[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

                              ----------                              

                   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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \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 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \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/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ EcoAdapt: http://ecoadapt.org/
    \3\ Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange: https://www.cakex.org/
    \4\ National Adaptation Forum: https://
www.nationaladaptationforum.org/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \7\ Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project: http://
flagstaffwatershedprotection.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \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/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \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
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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.