Syndrome is extremely rare. Hi. Friends dont have to be. This is joe. When youre connected, youre not alone. Cox, support cspan as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. Next, a discussion about the impact of Climate Change and possible solutions with fema administrator deanne criswell. She talks about why she believes Climate Change is the crisis of our generation. The virtual conversation runs over just 40 minutes. Hello. Welcome to Washington Post live. I am a National Environmental reporter. Were going to be discussing natural disasters, why they are becoming more frequent and more severe than in the past. And how the federal government is trying to prepare for more extreme weather events ahead. Later, we will hear from fema administrator deanne criswell. But first, i am joined today by two climate experts. The professor Michael Oppenheimer and the senior feller fellow, alice hill. Welcome to Washington Post live. Thank you. Michael milletts start with you lets start with you. More than 50 million americans are under severe heat alert, parts of texas have seen triple digit whether for many days in a row. Records are falling, can you explain why an event like this is so significant . White is the thing that scientists are telling us is likely to happen more often around the world . And what are the health risks and worries when we face events like this . The Greenhouse Gas primarily through fossil fuel burning building up in the atmosphere. The trump team, would otherwise trapped with escape space. Its a trend owing on for 150 years. Its accelerating because we are more those poor martha gases in the atmosphere. Dream a very slight extreme heat waves, the extra heat evaporates from the Ocean Surface and what goes up has to come down. You get more rainfall. Extreme levels of seawater at the coast, sea level is rising as the ocean water warms and is ice melts. That means extreme events that, events we rarely saw, if ever in the past are going to happen more frequently. Were not prepared to deal with that right now. Ellis, on the same line, this week alice on the same line, we have seen 40 Million People in the northeast on the Central Plains at risk of severe storms. Summertime there is bad weather, but as a nation, the number of really damaging storms, socalled billiondollar disasters has been rising sharply in recent years. What is your biggest concern when you look at the increased extreme weather and how it stretches to almost every part of the country . The biggest worry is, we are simply not prepared. Were seeing a climate that did not exist for before. Everything we built is built to the climate of the past. We routinely see infrastructure that is inadequate. The electric grid is a wonderful example. It routinely fails. Power outages are up. That leads to serious consequences for public health, people dependent on machines to thrive, or for the economy. Businesses close. Kids have to go home. There is no air conditioning. We are seeing that we simply dont have what we need for a climate worsened environment. Were sorely behind on the landuse choices, the Building Codes, the type of changes that would keep us much safer in a harder, more dangerous world hotter, more dangerous world. Lets go back to michael. The nonprofit, 1st street foundation, just released new data that finds Climate Change is fueling more devastating rain around parts of the country. Dataset to only and that is set to only worsen. One finding from the study found that, roughly 20 of the country, what was maybe one day what used to be a one and 100 year storm may happen every 25 years. You tweeted that the news was another way fema is behind on protecting americans. Can you talk through what you meant by that . The primary problem, is, fema does a good job most of the time on cleaning up after a disaster. Its a congressional mandate. With Climate Change, you have to plan in advance, i dont mean a day into a day or two in advance, i mean decades. Building a resilient society, to take your example, improving drainage systems around the country, particularly in urban areas takes decades. We cant afford to do it all at once in a year or two. That means we need a lot of planning. That has not been femas job in the past. The federal government as a whole has not been set up, until some initiatives in the Biden Administration, to deal with taking a long time in advance in terms of Climate Change. The climate has not been changing in significant way for a long time, then recently, in recent decades, the changes are due to the buildup of the Greenhouse Gases have become noticeable. We need a reorganization in the federal government and in the relationship between the federal government and the states. Most of the money to do things like build water supply systems, filled coastal defense, build dams, a lot of that comes from the federal government. The implementation in large measure is either in the army corps of engineers which has its own set of your these or at the state and local levels. They have a responsibility but not the money. The federal government has the money, but it has not had the mandate to think ahead. That is starting to change. Its not changing fast enough. We need more centralization of the responsibility for Climate Adaptation and resilient building. We need it fast. Speaking of adaptation and building of infrastructure, alice, i covered the 1st street report this week one thing that jumped out, the point being that the governments current precipitation estimates do not capture what is actually happening any longer as the Climate Changes, but also that this comes at a time when the nation is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into new infrastructure. We know that,noah is working on estimates that will fact or in Climate Change factor in Climate Change but those are years away. Do you worry that we are going to end up in this moment that we are in, building roads, bridges, and other infrastructure that might not be adequate for the climate of the future or for the present . There is a huge risk that we will take this once in a generation amount of money and spend it in a way where we dont build the bridge high enough for the floodwaters, the road does not have a wide enough Drainage Ditch for the precipitation that falls. We base our building practices in the u. S. On model Building Code. Those model Building Codes also rely on the calculations of pass rain that we have had. Those model Building Codes, even if they are the latest codes, do not yet reflect the future risk. In the u. S. , because of the way we are set up and the decisions of how and where building occurs rests with state or local government, more than half the state, 40 some states have a very low level of code to disaster resistance. Thats to the events that occurred in the past. Not events in the future. Were also seeing much Greater Development in coastal areas. 40 of our population lives in a county along the coast. That is only 10 of the landmass. But that area is vulnerable to more intense storms as well as sea level rise. We are seeing lots of people moving into this wildland urban interface, which faces much higher wildfire risk. They are also vulnerable. Then we will have infrastructure that is built to out low standards. We dont have good vulnerability standard assessments yet about what these future risks will look like, as we make the choices about where infrastructure should be placed. Should we be building a bridge there . That is a fundamental question lay the face of climate changing in the face of climate changing . But we dont have that information for communities to build off of. Maybe a wealthy community, but many communities do not have the access to it to make the wise choices with the dollars coming very quickly with a lot of pressure to spend them. Alice is speaking about different hazards. I want to go into that as well. As you know, Climate Change is not just affecting rain and hurricanes, but its supercharging any number of whether related disasters such as wildfires, drought, heat waves in parts of the country we are seeing this week. I wonder if you can talk about what you think the government about whether the government is prepared for the challenges, where would you prioritize to prepare for the challenges and our individual communities prepared are individual communities prepared . Given some of the uncertainties and lack of information alice cited, we have to act anyway. Having a fully built resilient country for what is going to happen in 2050 means we have to start now. We clearly dont have a fully resilient country for what is happening now. Have a long way to go. That means not waiting and planning the biggest most expensive things. It also means doing things that we can get in place cheaper, like preserving wetlands along the coast, maybe extending them. Or building up dunes that had been destroyed by various kinds of development. It means grappling with the most common cause of climate related mortality, which is heat related deaths. We privatized the business of dealing with extreme heat. We tell people, go out and buy an air conditioner. What happens if you can afford one . What happens if you dont have access to the very minor role that government plays in keeping people from extreme heat which are cooling centers . A lot are built in places where the most vulnerable populations, people who are poor, sick, people who have been disadvantaged various ways, do not have access because they would have the to drive a mile, they dont have a car they dont know a lot of people who can just come pick them up. We have to fix society and the way it is dealing with people who do not have the resources to help themselves. We have to start with these things which are quite obviously building cooling centers in the right place. Or fixing drainage systems. When you do that, think about the amount of rainfall you will have to accommodate in 30 years. You dont want to come back every five years. The first thing we do is look for the obvious. While we are doing that, we for the bigger things like surge. Barriers. Which we dont know if we need in some of our cities but we might and once you decide to build one, it takes a decade or more to get it done. We have a lot to do. Implement the easy and cheaper and effective stuff now. The stuff that can save lives at a relatively low cost, but be planning for the bigger stuff as you move into the future. Then there are probably some big angst big things in some places that we cannot wait for. The federal government has to help localities. Michael just mentioned the very real reality that a lot of times the most severe climate impacts fall on those least equipped to deal with it. I wonder if you have any more to add about how you think about whether the nation and how the nation ensures that the funding and the resources that do exist to adapt, to prepare for extreme weather disasters and to recover from them that it actually reaches the places needed, low income, minority, Rural Communities that may be do not have resources as larger cities. How should we think about that as a country . Well, it should be a priority. I believe the Biden Administration has put great emphasis on making sure that the federal aid available is reaching the most vulnerable. There has been some studies that show the past eight divided by fema has benefited richer, white people than it has benefited poor black people who tend to be, because of racial profiling and redlining, located in floodplains. We have many poor, marginalized communities who are physically at greater risk because of historical discrimination in the united states. The Biden Administration has been looking at how do we provide some kind of extra aid if those people want to relocate . Fema runs a bio program, 60,000 homes have been bought out to allow people to move out of floodplain, to a higher area. Recently, that program, 70 of the people took advantage of that program moved to higher ground. We dont want people to take the money and moved to someplace that is vulnerable to flooding. We need to look at, how do we help people who are already there who do not have the means to leave, leave. We need to think of insurance clauses going up. Were on the edge of a major disruption of property insurance availability. We see disruption in the Flood Insurance which is provided by the federal government. Rates increase to reflect the growing risk. Some people cannot afford those new premiums. How can we help those new people to be insured as they go forward, because they are sitting in an area that is more at risk than many others . It has to be a big focus. Unfortunately, it is going to be a huge cost. We talked about how much it will cost to transition to green energy. This cost to prepare the united states, including things like wildfire smoke spreading across the midwest and the northeast, something our models have not been talking about. Wildfire smoke from another nation. How do we get ready to have the proper filtration system, the places where people can be indoor safely and cover the Economic Loss that comes from people not going to sporting events, concerts getting counseled canceled. All the impacts we have not planned for or accounted for that we need to get busy for. Those impacts hit the most vulnerable the hardest because they dont have the resources to take care of reducing risk themselves. Im going to come back to you. This is probably the last question. I wanted to zoom out from the focus on the united states. You made the point early on that it comes back to the fact that we as a world continued to put Greenhouse Gases into the atmosphere and that is worsening all of these problems. The two questions i have on that , there has been a lot of promises made to do more to cut Greenhouse Gases in recent years. Yet, the emissions continue to rise or at least plateau. What must change or what has to change that Scientists Say need to change . And what do you hope will . What do wealthy countries such as the u. S. Owe to other nations that are feeling the same kind of impact if not worse than what we are seeing in america, but did little to nothing to cause the problem . The basic bottom line is, if we dont rein in the gas emissions we will never adapt or get resilient fast enough or effectively enough to catch up with the Climate Change. Its going to run ahead of us. I cant imagine what the world looks like in the few decades if we sit here let it happen. You know, what is going on, is that most countries had made some serious commitments to reduce their greenhouse emissions and their contribution to warming. Theyre not living to the commitments fully. But a lot of countries are trying. On the good side, there is an Energy Revolution going on in the u. S. And elsewhere. Were are making a transition to less carbon intensive energy, less Energy Produced by coal burning that produces carbon dioxide. Were in a transition to driving electric cars that eventually will be powered with renewable energy. Hopefully entirely one of these days. Its not happening fast enough. Governments, now that they have taken the first steps, have to increase their level of ambition. Imagine what the world looks like if Climate Change runs away and we dont have any chance to catch up. Will be dealing with these events, not every hundred years or 10 years, but several times a year as it has been calculated for coastal flooding. Theres no choice. Im sure countries are realizing that, slowly. Were at a pivot point. We have an Energy Revolution going on on the one hand. On the other, we have countries lagging, and starting to reduce and increase their commitment and actions to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions. Being an optimist in life, it has a good chance of coming together and producing and a slowing of the Climate Change. And avoiding the kinds of outcomes that we just will never be able to deal with effectively. That means saving lives in the long term and saving money. One report argued that for every dollar spent in advance, you save three or four dollars after the fact, after the disasters have happened. It pasted think about this now, from the point of view of adaptation and the view of cutting emissions as soon as possible. Ok. Well. I think we will have to leave it there for today. Michael, thank you very much, we appreciate your time. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. For those of you who are just joining us, welcome to Washington Post live. Im a National Environmental reporter for the post. I am joined by the fema administrator deanne criswell. Welcome to Washington Post live. Thanks. It is great to be here today. I want to start with some of your own words. I noticed you have repeatedly called Climate Change our number one threat, would you take a moment to explain what you mean when you say that . How is Climate Change complicating your job and the work of fema . I think that is a great way to start this conversation. This is truly what i think is the crisis of our generation. We continue to experience and observe an increase in the number of Severe Weather