
titled, ``Inequitable Patterns of U.S. Flood Risk,'' which
examined current and future flood risk under the increasing
threat of climate change, including worsening risks and impacts
to communities of color; fifth, a February 2022 report by the
U.N. Environment Program, titled: ``Spreading Like Wildfire:
The Rising Threat of Extraordinary Landscape Fires,'' which
analyzed how climate change and land use change are making
wildfires worse across the globe, and how the world can better
adapt and minimize the risk of wildfires.
Sixth, finally, there has been a lot of discussion of
FEMA's National Flood Insurance Changes, so I will ask that
FEMA's press release from April 2021 announcing the changes is
included in the record, and Representative----
Mr. Graves. I object.
Ms. Castor. Okay.
Mr. Graves. Madam Chair, as I mentioned to you once before,
in my entire life, I have never heard of a committee not
allowing documents to be submitted in the record by unanimous
consent until this committee did it last year, I believe.
Ms. Castor. Okay. So you are objecting to the email?
Mr. Graves. I am objecting to everything. You just held Mr.
Palmer's. If you----
Ms. Castor. I was about to----
Mr. Graves. Okay. If you accept his, then I will lift my
objection.
Ms. Castor. Yeah, I was about to accept it.
Mr. Graves. Thank you. Thank you. I withdraw my objection.
Ms. Castor. We wanted to take a look at it because we ask
everyone, if they can, to submit it in advance and share it
with staff.
Mr. Palmer. And I apologize.
Ms. Castor. Yeah, that is fine. That is fine. Things come
up.
Mr. Graves. The rules don't require that.
Ms. Castor. No. Things come up during the hearing, but we
just needed a moment to look at it. And so we are also asking
unanimous consent for the record for Representative Palmer's
letter.
[The information follows:]
Submission for the Record
Representative Kathy Castor
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
March 9, 2022
Kathy Castor, Chair
Garret Graves, Ranking Member
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
H2-359 Ford Building
Washington, DC 20515
[email protected]
March 6, 2022
RE: Committee hearing on Confronting Climate Impacts: Federal
Strategies for Equitable Adaptation and Resilience
Dear Chair Castor and Ranking Member Graves,
On behalf of the Union of Concerned Scientists' (UCS) more than
500,000 members and supporters, we are thankful to the Select Committee
on the Climate Crisis for hosting a hearing on the need for a national
adaptation and resilience strategy. We offer this letter for the record
for the hearing ``Confronting Climate Impacts: Federal Strategies for
Equitable Adaptation and Resilience'' on March 9, 2022. We commend the
Committee for swiftly moving these critical issues forward.
We, as a nation, must act urgently both to reduce heat-trapping
emissions and transition to clean energy, while also fostering
effective, equitable adaptation to ensure that people and communities
are equipped to withstand increasingly severe and disruptive extreme
weather and climate-related impacts. The recent Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) report on climate impacts, adaptation, and
vulnerability \1\ makes clear that climate change is already a grave
threat to people and the planet, disproportionately affecting
marginalized communities, and that incremental adaptation measures are
grossly insufficient when compared to the whole-of-society,
transformational adaptation measures that will be required to ensure
human safety, wellbeing, healthy ecosystems and a livable planet in a
warmer climate.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ See www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a pivotal moment for bold action. Many communities across
the U.S. have an acute need to build their resilience to the climate
impacts they are already coping with, including deadly heatwaves,
increasingly severe wildfires, record-breaking drought, and worsening
floods. For a growing number of communities, their current
infrastructure, local economies, and ways of life will be at even
greater risk of climate-change related impacts in the near-future. The
IPCC report highlights that more communities will increasingly come up
against hard and soft limits to adaptation unless we act swiftly.
Therefore, we call on Congress to enact bold legislation to establish a
national resilience strategy and bolster the urgent need for data,
science, technical resources and funding to deliver on it. To truly
address the nation's resilience needs in an integrated and
comprehensive fashion, a national resilience strategy would need to
include these six foundational elements:
1. Aligned ambition on mitigation and adaptation. Similar to the
IPCC report's framing of climate resilience, UCS's ``Resilience Gap''
framework \2\ recognizes that successfully building climate resilience
will necessitate both limiting the future extent of climate change by
sharply reducing heat-trapping emissions (i.e., mitigation) and
adapting to the changes that will no longer be avoidable. Aligning
mitigation and adaptation efforts to advance climate-resilient
development will have multiple health and economic benefits, including
protection for people, livelihoods, and critical ecosystems from
climate impacts. By contrast, lagging on one front or the other will
guarantee that neither effort can ultimately succeed. A national
resilience strategy must derive from this understanding and, even as it
drives much-needed adaptation action, appreciate that ambitiously
curbing emissions is our only hope of creating a climate future to
which we can successfully adapt.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ See www.ucsusa.org/resources/toward-climate-resilience
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Investment in a science-informed national resilience strategy.
Congress must ensure that the federal government is armed with the
latest and best available climate change science across a range of
worsening climate risks, and their intersection with socioeconomic and
other factors that heighten vulnerabilities. State, local and Tribal
governments and communities also need access to actionable climate
science to inform their efforts. While important progress has been made
on climate risk science, including through the essential work of the US
Global Change Research Program, there remain many gaps in data and
supporting infrastructure. This includes the need for more stream
gauges across the country, better flood risk mapping and frequently
updated precipitation frequency estimates, better wildfire risk mapping
and warning systems, heatwave early warning systems, and data on
compound and cascading risks. Further, as the IPCC report points out,
elevating and including Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge is
essential.
3. A focus on equity and justice. The evidence is abundantly clear
that in the U.S. and globally those most impacted by climate change are
often people of color, people with low incomes, and other communities
that have been disadvantaged and marginalized. These communities must
be prioritized for adaptation investments. The Biden Administration's
Justice40 Initiative and the in-progress Climate and Economic Justice
Screening Tool are an important start. Congress must embed these
approaches in legislation, together with robust funding, to ensure
accountability for climate justice from the federal to the state, local
and Tribal level. To truly build resilience across the U.S. will be a
multi-generational effort; here in 2022, our nation's resilience
strategy must commit to a tireless pursuit of equitable outcomes,
building a resilience workforce and just transformation.
4. A whole system approach toward building resilience. To ensure
truly successful and equitable resilience and to avoid the risks of
maladaptation identified in the IPCC report, there is a need for a
strong and clear coordination framework from the federal to the local
levels. Applying a systems-thinking approach will help to invest
federal resources wisely and proactively, ensure that diverse
stakeholders have a strong voice in shaping priorities, integrate the
need for nature-based solutions, and boost the effectiveness of
policies, programs, and tools. It should also integrate and focus
federal resources based on need and how soon communities will face
extreme climate impacts, like vertebrae along a spine, could form the
backbone of a national resilience strategy. This approach must also
include actions to protect our financial system and economy, including
mandating climate risk disclosure in the marketplace to ensure that the
private sector's decisions are also aligned with a low-carbon, climate-
resilient future.
5. Responsiveness to rapidly evolving, compounding and cascading
risks. There is a wealth of climate science detailing the climate
impacts different regions of the U.S. are likely to experience in the
coming decades, but our understanding of how climate risks are
combining with other climatic and non-climatic risks and creating new
threats is still evolving. Despite the exceptional science undertaken
to date, the aperture through which the U.S. can see its own risks is
therefore too narrow. Given the potentially vast societal harm of
compound and cascading impacts, this dangerous limitation must be
overcome. To build responsiveness to acute and spatially broad risks
like the yet-unfolding Southwest megadrought, or the intersection of
the hurricane season with a pandemic as we recently experienced, a
national resilience strategy will need to include resources and nimble
frameworks for identifying and responding to evolving and cascading
risks.
6. A bold and comprehensive national resilience strategy bill.
Climate change is already impacting the ways of life of communities and
our treasured natural heritage and will continue to reshape our nation
for generations to come. To best ensure that reshaping is neither
forced upon us nor harmful, Congress should enact a bill to advance a
comprehensive national resilience strategy. In particular, such a bill
must include a forward-looking, integrated and equitable framework to
address the full range of climate-related impacts and risks communities
will face in the near, medium and long term, and the solutions that
will foster effective and equitable outcomes. This should include a
framework for addressing profound challenges such as climate-driven
displacement and migration and compound, cascading and tipping point
risks, as well as the opportunity to build safer, healthier and more
sustainable communities and infrastructure for all.
In closing, UCS is eager to hear from the members and witnesses
during the hearing. It's time for comprehensive and bold congressional
action to combat the climate crisis and we urge the members to work
towards enacting legislation for a national resilience strategy in the
117th Congress. UCS looks forward to being a resource to the committee
on any components of such a strategy. Please do not hesitate to contact
us with any questions the committee may have by reaching out to Todd
Wolf, Senior Washington Representative.
Sincerely,
Rachel Cleetus
Policy Director, UCS Climate & Energy Program
Shana Udvardy
Senior Climate Resilience Policy Analyst, UCS Climate & Energy Program
Erika Spanger-Siegfried
Director of Strategic Climate Analytics, UCS Climate & Energy Program
+++
ATTACHMENT: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II,
Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
Summary for Policymakers, 27 February 2022.
The report is retrained in committee files and available at:
https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg2/pdf/
IPCC_AR6_WGII_SummaryForPolicymakers.pdf
ATTACHMENT: Sweet, W.V., B.D. Hamlington, et al., 2022, Global and
Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States:
Updated Mean Projections and Extreme Water Level Probabilities
Along U.S. Coastlines, National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, National Ocean Service, Silver Spring, MD.
This report is retained in committee files and available at:
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/sealevelrise/noaa-nos-
techrpt01-global-regional-SLR-scenarios-US.pdf
ATTACHMENT: Wing, O.E.J., Lehman, W., Bates, P.D. et al., 31 January
2022, ``Inequitable patterns of US flood risk in the
Anthropocene,'' Nature Climate Change.
This article is retained in committee files and available at:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01265-6
ATTACHMENT: United Nations Environment Programme, 23 February 2022,
Spreading like Wildfire--The Rising Threat of Extraordinary
Landscape Fires. A UNEP Rapid Response Assessment. Nairobi.
This report is retained in committee files and available at:
https://www.unep.org/resources/report/spreading-wildfire-
rising-threat-extraordinary-landscape-fires
ATTACHMENT: Federal Emergency Management Agency, 1 April 2022, ``FEMA
Updates Its Flood Insurance Rating Methodology to Deliver More
Equitable Pricing.''
This press release is retained in committee files and available at:
https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20210401/fema-updates-its-
flood-insurance-rating-methodology-deliver-more-equitable
+++
Submission for the Record
Representative Gary Palmer
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
March 9, 2022
ATTACHMENT: Watts, A., ``The big list of failed climate predictions,''
Watts Up
With That, 2 April 2014.
This blog post is retained in the committee files and available at:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/02/the-big-list-of-failed-
climate-predictions/
Ms. Castor. And I would just say that the other items
included in the record, as our witnesses testified today, the
recent report by the IPCC by Dr. Solecki, there is a lot of
current climate science for folks to examine. The consensus is
clear, it is deep, that action is urgent. There is a rapidly
closing window, and I urge everyone, rather than point to
decades ago, look at what is right in front of us. The world's
top scientists and America's technological edge gives us the
ability to look at that and do that. So thanks, everybody.
Mr. Graves. Would the gentlelady yield?
Ms. Castor. We will yield for a moment, sure.
Mr. Graves. Thank you. Madam Chair, my friend from
California, and he is my friend, Mr. Huffman, who came down to
St. Charles Parish and went on an airboat tour to see our
coastal problems down there, he mentioned a few things that I
do think is worth getting balanced news or information in the
record. He said fossil fuel dependency is the problem. Madam
Chair, the Biden Administration's EIA says that developing
countries are going to need between a 44- and 80-percent
increase in natural gas, that developed countries are going to
need between--what is it--31 to 58 percent for developed
countries. They said that you are going to see an increased
demand in global energy of 50 percent over the next 28 years.
So you know what? I, too, and I have told you this before, I,
too, would love if we could just make everything magically run
on pixie dust. I would, but right now, that is not possible.
The Biden Administration says it, so we have shown before that
if we stop producing, all that happens is other countries
produce, and they do it with greater emissions. We can't go
devise energy policy strategies that are designed on nothing,
that are designed on pixie dust. We can't do that.
Ms. Castor. Thank you.
Mr. Graves. No. Madam Chair, you just spoke for 2 minutes
without any recognition. I am just asking for the same
courtesy.
Ms. Castor. Go ahead.
Mr. Huffman. Madam Chair----
Ms. Castor. But we are going to----
Mr. Graves. So, Madam Chair, I remember----
Ms. Castor. I am going to have order, and I am going to
adjourn. I am going to give you a little bit longer to go.
Mr. Graves. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Ms. Castor. But please wrap it up.
Mr. Graves. Madam Chair, every Democrat member of this
committee voted against banning Russian oil.
Mr. Huffman. [Inaudible.]
Mr. Graves. Yes, it is true.
Mr. Huffman. All right. Will the gentleman yield some of
the time that he doesn't have?
Mr. Graves. I will in just a minute. And voted against a
motion to recommit, voted against my amendments in committee.
The only President in recent time or over the last 5 years that
has reduced emissions is President Trump, not President Biden.
So we have got to stop talking about all these things that are
actually doing the opposite of what makes sense for the
environment. And folks are out there doubling and tripling down
on things that have contributed to energy insecurity and
greater emissions.
Ms. Castor. Okay.
Mr. Graves. California and the European Union are two
perfect examples of fatally flawed strategies, and I am happy
to yield my friend.
Mr. Huffman. May I?
Ms. Castor. Go ahead and take a moment since we are waiting
for votes to be called on the floor.
Mr. Huffman. Well, so my friend from----
Ms. Castor. But we are going to wrap it up here quick.
Mr. Huffman. Thank you, Madam Chair. You have been very
gracious and patient. And my friend from Louisiana, you know,
maybe forgets that I am on the same committees as him, so these
amendments he is referring to that he describes as a ban on
Russian oil, I know that they were not that. They were trapdoor
amendments that would have stopped some clean energy
initiatives until someone completed a study of how it helped
Vladimir Putin. They were gimmicks. The gentleman has never
introduced a straight up ban on Russian oil, but, today, he
will have a chance to vote on one, so that is the good news. If
he is interested in it, let's do it. And describing clean
energy as Bigfoots and unicorns, and pointing to some
hypothetical demand for fossil fuel in the developing world
forgets the fact that clean energy is the fastest growing
source of new energy in the world on the economics of it. This
is not Bigfoots and unicorns, and I have told the gentleman
that we could also talk to some drug policy experts, and they
would say there is an almost infinite demand for more fentanyl,
and we know----
Ms. Castor. All right. All right. I think----
Mr. Huffman. And we know it would be really bad if we let
people get it, but we are not powerless. We are not powerless
to change hypothetical demand curbs. And with that, I yield
back.
Ms. Castor. Thank you all, again, for a robust debate. I
look forward to the next committee hearing very much. But thank
you, again, to our witnesses for our hearing today on
``Confronting Climate Impacts and the Federal Strategies for
Equitable Adaptation and Resilience.''
The committee is adjourned.
Whereupon, at 11:20 a.m., the select committee was
adjourned.]
United States House of Representatives
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
Hearing on March 9, 2022
``Confronting Climate Impacts:
Federal Strategies for Equitable Adaptation and Resilience''
Questions for the Record
Dr. William Solecki
Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Science
Hunter College--City University of New York
the honorable kathy castor
1. The IPCC's latest report provides a stark warning about the
climate impacts that are accelerating and could become irreversible for
some of our most vulnerable landscapes and communities. In your
testimony, you noted that there is an increasing gap between adaptation
action taken and what is needed. This adaptation gap is even bigger in
lower income communities and for communities of color. What steps
should Congress take to address this adaptation gap and ensure that a
national adaptation plan addresses the needs of marginalized
communities?
The WG2 Summary for Policy Makers Report directly addresses how
reduce the adaptation gap emerging with communities. Specifically, the
report focuses on the role of enabling conditions that reduce the
adaptation gap. Key enabling conditions include political commitment
and follow-through, institutional frameworks, policies and instruments
with clear goals and priorities, enhanced knowledge on impacts and
solutions, mobilization of and access to adequate financial resources,
monitoring and evaluation, and inclusive governance processes.
It was found that political commitment and follow-through across
all levels of government accelerate the implementation of adaptation
actions. Implementing actions can require large upfront investments of
human, financial and technological resources, while some benefits could
only become visible in the next decade or beyond. Accelerating
commitment and follow-through is promoted by rising public awareness,
building business cases for adaptation, accountability and transparency
mechanisms, monitoring and evaluation of adaptation progress, social
movements, and climate-related litigation in some regions.
Institutional frameworks, policies and instruments that set clear
adaptation goals and define responsibilities and commitments and that
are coordinated amongst actors and governance levels will strengthen
and sustain adaptation actions. Sustained adaptation actions are
strengthened by mainstreaming adaptation into institutional budget and
policy planning cycles, statutory planning, monitoring and evaluation
frameworks and into recovery efforts from disaster events. Enhancing
knowledge on risks, impacts, and their consequences, and available
adaptation options do promote societal and policy responses.
Furthermore, a wide range of top-down, bottom-up and co-produced
processes and sources can deepen climate knowledge and sharing,
including capacity building at all scales, educational and information
programs, using the arts, participatory modelling and climate services,
Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge and citizen science. These
measures facilitate awareness, heighten risk perception and influence
behaviors.
Inclusive governance that prioritizes equity and justice in
adaptation planning and implementation leads to more effective and
sustainable adaptation outcomes. Vulnerabilities and climate risks are
often reduced through carefully designed and implemented laws,
policies, processes, and interventions that address context specific
inequities such as based on gender, ethnicity, disability, age,
location and income. These approaches, which include multi-stakeholder
co-learning platforms, transboundary collaborations, community-based
adaptation and participatory scenario planning, focus on capacity-
building, and meaningful participation of the most vulnerable and
marginalized groups, and their access to key resources to adapt.
With adaptation finance, enhanced mobilization of and access to
financial resources are essential for implementation of adaptation and
to reduce adaptation gaps. Building capacity and removing some barriers
to accessing finance is fundamental to accelerate adaptation,
especially for vulnerable groups, regions and sectors. Public and
private finance instruments include grants, guarantee, equity,
concessional debt, market debt, and internal budget allocation as well
as savings in households and insurance. As such, public finance is a
critical enabler of adaptation. Public mechanisms and finance can
leverage private sector finance for adaptation by addressing real and
perceived regulatory, cost and market barriers, for example via public-
private partnerships. Financial and technological resources enable
effective and ongoing implementation of adaptation, especially when
supported by institutions with a strong understanding of adaptation
needs and capacity.
Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of adaptation also are critical for
tracking progress and enabling effective adaptation. M&E implementation
is currently limited in the U.S. Although most of the monitoring of
adaptation is focused towards planning and implementation, the
monitoring of outcomes is critical for tracking the effectiveness and
progress of adaptation. M&E facilitates learning on successful and
effective adaptation measures, and signals when and where additional
action may be needed. M&E systems are most effective when supported by
capacities and resources and embedded in enabling governance systems.
2. The IPCC report emphasized the importance of connecting climate
mitigation, adaptation, and economic development. What opportunities do
you see to better integrate climate mitigation and adaptation in
federally supported economic development?
The WG2 Report Summary for Policy Makers focuses on opportunities
presented by Climate resilient development (CRD) that integrates
adaptation measures and their enabling conditions with mitigation to
advance sustainable development for all. Climate resilient development
involves questions of equity and system transitions in land, ocean and
ecosystems; urban and infrastructure; energy; industry; and society and
includes adaptations for human, ecosystem and planetary health. Climate
resilient development is enabled when governments, civil society and
the private sector make inclusive development choices that prioritize
risk reduction, equity and justice, and when decision-making processes,
finance and actions are integrated across governance levels, sectors
and timeframes. Evidence shows that climate resilient development
processes link scientific, Indigenous, local, practitioner and other
forms of knowledge, and are more effective and sustainable because they
are locally appropriate and lead to more legitimate, relevant and
effective actions. Government efforts that advance climate resilient
development account for the dynamic, uncertain and context-specific
nature of climate-related risk, and its interconnections with non-
climate risks, such as poverty, lack of education, and underemployment.
Overall, government institutions that enable climate resilient
development are flexible and responsive to emergent risks and
facilitate sustained and timely action. Governance for climate
resilient development is enabled by adequate and appropriate human and
technological resources, information, capacities and finance. Climate
resilient development practiced in communities is observed to be more
effective if it is responsive to regional and local land use
development and adaptation gaps, and addresses the underlying drivers
of vulnerability. Urban communities are critical place for enabling
climate resilient development, especially those along the coasts. The
greatest CRD related gains in well-being can be achieved by
prioritizing finance to reduce climate risk for low-income and
marginalized residents. Coastal cities and settlements make key
contributions to climate resilient development through their vital role
in national economies and inland communities, national and global
supply chains, cultural exchange, and centers of innovation.
3. How can the federal government better respond to the needs of
small island and developing states that are facing dire climate impacts
today and in the near term?
The IPCC AR6 WG2 Report presents evidence on how many small island
and developing states are facing an existential threat from climate
impacts. Many increasing climate risks are present including water and
food insecurity, extreme heat, and flooding, sea level rise poses a
distinctive and severe adaptation challenge as it implies dealing with
slow onset changes and increased frequency and magnitude of extreme sea
level events which will escalate in the coming decades. Such adaptation
challenges would occur much earlier under high rates of sea level rise,
in particular if low-likelihood, high impact outcomes associated with
collapsing ice sheets occur.
Soft limits to some adaptation in small islands and developing
states has been reached, but can be overcome by addressing a range of
constraints, which primarily consist of financial, governance,
institutional and policy constraints. Inequity and poverty also
constrain adaptation, leading to soft limits and resulting in
disproportionate exposure and impacts for most vulnerable groups. Lack
of climate literacy at all levels and limited availability of
information and data pose further constraints to adaptation planning
and implementation.
A key policy goal should be enable adaptation via strategies that
promote governance capacity, financing, and advancing new knowledge of
risk and the effectiveness of existing adaptation strategies (A fuller
discussion of these strategies is presented in the response to question
#1 present above). It is critical that the strategies focus both on
needs widely present as well as issues relevant to specific risks or
social or geographic context. For example, responses to ongoing sea
level rise and land subsidence in low-lying coastal cities and
settlements and small islands include protection, accommodation,
advance and planned relocation. These responses are more effective if
combined and/or sequenced, planned well ahead, aligned with
sociocultural values and development priorities, and underpinned by
inclusive community engagement processes.
the honorable mike levin
1. The IPCC Working Group Two report underscores how climate
adaptation can help human populations and natural systems better deal
with existing hazards and reduce future risk. However, it also
acknowledges that adaptation alone, without parallel decarbonization
efforts, will not be enough to stem the worst impacts of climate
change. Can you explain why climate adaptation efforts can only be
effective when paired with reductions in greenhouse gas emissions?
The IPCC AR6 WG2 Report and Summary for Policy Makers concludes
that the level of global climate risk has increased and is projected to
increase further in the coming decades. The Report highlights that
while adaptation efforts in the short term can reduce vulnerability and
enhance resilience, the rate of climate change if left unaddressed will
overwhelm adaptation efforts structurally (i.e., exceeding the
resilience capacity) or financially (i.e., increase in the potential
cost of adaptation). Equally concerning is that ever more demanding
adaptation strategies increase the prospect for maladaptation or
adaptation strategies that result in unwanted or unexpected social,
economic, or ecological outcomes. By integrating aggressive adaptation
and mitigation, the burden of developing and implementation radical or
extreme adaptation scenarios can be significantly lessened for many
sectors and regions.
Overall, the assessment determines that embedding effective and
equitable adaptation and mitigation in development planning can reduce
vulnerability, conserve and restore ecosystems, and enable sustainable
development. This twin policy approach is however especially
challenging in localities or settings with persistent development gaps
and limited resources. It is clear that dynamic trade-offs and
competing priorities exist between mitigation, adaptation, and
development. It was concluded that integrated and inclusive system-
oriented solutions focused on adaptation and mitigation and based on
equity and social and climate justice can reduce risks and enable
sustainable development.
References Page
H.-O. Portner, D.C. Roberts, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, M.
Tignor, A. Alegria, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Loschke, V. Moller, A.
Okem (eds.). IPCC, 2022: Summary for Policymakers [ In: Climate Change
2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working
Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change [H.-O. Portner, D.C. Roberts, M. Tignor, E.S.
Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegria, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S.
Loschke, V. Moller, A. Okem, B. Rama (eds.)]. Cambridge University
Press. In Press.
H.-O. Portner, D.C. Roberts, M. Tignor, E.S. Poloczanska, K.
Mintenbeck, A. Alegria, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Loschke, V. Moller,
A. Okem, B. Rama (eds.). 2022. Climate Change 2022: Impacts,
Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the
Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change . Cambridge University Press. In Press.
Questions for the Record
Dr. Lara Hansen
Chief Scientist & Executive Director
EcoAdapt
the honorable kathy castor
1. The IPCC report emphasized the importance of connecting climate
mitigation, adaptation, and economic development. What are your views
on this?
Climate mitigation and adaptation are actions that we must take
because the physical world is requiring it due to our historic
greenhouse gas emissions. There is simply no choice given the impacts
we are and will continue to experience. In the case of economic
development, we can take actions that assist in this response or that
exacerbate it further. Global economic development to foster greater
equity and sustainability across countries could be made possible by a
rapid transition to a system that is based maximizing energy efficiency
and generating power through distributed renewable energy. There is
also indication, as evidenced by current events, that this would
increase political stability.
2. The IPCC report also emphasized the importance of avoiding
maladaptation. What examples have you seen of maladaptation and how can
we avoid it in federal programs?
Maladaptaiton most often occurs when the perspective applied to
adaptation planning and implementation is too narrow. Example of this
include when:
spatial scale is too small (e.g., only considers one
jurisdiction, doesn't not account for the source of a resource or the
connectedness of s system),
timeframe is too short (e.g., only considering the impact
over the next 10-20 years when the life expectancy of the resource or
infrastructure accounts for a much longer investment, such as 100 years
for a bridge),
only a single climate impact is considered (e.g.,
planning for sea level rise but failing to identify the impact of
increasing temperature or ocean acidification or changing precipitation
patterns),
climate change impacts are considered in isolation from
other stressors also affecting the community or ecosystem (e.g.,
contaminants, lack of affordable housing, energy demand,
gentrification), and
sectors are considered individually rather than
holistically (e.g., developing adaptation strategies for water and for
agriculture separately).
Unfortunately, the piecemeal approach we currently have to
adaptation in the United States, predisposes us to developing
maladaptation owing to a lack of mandate, funding and technical
capacity to undertake holistic adaptation. The science and data exist
to guide it, but the will and resources to make it happen do not.
3. The IPCC report promoted the integration of equity into
adaptation measures on a global scale. How might doing so address the
longstanding injustices felt in some communities in our country?
Responding to climate change gives us a unique opportunity to
correct myriad past wrongs. It allows us to reconsider how resources
have been distributed and past risk unfairly assigned, by requiring
explicit reevaluations of these aspects of society in relation to
climate change. Things that seemed foregone conclusions of policy and
practice, are now themselves vulnerable to climate change, allowing us
to develop new strategies that are equitable. But this will only happen
if we do the work to fully understand the implications of climate
change, then develop solutions that earnestly endeavor to create an
equitable circumstance going forward. There are many lessons to be
learned from equitable adaptation being undertaken in other countries
and the major issues of global North/South equity in the mitigation and
adaptation spaces.
4. Talk us through some of the barriers a local government or
community might face trying to develop and implement a climate
adaptation plan, and how the federal government can help overcome them?
There are barriers at each step of the process, but with those are
opportunities for improvement.
1) Determining you will undertake climate change adaptation.
Barrier: Lack of knowledge that this is something a community
can undertake.
Lack of political will.
Federal Opportunity: Create requirements for federal support
that climate ad-
aptation plans be in place to be a recipient.
2) Determining how you will undertake climate change adaptation.
Barrier: Lack of clear approach to how this should be
undertaken.
Federal Opportunity: Create standards of practice that are
easily accessible,
easy to understand, and linked to support. Tools like Climate
Smart Conserva-
tion\1\ are great models.
3) Finding Capacity to undertake climate change adaptation.
Barrier: Lack of local capacity to undertake a climate
adaptation plan. Most
communities do not have dedicated staff, nor do they know
where to find exter-
nal support.
Federal Opportunity: Create climate change adaptation training
opportunities
in more fields. Currently the National Conservation Training
Center does a
great job of providing adaptation training for conservation
professionals but
there are few other sectors for which there are curriculum,
tools and training
for professionals.
4) Finding information to undertake climate change adaptation
Barrier: Users don't know where to look and don't have the
capacity (see
above) to know how to apply it.
Federal Opportunity: Climate Explorer\2\ is a great resource
supported by fed-
eral agencies to get data to users. Systems like Coral Reef
Watch\3\ are a model
for how to pair data with user needs. We need better access by
all to Climate
Explorer and more pushing of data to users like Coral Reef
Watch.
5) Finding funding to undertake climate change adaptation
Barrier: There are both a perceived and real funding
shortfalls for climate
change adaptation.
Federal Opportunity: In addition to making more funds
available for adapta-
tion, it is also essential that all funds be spent in a
climate smart manner.
As mentioned above, making climate change adaptation a
requirement for the
expenditure of funds will ensure that we are not taking
actions (building infra-
structure, designing social systems, protecting wildlife) that
are not resilient
to climate change, which in turn will help us avoid making our
problems
worse.
6) Implementing climate adaptation
Barrier: Analysis paralysis and lack of follow through.
Currently too much ad-
aptation never advances beyond the development of a
vulnerability assessment
or an adaptation plan. We are falling short on implementation.
Federal Opportunity: Require climate change adaptation be
inherent parts of
any local actions. Just like ensure you have money and staff
to undertake a
project, it must also take climate change into account
(mitigation and adapta-
tion ideally).
7) Monitoring and evaluating your adaptation actions to ensure
they work
Barrier: Very little monitoring and evaluation happens in
general.
Federal Opportunity: We are behind the curve on climate change
adaptation.
The problems of climate change are increasing and we have not
learned
enough about what actions confer advantage. We need to learn
and we need
to do it quickly. This will require monitoring and evaluation
of the processes,
plans and outcomes to ensure we are making good choices and
have informa-
tion to share with others that follow.
8) Sharing your monitoring and evaluation outcomes
Barrier: Clear paths of sharing are under-resourced. The
largest database of
climate change adaptation solutions is run by a non-profit
(EcoAdapt where I
work) and has a staff of one. We need to expand this.
Federal Opportunity: Support databases such as the Climate
Adaptation
Knowledge Exchange (CAKEx.org)\4\ and have federal programs
share
learning through them with interconnectedness of access nodes
and content.
Additionally, person to person events like the National
Adaptation Forum\5\ (in
person and virtual) offer real time exchange of ideas that can
allow for not
only sharing of lessons but innovation of new approaches built
on collective
experience.
5. In your experience, what are the most successful strategies for
helping communities adapt that we should include in a national
adaptation plan?
When communities have access to a clear mandate (what they are
aiming for), understandable climate information, staff with capacity,
community champions who support the effort, allocated funds to
undertake the work, and a means of monitoring their progress, they can
make adaptation happen. None of this is extraordinarily expensive but
it does all have to be there. A National Adaptation Plan could provide
the mandate, access to climate information, staff capacity, funds and
monitoring. With the increased awareness created by those five
elements, the local community champions will likely make themselves
known.
the honorable mike levin
1. In your testimony you highlighted how the U.S. is already
experiencing increased wildfire risk due to climate change and how we
need to develop climate adaptive strategies to minimize the impacts and
severity of wildfires. Over the last four years, California communities
have suffered from seven of the largest fires in state history. These
fires, including the August Complex fire, Dixie fire, Monument fire,
Caldor fire, and Beckwourth complex fire, collectively burned over 2.5
million acres and destroyed or damaged over 30,000 structures. With
climate change, we know that we cannot just prepare for a fire season
but must now deal with this threat year-round. And we know that
wildfire risk will only continue to increase, with the United Nations
Environment Program recently finding that the likelihood of extreme
wildfires is expected to increase up to 14 percent by 2030 and up to 50
percent by 2100 as a result of climate change and changes in land use.
Can you expand on how wildfires can sometimes lead to greater
greenhouse emissions?
Generally when I hear this question I think I'm being asked about
emissions from the fire itself. And it is true, fires emit carbon.
Fires such as the burning of peatlands in Indonesia can have massive
greenhouse gas emissions. Fires in North America emit carbon as well.
Although the emissions amount depends on the fuel load and the heat of
the fires. However it is important to note that the burning of trees,
plants and soils is the release of what is known as biological carbon.
It is carbon that is very labile. It moves as the plants
photosynthesize, respire, grown, die, and decompose. This is moving
quickly in and out of the atmosphere if you think about it on a
geological timeframe. Yes, in the near-term it is more carbon in the
atmosphere but its part of the baseload of carbon that has been moving
in and out of the atmosphere regularly. The real additive concern for
climate change is from fossil carbon.
Fossil carbon (from coal, oil, and gas) is largely fixed until we
extract it, refine it and burn it. In wildfires there is also a
significant fossil carbon source greenhouse gas emissions pattern. When
houses burn they contain a good deal of fossil carbon from everything
the house contains that is made of synthetic materials derived from
fossil materials.
Large amounts of fossil fuel energy are also used to try and
prevent fires (e.g., trucks, chainsaws, bulldozers), fight fires (e.g.,
firetrucks, helicopters, airplanes) and recover from fires (e.g.,
construction equipment, movement of goods to rebuild)--all of which
result in increased emissions. I was struck last summer as sat on the
shore of Silver Lake in California as the helicopters came in again and
again to get water to deliver to the Tamarack Fire that this was a very
energy intensive approach to solving a growing problem. How could we
possibly keep up?
2. How can communities responsibly adapt to increased wildfire
risk and address the acute health risks posed by wildfires without
compounding our climate challenges?
This is a considerable challenge. I live in a community where for
at least one week each summer (often several) we are relegated to
staying indoors with air filters whirring to reduce our exposure to
harmful air from wildfires often hundreds of miles away. We are
thankful that it is relatively cool where we live but you can see the
added complexity of needing to run filters and air conditioning--which
is many regions of the west are run on electricity generating by
burning goal or gas. Clearly just making the problem worse. What can we
do to improve this?
Only generate electricity in a manner that does not emit
greenhouse gases. In other words convert to all renewable, thermally
resilient (not vulnerable to elevated temperatures) electricity to
power our household, manufacturing, business and transportation needs.
Update building code to have greater energy efficiency
and proper air filtration options.
Update land use planning to ensure shade and buffer
zones.
3. Can you also share any examples of how communities have
successfully built resilience and adapted to the impacts of increased
wildfire risk and extreme heat?
Successful is a hard bar to meet here for two reasons. First, as I
mentioned previously, and in my testimony, we have not done enough to
monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of our adaptation ideas,
processes, actions and outcomes. This is not due to an inability to do
this, rather it is due to a lack of funding to support it and
requirement to undertake it--both things Congress can address. With
fire and heat occurring on an increasing basis there is plenty of
opportunity to assess how well an action to reduce vulnerability to
these stressors does or does not work. We don't need to wait until
fifty years from now to see how we did, we can be learning right now,
using those lessons to modify our actions and sharing them with other
communities so they can move more quickly to more successful actions.
My organization is undertaking a concerted effort to develop monitoring
and evaluation guidance, undertake our own efficacy assessment in
various sectors and support broader scale adoption. I am happy to share
some of those products and tools with you at your request\6\. Second,
what success looks like to different communities at different times
will vary. Does success mean suppressing fire on the landscape scale as
we did for over a century? Does it mean creating a firesafe perimeter
so your community does not burn but the landscape around it does? Does
it mean moving communities out harm's way? Does it mean reducing the
wildland/urban interface by reducing sprawl so communities stay out of
harm's way? There are examples of all of these, but for some each of
these solutions will not be seen as successful and for others they
will. If you would like to see examples of how communities have taken
action to address climate change, including wildfire and extreme heat,
head on over to the Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange's case
studies collection (https://www.cakex.org/resources/type/project) and
search for ``wildfire and heat'' in the search box, or use the key word
on the right hand side. You will get hundreds of examples from across
the country and a few from around the world. I would be happy to
explore this data with you more closely if you are interest.
References Page
\1\ Stein, B.A., P. Glick, N. Edelson, and A. Staudt (eds.). 2014.
Climate-Smart Conservation: Putting Adaptation Principles into
Practice. National Wildlife Federation, Washington, D.C. https://
www.nwf.org/-/media/PDFs/Global-Warming/2014/Climate-Smart-
Conservation-Final_06-06-2014.ashx
\2\ Climate Explorer. https://crt-climate-explorer.nemac.org/
\3\ Coral Reef Watch. https://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/
\4\ Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange. https://www.cakex.org/
\5\ National Adaptation Forum. Next event October 2022 in Baltimore,
MD. https://nationaladaptationforum.org/
\6\ Hoffman, J.R. and L.J. Hansen. 2022. Moving from faith-based to
tested adaptation process and approach: How will we know we're
adapting? Adaptation Insight and EcoAdapt.
Questions for the Record
The Honorable Matthew Jewell
President
St. Charles Parish
the honorable garret graves
1. President Jewell, we know that collaboration between states and
the Federal government is important in developing resilience and
mitigation strategies. The IPCC's latest report ``Climate Change 2022:
Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability,'' states that ``effective
partnerships between governments, civil society, and private sector
organizations'' are needed.
a. Do you think FEMA's changes to the National Flood
Insurance Program through Risk Rating 2.0 are an
example of an effective partnership between Louisiana
and the Federal government, especially considering that
many of us in Louisiana have continually made FEMA
aware of the drastic rate increases that will occur due
to the changes they've made to their methodology?
The roll out of Risk Rating 2.0 is not an example of an effective
partnership between Louisiana and the Federal Government and even less
so with local governing officials who are closest to the issue. We have
been raising valid concerns about the modeling and methodology even
prior to the implementation of this new policy but it has fallen on
deaf ears. When we have approached FEMA with questions about data they
are using in its new system, they cannot provide clear responses and we
are left with more questions than answers.
2. The IPCC's report also noted that, for coastal communities,
these strategies are best deployed when ``aligned with sociocultural
values and development priorities.''
a. Can you explain whether or not you think that Risk
Rating 2.0 is a policy that is aligned with coastal
communities' interests to invest in important
mitigation tools?
Louisiana is a working coast. Whether you are a commercial
fisherman, a shipbuilder or work in the tourism industry; people who
live here rely on the coast for their livelihoods. FEMA's new risk
rating policy threatens those who live here by making it financially
unaffordable to remain here and potentially bankrupting them by
devaluing their largest investment, their homes.
3. Instead of pursuing policies the way FEMA has over the last
year--taking administrative action without effectively engaging the
public--can you share your perspective on how the Federal government
can be a more effective partner to develop resilience and more
effectively protect our communities?
First and foremost, FEMA should be working with local governments
to help them mitigate their risks. The President has stated that for
every dollar invested in mitigation, it saves six dollars in mitigated
damages. There has been billions of dollars invested, both federally
and locally to mitigate flooding from storm surge and torrential rain
in Southeast Louisiana. We need to ensure that that investment is
factored into the premiums that residents pay and there needs to be
continued investment in future mitigation.
4. You spend your days interacting with Louisianans and helping
them solve problems within St. Charles Parish. What impact will Risk
Rating 2.0 have on the people you and I represent?
We are already seeing the impacts of Risk Rating 2.0. As you are
aware, the first phase of this program became effective on October 1,
2021 and impacts new policies. Residents seeking to build new homes are
walking away due to the exorbitant increases to flood premiums. Many of
these new policies are as much as 10 times the cost of the existing
policies.
Most residents with existing policies are going to see an increase
of 18%, the maximum allowed by Congress, year over year until their
policies become unaffordable. This increase on top of the highest
inflation we have seen in the last 40 years and recent increases to
property insurance premiums will have a devastating impact on the
housing economy.
Questions for the Record
Dr. Lauren Alexander Augustine
Executive Director
Gulf Research Program
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
the honorable kathy castor
1. How can the federal government better support efforts in the
Gulf Coast Region to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and increase
resilience through a more comprehensive or holistic approach?
The Gulf Coast Region faces a particular challenge in reducing
greenhouse gas emissions because of its disproportionate role in oil
and gas production and petrochemical manufacturing. The region also is
subject to many climate and weather related risks that result in
elevated vulnerability to sea-level rise, intense hurricanes, flooding
from more intense rainfall (including pluvial flooding), and tornadoes
in the Gulf States. These phenomena combined with social inequity and
deep pockets of poverty challenge resilience in the region. Efforts
both to reduce emissions to achieve net-zero and increase resilience
can and should be brought together in an integrated approach.
This type of integration could most easily be tested or piloted in
areas where climate mitigation and adaptation actions coexist. Within
the Gulf Coast Region, the State of Louisiana has developed both a
Coastal Master Plan to address resilience and a Climate Action Plan--
the first in the Gulf South--to achieve net-zero emissions objectives.
At a regional level, Houston has also developed a Climate Action Plan
that accelerates renewable energy and engages the oil and gas and
petrochemical industries in approaches to reduce substantial emissions.
As part of the long-term recovery from Hurricane Harvey (2017), Houston
also has the Resilient Houston strategy. In Florida, Tampa Bay Regional
Planning has also developed a Regional Resiliency Action Plan.
The federal government should develop strategies to assist these
important state and regional initiatives by providing funding,
technical assistance, and interagency coordination. The regional
offices of federal agencies such as FEMA, NOAA, the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, EPA, and USGS (and others) could contribute to an all-of-
government approach exercised at the regional level with a commensurate
level of coherence and urgency.
2. The IPCC report emphasized the importance of avoiding
maladaptation. What are the risks of maladaptation and the unintended
consequences of tackling climate change? How are you working to avoid
maladaptation in the Gulf region?
As the IPCC report points out, actions intended for climate change
adaptation can backfire and can increase vulnerability rather than
decreasing it. They can increase existing vulnerability or reinforce
existing inequalities in its distribution. Adaptation actions may just
redistribute vulnerability, reducing risks in one place while
increasing them elsewhere. Furthermore, adaptation efforts focused on
near-term risks can inadvertently introduce longer-term risks.
The Gulf Research Program's work on enhancing resilience for Gulf
Coast communities focuses on the social determinants of health to
ensure that adaptation does not reinforce or perpetuate existing health
disparities. Our programs seek to support climate adaptation projects
that produce co-benefits, improving human health and well-being through
equitable and community-driven climate hazard mitigation. Our program
on sea-level variation and rise in the Gulf aims to provide forecasts
and projections based on the latest science. This GRP work provides the
needed evidence base to help avoid the high economic and social costs
of excessive adaptation while also avoiding insufficient adaptation.
3. Talk us through some of the barriers a local government or
community might face trying to develop and implement a climate
adaptation plan, and how the federal government can help overcome them?
When local communities or governments begin to design or implement
a climate adaptation plan, scale may be a difficult challenge.
Communities often try to adapt to the most pressing conditions within
their jurisdiction that were--or are--created beyond their
jurisdictional boundaries. Communities' adaptation successes can be
realized most easily when a single jurisdiction can control for the
sources of and the impacts from a risk or a hazard. Thus, we see many
examples of resilience efforts focused at the site scale (e.g.,
buildings, grading, etc.), since local jurisdictions can establish and
enforce things like building codes, stormwater designs, required set
backs, and even allowable materials. In order for small jurisdictions
to tackle larger adaptation and resilience issues -greenhouse gas
emissions or environmental justice, for example--they may need
assistance to find local solutions to problems caused by regional or
external forces. The federal government could play a role that provides
information resources, enforceable regulations and limits to
environmental releases, technical assistance, or financial resources to
expand the effect of local solutions.
4. How can we better shape federal policy to incentivize
adaptation measures before disasters strike? Can you expand on the
current state of funding for pre-, during, immediate post- and long-
term post-disaster funding?
The federal government plays a critical role in helping the people
of this country survive and recover from disasters. The federal
government provides or augments disaster relief and response services,
recovery resources, and even opportunities to mitigate the worst of the
impacts experienced during a disaster. Through the Stafford Act and
presidentially declared events, disaster relief funds and the pre-
disaster mitigation grants are administered by FEMA. The most visible
benefits are seen during the response phase--lifesaving, evacuation,
and sheltering functions through the worst parts of an event and in the
immediate after effects. Long-term recovery money for presidentially
declared disasters often counts in the billions delivered over multiple
years, mostly through community development block grants and other
programs administered through US Housing and Urban Development.
Outside of Stafford authorities, there exists a range of federal
agencies have various pre-disaster adaptation, resilience or mitigation
programs. NOAA, NASA, DOE, and other agencies work with industry,
regulators, or communities to provide incentive and in some cases
technical assistance to enhance adaptation to climate change.
Numerous studies have outlined the financial benefit of pre-
disaster mitigation investments with returns on those investments
tallying anywhere from 1:6 to 1:11. State and regional jurisdictions
are interested in the benefits of pre-disaster mitigation and
adaptation efforts to reduce the impacts and costs to their
jurisdictions should a disaster occur. Now, through the Building
Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program at FEMA, 6% of the
Disaster Relief Fund is dedicated to disaster mitigation.
There ae a few problems with this constellation of federal
assistance and programming. First, the various programs are not
coordinated with each other, including the programs that are
administered under the purview of one agency. A great advantage would
be for the diverse federal pre-disaster programs to become coordinated
or at least aligned with each other, with applications that are
harmonious in format and timing with each other. Another problem is
that the applications themselves can be complicated and burdensome to
applicants. Often, consultants are hired to complete the applications;
as such, there is an implicit bias against under-resourced communities
in applying. Those communities that have the resources to hire
consultant firms produce the most compelling proposals and they are at
a distinct advantage over the communities that are relegated to
completing their applications on a low budget, with a small staff, or
at low capacity. Perhaps one option would be to seek some sort of
common application that could be slightly adapted for different funds
across federal agencies. Such a ``common app'' would substantially
reduce the administrative and application burden on the jurisdictions
seeking funds. Connecting various federal disaster programs together
would also result in State, Local, Tribal jurisdictions building
resilience across the full arc of activities that would allow them to
connect the long-term recovery resources with mitigation and adaptation
funds to reduce the impacts of disasters over the long term.
5. Some communities across the country are highly dependent on a
fossil fuel economy for their livelihoods. They are also often co-
located in communities of color. How can we help these communities
navigate the transition towards a just, resilient, and sustainable
economy?
Because of a sizable presence of fossil-fuel-related industries
along the Gulf Coast, particularly along the central and western Gulf,
many communities are economically dependent on these industries. Many
communities of color have experienced deleterious health and
environmental effects. Sometimes, the affected communities receive some
of the economic benefits associated with the industry, like well-paying
jobs, but oftentimes the people of the impacted communities do not.
Petro-chemical plants, oil refineries, and major oil and gas
infrastructure contribute to environmental injustices over generations.
As we undergo the energy transition from fossil fuels towards net-zero
emissions, it is incumbent on the policy and decision makers to ensure
that these communities are afforded a voice and opportunities related
to their future and remediation to restore those communities to health
or other alternatives for healthier communities. The goal should be to
achieve economies that are more just, resilient and sustainable. As
renewable energy replaces fossil fuels, we will need to consider ways
for the new energy economy to improve living conditions and provide
safe, stable work and job opportunities; ways to create new economic
opportunities for local communities; and options to activate, build and
sustain capacity within the local workforce to fill these jobs. To be
sure, to the extent there is a role for the use of fossil fuels--
through carbon capture and storage, blue hydrogen or innovations in
chemical manufacturing--let us ensure that we do not repeat the unjust
mistakes and decisions of the past that would sustain or exacerbate
risks to fence-line communities. We need to explore the options,
understand the trade-offs, make strategic investments and avoid the
negative externalities that disproportionately impact the communities
that have already borne the brunt of environmental degradation for
generations.
6. You have personally worked with adaptation efforts across many
levels both inside and outside of government. Could you share a
successful example of adaptation that you have seen implemented that
also addressed equity and justice concerns? Is there any key
characteristic about that example that would be beneficial to
highlight?
Regions around Charleston, South Carolina are prone to flooding.
Through Resilient America (at the National Academies), we worked
closely with the Charleston Resilience Network on measuring flood
resilience. The communities most prone to flooding are communities of
black and brown people, and non-native English speakers. When we
discussed how to approach the social dimensions of flooding, someone
from the South Carolina Aquarium noted that ``everyone loves sea
turtles.'' It was an odd statement, given the topic at hand, but then
he went on to explain: the sea turtles habitat is the same coastal, low
lying areas where the flooded populations live. If we sought to protect
the sea turtle habitat, we could also institute some flood protection
for the people who live in similar habitats. So the lesson here was
that sometimes, you need to exercise some creativity. The key is to
find multiple benefits in single points of investment; and, in this
case, using how ``everyone loves sea turtles'' to build flood
resilience for the people who share the turtles' habitat in the lowest-
laying, flood prone areas.