News article from Newtok, Alaska: Can the U.S. deal with slow-motion climate disasters?
The village of Newtok has requested a federal disaster declaration from President Barack Obama to address ongoing erosion and thawing permafrost. It’s one of the first tests of whether the nation’s disaster relief laws can be used to deal with the slow-moving impacts of climate change.
Resilience: Assessing climate resiliency of more than 250 U.S. cities
The University of Notre Dame’s Global Adaptation Initiative (ND-GAIN) has announced it will assess the climate vulnerability and readiness of every U.S. city with a population over 100,000 — more than 250 in all — in an effort to help inform decisions by city officials on infrastructure, land use, water resources management, transportation and other adaptive strategies. The Urban Adaptation Assessment (UAA) will also integrate a social equity analysis, which will investigate how vulnerable groups are disproportionately harmed by climate hazards, such as extreme heat, flooding and extreme cold.
Climate Change: Improved Federal Coordination Could Facilitate Use of Forward-Looking Climate Information in Design Standards, Building Codes, and Certifications.
I just posted an article with complaints from LA officials. Here is an account of recovery problems as noted by the outgoing Administrator of FEMA:
Battling Climate Change, FEMA Chief Blasts ‘Social Welfare For Developers’
From Bloomberg News: Trump Rejects Climate Change, but Mar-a-Lago Could Be Lost to the Sea . “Floridians in Palm Beach spend millions to deal with rising seas.” An excerpt:
Donald Trump shelled out $409,759 for property taxes in 2016 on Mar-a-Lago, his oceanfront club above billionaire’s row in Palm Beach, Fla. Some of those tax dollars will go toward combating the ravages of climate change, a phenomenon the president-elect has dismissed as a hoax. Trump tweeted in 2012 that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese” to make U.S. industry less competitive. In early December he told Fox News that “nobody really knows” whether climate change is real. He’s picked Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a staunch denier of climate change, to run the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
From the NY Times: Dismantling Climate Rules Isn’t So Easy. An excerpt:
Regulatory reversals lacking a legal or factual basis would result in lawsuits by citizens, states and industries supporting the regulations. Challengers would argue that the rules are rooted in statutory language, court precedents and in careful documentation of environmental, technological and market facts. On the climate, for example, three Supreme Court decisions established that federal climate action is required by the Clean Air Act’s broad language; and the E.P.A. then, via another rule upheld by the judiciary, documented substantial climate risks.
This is a follow on to the posting I did on Nov. 25th. Cities and States Lead on Climate Change.
Since it seems the federal government is likely to be a less reliable partner on many fronts, it is essential that other sectors of society assume responsibility for more activities.
At forum, MIT community tackles tough ethical questions of climate change.
An MIT panel discussed The ethical challenges presented by climate change and the question of what individuals — and academic institutions like MIT — can do to affect change. “Science has performed its role adequately,” said Vice President for Research Maria Zuber, “[but] it cannot tell us what our obligations are to future generations. Determining how to respond to climate change is a question for all of us.”
Washington Won’t Have Last Word on Climate Change. according to Michael Bloomberg.
Last June in Beijing, during the U.S.-China Cities Summit on Climate Change, we announced a partnership between the Compact of Mayors and China’s Alliance of Peaking Pioneer Cities. Since then, the Compact of Mayors has joined forces with the European Union’s Covenant of Mayors, making the new Global Covenant of Mayors the single largest and most ambitious coalition of mayors on climate change.
In fact, if the Trump administration does withdraw from the Paris accord, I will recommend that the 128 U.S. mayors who are part of the Global Covenant of Mayors seek to join in its place.
Washington will not have the last word on the fate of the Paris agreement in the U.S. — mayors will, together with business leaders and citizens.
And here is a related article: With waning US leadership on climate, nonstate actors to play outsize role . Civil society and other groups, such as academics and businesses, stand to play a bigger role in how the countries of the world address climate change.
According to an analysis released Tuesday by the World Meteorological Organization, Superstorm Sandy was one of several “high-impact” global weather events over the last five years whose likelihood was increased by climate change.
Here is the direct link to the WMO Global Climate Report (32 pp).
Recovery Diva 