Resilience
States and localities are having to adjust to a changing climate, establishing new policies, rules and guidelines relating to energy, land use and water rights, as well as responding to emergencies triggered by more intense storms, floods and wildfires.
Most of Alabama may be covered in forests, but asphalt still reigns on school playgrounds. The Alabama Forestry Foundation wants to change that.
All along the Eastern Seaboard, concerns about industrial wind turbines continue to grow. There are better ways to generate clean, reliable, less costly power.
Gov. Greg Abbott declared an emergency declaration on Tuesday for 60 counties as the Smokehouse Creek Fire continued to spread. As of 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, the fire had burned 850,000 acres and was just 3 percent contained.
Land subsidence is making major seafront metropolises from New York to Jakarta more vulnerable to rising waters. Local decisionmakers need to account for it.
Umatilla Electric Cooperative is responsible for 1.8 million tons of carbon emissions annually despite having just 16,000 customers. One of those customers is Amazon, which has data centers in areas where renewable energy access is limited.
Louisiana is one of the nation's leading oil and gas producers. The state is now getting seriously into wind as well.
Returning predators to wild places is a good starting point for dealing with our biodiversity crisis. Colorado can be a model for what states can do to repair their ecosystems.
A plant in Michigan might become the first to reopen after closing.
Of the eight Southern California counties that were under a state of emergency during the most recent storm, only 52,820 homes and businesses were covered by flood policies.
A new report studied 197 Category 5 tropical cyclones between 1980 and 2021 and it identified five storms that hypothetically could be classified as Category 6, including a cyclone that had wind speeds up to 215 mph.
In places as varied as Tucson and Bangkok, ways are being found to replenish shrinking aquifers. It’s a matter of “water consciousness.”
The state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority has advised Gov. Jeff Landry that he should declare a state of emergency for coastal Louisiana. This would prod agencies to advance the state’s 50-year Coastal Master Plan.
The Ogallala Aquifer, which spans eight states along the Great Plains, is the only reliable water source for parts of its region. Farmers have pumped its groundwater for decades and, as it dwindles, rural towns need to preserve their sole water source.
“Severe repetitive loss properties” are homes that have flooded twice, with damage totaling the property, or flooded four times with at least $5,000 in damages each time. But residents aren’t allowed to know where those properties are exactly.
Both industries want to utilize the state’s offshore property for multimillion-dollar projects. It’s unlikely the two can coexist.
The Inflation Reduction Act includes $1 billion to help states implement modern building codes. The CEO of the International Code Council outlines both obvious and underappreciated reasons they are essential.
Lawmakers should make charging convenient for everyone and minimize the environmental impact of electric vehicle batteries.
After the U.S. Supreme Court stripped federal oversight of millions of acres of wetlands, the financial maintenance of those lands now falls to the states. It could take years for them to address the loss of federal standards, if they do it at all.
The state’s Individual Disaster Assistance Grant Program has paid $227,675 in response to storm damage. FEMA estimated the state’s spring flood damage at $6.3 million. As of Dec. 4, crop insurers had paid out more than $248 million due to drought.
Between 2000 and 2020, millions of Americans have moved away from high-flood-risk areas. When between 5 to 10 percent of properties in a census block are at risk of flooding, people start to move out of the area, even despite attractive amenities.
Seattle neighborhoods within two miles of Amazon’s “last mile” facilities were exposed to twice as much traffic from trucks and other delivery vehicles than other communities, with a disproportionate impact on communities of color.
The city’s new law will apply to approximately 4,100 buildings that are 20,000 square feet or larger. These account for only 3 percent of all buildings in the city but produce over one-third of total building emissions.
A new report found that the state’s methane output last year continued its decadelong downward trend, confirming that Permian Basin oil and natural gas producers are successfully lowering emissions.
The California governor and his administration are moving forward with a plan to build a 45-mile water tunnel between the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, even as the project has received heavy pushback from environmental groups.
The summer of 2023 was the hottest on record globally as was the 12-month period ending Oct. 31. Nationally, 1,784 people have died from heat-related causes so far this year, almost double the amount in 2018.
The fifth National Climate Assessment found that the Midwest region faces threats caused by rising temperatures, drought and extreme precipitation. Since 1980, the region has incurred over $49 billion in economic damage due to flooding.
Transportation emissions accounted for 35 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the state, the most of any sector. The Advanced Clean Cars II mandate will require 51 percent of new car sales to be electric in 2027.
The comprehensive report found that the state has taken among the fewest climate adaptation and mitigation actions of all the states and is just one of three states whose carbon intensity of their economies increased from 2010 to 2021.
Swinging between drought and flooding, the river needs coordinated oversight. But nobody is setting priorities or getting scores of federal agencies, states, towns, tribal nations and NGOs to sing from the same hymnal.
The Peterbilt 520 EV emerged onto the streets of outer Northeast Portland recently, becoming the city’s second-largest EV, behind the Fire Bureau’s electric fire engine. The truck cost $675,000, nearly double a diesel-powered one.
The massive, 2,000-page report is only issued every four to five years and outlines the major climate issues impacting regions and communities across the nation. Here are five main points of the assessment.
