Mother Jones
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Just a few days after the Treasury Department announced it would no longer back funding for most overseas coal-fired power plants, today President Obama issued a new executive order that lays the groundwork for how the US will prepare for climate change within its borders. The order is the latest in a series of policies stemming from the president’s Climate Action Plan; earlier this year, for example, the administration issued new greenhouse gas emission limits for power plants and cars. But rather than addressing carbon pollution, per se, today’s plan focuses on how cities and states can prepare for the climate impacts already on the way.
“We need to work on bipartisan solutions, and put politics aside,” said Mayor James Brainard of Carmel, Indiana, a Republican who is one of the local officials taking part in a new advisory task force created by today’s order. “The climate is changing, and we need to be prepared for it.”
So what does the order call for? Here’s what you need to know:
Prioritize climate-ready projects: In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, many civic planning experts called for future infrastructure plans—for bridges, roads, housing development, and the like—to emphasize climate resilience (a popular buzzword among climate wonks that means being able to quickly bounce back from disasters).
Today’s order requires federal agencies to support and incentivize “smarter, more climate-resilient investments” through grants, guidance, and other forms of assistance. These could include moving roads away from crumbling coasts or requiring seaside homes to be built higher above the floodplain. The order also directs agencies to “identify and seek to remove or reform barriers that discourage” resilient investments—for example, policies that currently encourage cities to apply weak rebuilding standards after natural disasters.
“What we’re seeing here is a promise that resources that might have been dedicated just to rebuilding, there would now be a mandate to rebuild in a more resilient fashion,” said Rachel Cleetus, a climate economist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The order gives a nod to natural systems, too: Federal agencies are required to look for ways to protect places like watersheds, marshes (which are themselves an important protective barrier from sea level rise), and forests from climate impacts and are directed deliver specific recommendations to the White House within nine months.
Source:
Why This Red-State Republican Mayor Backs Obama on Climate Change
