Responding to Climate Change: The Economy and Economics - Part of the Problem and Solution

The Climate Change Starter’s Guide provides an introduction and overview for education planners and practitioners on the wide range of issues relating to climate change and climate change education, including causes, impacts, mitigation and adaptation strategies, as well as some broad political and economic principles. The aim of this guide is to serve as a starting point for mainstreaming climate change education into school curricula. It has been created to enable education planners and practitioners to understand the issues at hand, to review and analyse their relevance to particular national and local contexts, and to facilitate the development of education policies, curricula, programmes and lesson plans. The guide covers four major thematic areas: 1. the science of climate change, which explains the causes and observed changes; 2. the social and human aspects of climate change including gender, health, migration, poverty and ethics; 3. policy responses to climate change including measures for mitigation and adaptation; and 4. education approaches including education for sustainable development, disaster reduction and sustainable lifestyles. A selection of key resources in the form of publication titles or websites for further reading is provided after each of the thematic sections

Building Community Resiliency Against Disasters

Disasters impact people in many different places around the world. The impact to communities by disasters is shaped by their constructed vulnerability. The goal of this research project was to better understand how the vulnerability and resiliency of different communities was shaped at six different sites across the U.S. and to construct a collection of best practices to raise the resiliency of populations and locations in the face of many different forms of possible disasters in the future. These concepts and conclusions were drawn from internet research of the chosen sites. Phase 1 of the research determined noteworthy sites and gathered details and data on each site to guide recommendations. Phase 2 gathered information by interviewing individuals with credible and meaningful insights to add to the research data. The sites chosen had disaster events that happened recently or were still occurring during the research in order to better understand the current issues disasters pose and to generate more creative and applicable solutions to these issues. Researching these sites provided a better understanding regarding the best ways to interact with vulnerable communities and raise their resiliency against disasters. It was found that if vulnerable communities had better access to resources, infrastructure, and decision-making agency, and locations had sustainable electricity sources that could operate through extreme weather, they would be more resilient to disasters. Politics plays a large role in shaping vulnerability and resiliency, particularly in how policies determine who has access to resources, power distribution, what disaster response occurs, and how disasters are perceived, showing that these specific areas of resiliency are important to focus on, but to be effective, they need support from the political realm. If these proposed recommendations are implemented, communities will be better able to withstand disruptive forces from the environment and mitigate harm, or possibly even fully prevent disasters from occurring

Examining How Federal Infrastructure Policy Could Help Mitigate and Adapt to Climate Change: Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Transp. & Infrastructure, 116th Cong., Feb. 26, 2019 (Statement of Vicki Arroyo)

As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in November, describes, the United States is already experiencing serious impacts of climate change—and the risks to communities all across the country are growing rapidly. These findings, along with those in the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)report, are clear and should be a call to immediate action. Even if we manage to limit planetary warming to just 2 degrees C, the world will still face increased chances of economic and social upheaval from more severe flooding, droughts, heatwaves, and other climate impacts as well as devastating environmental consequences, the IPCC report warns. The scientific consensus as described in the IPCC Special Report is that countries around the world must rapidly decarbonize their economies, cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and to near zero by 2050. Yet the current trends are going in the wrong direction. Despite our increasing understanding of the narrowing window to act, U.S. GHG emissions increased by 3.4% in 2018, according to a January report from the Rhodium Group. Clearly more action is needed. The encouraging news is that many states and cities have committed to taking action. They are taking steps to reduce emissions through legislation, executive orders, and pledges made in collaborations such as the US Climate Alliance –now covering roughly half the US population and GDP. In my testimony, I will be focusing on the transportation sector, which is the largest contributor of GHG emissions in the United States, and is already facing significant impacts from climate change. Federal standards have been important in increasing efficiency and reducing emissions, yet transportation-sector emissions are increasing as more vehicle miles are driven, more freight is transported in trucks, and airline travel continues to grow. Transportation is becoming an increasingly large share of U.S. economy-wide emissions as the power sector decarbonizes as a result of market shifts and policy. There is an urgent need, therefore, to transition to a low-carbon transportation system. Such a transition would not only reduce emissions and fight climate change, it also would bring additional important benefits, including protecting public health by reducing conventional air pollution, providing more mobility options, and driving innovation and economic growth through policy action and through public and private investment

Why Information Matters: A Foundation for Resilience

Embracing Change: The Critical Role of Information, a research project by the Internews' Center for Innovation & Learning, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, combines Internews' longstanding effort to highlight the important role ofinformation with Rockefeller's groundbreaking work on resilience. The project focuses on three major aspects:- Building knowledge around the role of information in empowering communities to understand and adapt to different types of change: slow onset, long-term, and rapid onset / disruptive;- Identifying strategies and techniques for strengthening information ecosystems to support behavioral adaptation to disruptive change; and- Disseminating knowledge and principles to individuals, communities, the private sector, policymakers, and other partners so that they can incorporate healthy information ecosystems as a core element of their social resilience strategies

Building Climate Resilience with Local Tools

The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, celebrated the grassroots environmental movement that began in the ‘60s and early ‘70s and ushered in the creation of a new legal framework for controlling pollution and addressing environmental concerns in the United States. However, more than fifty years later, some experts fear that the environmental progress achieved during the ‘70s and ‘80s has begun to stall as the United States and other nations experience broad economic hardship and must shift their focus to more immediate concerns. Therefore, even as the damaging effects of climate change threaten communities across the globe, the next major environmental movement is unlikely to happen at the federal or global level. Instead, state and local citizens and governments must address the increasing impacts of climate change by exploring short- and long-term approaches to land use planning and environmental regulation to prepare communities to be resilient to coming changes. This Article attempts to consolidate the various land use tools, such as planning, zoning, sustainable and green development, eminent domain, inverse condemnation, nuisance law, renewable energy incentives, and smart cities, which can help communities and individuals deal with past, current, and future impacts from climate change. These more localized tools present greater opportunities to prepare for climate change and continuing disasters, address systemic inequalities and disruptive histories, and build or rebuild resilient communities through mitigation and adaptation. This Article suggests that the principle of social ecological resilience is an effective concept to deal with climate change when our ecosystems are prone to disruption, promoting a land use system that manages risk through mitigation and adaptation. By incorporating principles of social-ecological resilience, sustainability, and adaptation into the circle of disaster risk management and other regulatory responses, communities can better prepare for the future while also establishing equitable laws and policies. The Article continues by assessing local land use concepts that are available to mitigate and adapt to climate change at the community level. While local governments have a vital role in establishing mitigation and adaptation strategies through a variety of land use regulations and policymaking, the participation of all citizens who live and work in the community––particularly the vulnerable ones––is also essential for creating planning and governance strategies that further a community’s resilience goals. This inclusive, community-wide approach provides a framework for assessing emergency response strategies at the local level, analyzing various compensation models to spread risks following a disaster, and facilitating cohesive and effective rebuilding efforts. Bearing all these tools in mind, this Article concludes that adaptive governance informed by resilience thinking at the local level will help build (and rebuild) communities capable of withstanding whatever the future holds

Returns on Resilience: The Business Case

Real estate projects designed to withstand the effects of climate change can provide substantial returns on investment and an array of other benefits, according to this new report. Case studies from 10 leading resilience projects are highlighted, ranging from a Boston hospital built to withstand coastal storms to a residential community in San Antonio built to withstand the effects of intense heat and drought. Other communities with highlighted case studies include Queens, N.Y.; Miami, FL; Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands; Nashville, TN; Tucson, AZ and Lancaster, CA.The study found an array of benefits from the climate-smart designs in addition to their strength against climate unpredictability. They include:Better energy efficiency. For example, multilayered impact-resistant windows save energy and reduce utility bills.Greater marketing, sales and leasing success driven by buyers' desires for well-built structures that will withstand harsh conditions and keep their value longer.Better financing options and lower insurance rates based on the reduced risk from resilient and hardened structures

From Paris to Pittsburgh: U.S. State and Local Leadership in an Era of Trump

States and cities have long been leaders on clean energy and climate policy. Their work has informed development of federal policies including motor vehicle standards and the Clean Power Plan. With the election of President Trump and the increasingly severe impacts of climate change, subnational leadership has become even more important and urgent. In response, many states and cities have pledged to enact new policies to mitigate the effects of climate change and help communities adapt. This Article focuses on recent developments in subnational leadership on both climate mitigation and adaptation to demonstrate the breadth and depth of engagement by leading states and cities. It provides just some examples that illustrate how, despite the Trump Administration’s best efforts to dismantle federal environmental policies, many states and cities are fighting federal rollbacks and moving forward with their own policies to address climate change, promote a clean energy economy, and prepare for the consequences of a changing climate. Taken together, these efforts are important in keeping the United States within reach of the Paris Agreement targets. However, broader participation and meaningful federal action will be necessary to meet international commitments and avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change

Solar+Storage for Low-and Moderate-Income Communities: A Guide for States and Municipalities

The Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA) has produced a new report for states and municipalities on solar+storage for low- and moderate-income (LMI) communities. The report explains how solar+storage can benefit LMI residents and describes a variety of policy tools for doing so, including grants, rebates, utility procurement standards, financing support, opening markets, and soft cost reduction