Climate policy used to be seen as either concentrating efforts on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions or adapting to a changing environment. Many environmentalists focused on the former, with the latter as a secondary concern.
However, as the process over agreeing on mitigation policy in domestic and international areas remains deeply political, economic, and slow, adaptation policy is becoming an increasingly important issue.
In a new RFF report, Reforming Institutions and Managing Extremes, Molly Macauley, Raymond Kopp, Richard Morgenstern, and Daniel Morris look at adaptation in the United States and offer recommendations to better incorporate adaptation into U.S. policy.
I sat down with Daniel Morris, a fellow in RFF’s Center for Climate and Electricity Policy, to discuss adaptation and his findings and recommendations on climate adaptation policy in the United States.
Download the podcast from iTunes here.
Here are some highlights:
“It’s a really complex issue and what we try to do with this report is show the complexity - not by trying to tackle everything all at once – but by picking concrete examples that show what policy can be enacted now and how that can yield positive benefits in the future.”
“Current capital investments in infrastructure were designed with the assumption that climate was essentially static and while it would fluctuate over time, it wouldn’t change too much…Now we have a shifting climactic regime which means that those assumptions are no longer true. That raises the question of one- where is the climate moving overall in different areas, and how do you adjust to that? Those types of questions are going to have to be embedded in infrastructure development and how cities and governments operate. It doesn’t have to be specifically adaptation-related funding but it can and should be embedded in other federal policies.”
“There’s not a cohesive strategy for the country to deal with climate adaptation and our hope is that this report will help move the federal government and federal actors toward developing something more like that.”
“One of the areas where the government can act is reforming institutions and getting incentives right… We recommend reforming subsidy programs (such as National Flood Insurance Program) to better reflect the actual climate risk that consumers face when they make these choices…. Risks from climate need to be better incorporated in price signals.”
“What we say in our second area - Improving Regulation and Management - is just pointing out that there are a lot of inefficiencies in federal regulatory statutes and federal management structures now, and they’re not well suited to deal with adaptation problems. They should be reviewed and perhaps restructured in a way that allows them to be more flexible to the needs of people dealing with climate impacts, and it’s not going to be a one size fits all recommendation… But the overall goal is to embed thinking about climate adaptation into the thinking of policymakers and encourage them to reform their management and regulatory structure such that it is a better response to adaptation issues.”
