A Changing Climate Means A Changing Society. The Island Press Urban Resilience Project, Supported By The Kresge Foundation And The JPB Foundation, Is Committed To A Greener, Fairer Future.​ This Article Was Originally Published October 21, 2019 in The Progressive.

Seven years ago this month, Hurricane Sandy pummeled the east coast of the United States, killing more than 150 people and causing about $70 billion in damage to homes, businesses and infrastructure.

Governments and individuals responded with an outpouring of support for the devastated communities and funds for relief and rebuilding. The federal government alone provided a remarkable $50 billion in aid. 

However, the country missed a golden opportunity presented by Hurricane Sandy to rethink and restructure policies and programs to better prepare for deadly and costly impacts of storms along the nation’s coasts.  

In 2015, the Army Corps of Engineers released a comprehensive report on Hurricane Sandy. It considered coastal flooding from storms and gradually rising sea levels, calling for a “paradigm shift in how we work, live, travel, and play in a sustainable manner as the extent of the area at very high risk of coastal storm damage expands.” 

Since that report, the country has endured more devastating hurricanes: Harvey, Irma, and Maria in 2017; Florence and Michael in 2018. New science points to more intense coastal storms as the climate warms. Estimates of future sea level rise, which will steadily push storms farther inland and inundate bigger swaths of land, are trending upward. 

States including New York and California, and communities including Miami and Boston, are making progress in preparing for these risks. But the country as a whole has not embraced the call for a “paradigm shift” in how coastal risk is managed. 

What should the country do now to protect the coasts?

First, we need to treat coastal storms and rising sea levels as a single problem. Planning for one risk without thinking about the other can lead to a fragmented and ineffective response.

For example, elevating buildings is a reasonable strategy when applied to the problem of temporary flooding from storms, but it fails when rising seas bring permanent inundation. 

In addition, federal programs for flood insurance and disaster relief urgently need reform. The flood insurance program encourages people to stay in risky coastal places that will eventually be inundated by rising seas. Disaster programs should refocus on smarter investments to avoid disasters in the first place. 

Although some state and local governments are coping with coastal flood challenges, others are not. The federal government should provide significant new funding for planning and implementation. 

We also need to invest in planning to protect coastal infrastructure and ecosystems. The federal government can work with state and local governments to protect or relocate critical infrastructure, such as military bases, transportation assets, and water facilities. Ecosystems, such as beaches and wetlands, need space to migrate landward and the federal government should be an advocate for these natural resources. 

Finally, coastal homeowners need help to avoid devastating financial losses as growing flood risks drive down property values. The federal government should buy risky property well ahead of rising sea levels. Current owners should have the option to stay until the property becomes unsafe—paying rent but not flood insurance premiums. 

Hurricane Sandy was a traumatic experience that millions of Americans consider best forgotten. But as the pain of loss and hardship fades, so can the sense of urgency for rethinking our relationship to the coast. Now is the time to renew and strengthen the national effort to prepare for growing coastal flood risks.

Dating back to late February, about 550,000 acres of land have been underwater in the rural Yazoo backwater area of the lower Mississippi delta. About half of the acreage is farmland, creating devastating effects in a region where agriculture is the lifeblood of the economy. While flooding in the region is common, this year’s floodwater has hung around longer than ever. From

A Changing Climate Means A Changing Society. The Island Press Urban Resilience Project, Supported By The Kresge Foundation And The JPB Foundation, Is Committed To A Greener, Fairer Future.​ This Article Was Originally Published October 25, 2019 in The Hill.

The federal government faces a dilemma over how to prepare the American coast for the rising seas and supercharged storms of a warming climate. These twin threats cost the government billions in disaster aid, while endangering communities, critical infrastructure and priceless ecosystems.  

To date, the standard prescription for coastal flooding has been structural protection in the form of seawalls or beach nourishment. Unfortunately, the coastal flood problem gets bigger every year with no end in sight. 

A policy of “seawalls for everyone” would be financially unsustainable, would raise challenging social justice concerns and would impose huge impacts on coastal ecosystems such as beaches and wetlands. The commonsense solution for the long term is to gradually step back from risky coastal places. However, most people living along the coast want to stay right where they are.  

Not surprisingly, faced with this dilemma, the federal government has fallen back on doing what it knows. In response to three major hurricanes in 2017, Congress provided over one hundred billion dollars in aid to communities. 

Helping recover from major disasters is clearly a core function of the federal government. But the certainty of more massive storms and rising seas should also prompt a rethinking of policies and programs to better prepare the country for these risks. Here are five places to start.

First, we need to treat coastal storms and rising sea level as a single problem. Planning for one risk without thinking about the other can lead to fragmentary and ineffective response strategies. For example, elevating buildings is a reasonable strategy when applied to the problem of temporary flooding from storms, but it fails when rising seas bring permanent inundation. 

In addition, existing federal programs for flood insurance and disaster relief urgently need reform. The flood insurance program encourages people to stay in risky coastal places that will eventually be overtaken by rising seas. Disaster programs do a good job of providing relief after a storm but need to refocus on smarter investments to avoid disasters in the first place. 

Some state and local governments are making progress in coping with coastal flood challenges, but the federal government should provide significant new funding for both planning and implementation. These plans need to reflect local needs and conditions but be guided by national frameworks. For example, states and communities need help to evaluate tradeoffs between structural protection (e.g., seawalls) and phased relocation of homes, businesses and infrastructure as seas rise. 

We also need to invest in planning to protect coastal infrastructure and ecosystems. The federal government needs to work with state and local governments to protect or relocate critical infrastructure, such as military bases, transportation assets and water facilities. Ecosystems, such as beaches and wetlands, need space to migrate landward and the federal government should be an advocate for these natural resources.  

Finally, coastal homeowners need help to avoid devastating financial losses as growing flood risks drive down property values. The federal government should buy risky property well ahead of rising sea levels. Current owners should have the option to stay until the property becomes unsafe, paying rent but not flood insurance premiums.  

The fear of large expenditures and hard choices tempt decision makers to delay action for another day, especially when major storms are uncertain from year to year and inundation by rising seas will occur over decades.   

But delayed action will exact a steep cost in lives and property. The population living right along the edge of the coast is expected to almost double by 2060. Prompt action is needed to steer new development away from areas at risk of inundation. Allowing these areas to grow would make fixing the problem later much more difficult and expensive. 

In addition, some new policies are best implemented over the long term. People have made major investments in coastal property and policies encouraging a transition to safer places will work best if we give people the time needed to adjust to a new understanding of risks and avoid financial losses.   

The challenges of protecting the coast from more severe storms and rising seas are intimidating but not insurmountable. Prompt action now will save money and lives. 

A Changing Climate Means A Changing Society. The Island Press Urban Resilience Project, Supported By The Kresge Foundation And The JPB Foundation, Is Committed To A Greener, Fairer Future.​ This Article Was Originally Published November 6, 2019 in The Revelator.

A century from now, the U.S. coastline will look very different from how it looks today. In the coming decades our beaches, wetlands and estuaries along the shore will be lost or degraded by a one-two punch of more severe storms and rising seas. This combination will drive communities inland and force the relocation of critical infrastructure. The consequences for fish, wildlife and ecosystems could also be devastating.

We’re already getting a glimpse of how bad things can get.

The three major storms of 2017 — Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria — caused more than 3,000 deaths and some $275 billion in damages. The longer-term ecosystem impacts of major storms like these are harder to quantify, but no less important. These include shifting of beaches and dunes, saltwater intrusion to freshwater systems, ecosystems contaminated by polluted floodwaters, and damage to habitat, oyster beds and coral. Rising sea levels are steadily pushing storm damage farther inland.

The country has done surprisingly little to meet this daunting challenge. As I wrote in my book A New Coast: Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas, there are steps that need to be taken now to help protect coastal ecosystems and the communities that depend on them. 

Measuring Loss

A first step toward better protecting beaches and coastal wetlands is to understand the risks they face from storms and rising seas.

Scientists predict that as the climate warms, coastal storms will become more intense and melting glaciers and ice sheets could push global sea level up four feet by 2100. Along the U.S. coast, the rise in sea level could be 15 to 25 percent higher due to land subsidence and ocean dynamics.

What will this mean for ecosystems? It’s hard to know exactly.

There is currently no national assessment of how ecosystems along the U.S. coast will change. What little we do know points to serious decline in the health of these resources.

For example, a study of the Gulf of Mexico region predicted these losses of coastal wetlands by 2060: 37 percent in Texas, 32 percent in Florida, and 26 percent in Alabama and Mississippi. A 2017 study by the U.S. Geological Survey found that up to 31 percent of California beaches would be lost in the event of 3 feet of sea-level rise and 67 percent in the event of 6 feet.

As beaches and wetlands are inundated or migrate inland, some of the ecosystem services they provide will be lost. We are likely to see diminished abundance and diversity of fish and wildlife. Other benefits of coastal ecosystems that are at risk include protection from the impacts of storm surges, protection of water quality, mitigation of coastal erosion, and sequestration of carbon.

The effects of more severe storms and rising oceans on fish and wildlife are not well studied, but the Center for Biological Diversity (publisher of The Revelator) reported that 233 threatened and endangered species in 23 coastal states — roughly 1 out of 6 of the country’s protected species — are at risk from sea-level rise.

Manmade Threats

In addition to suffering damages from storms and gradual inundation by rising seas, coastal ecosystems may fall victim to human efforts to protect communities and infrastructure from these risks.

Built structures such as seawalls,  damage beach systems and can prevent healthy functioning of marshes and wetlands. Living shorelines, which use natural materials such as plants, sand, or rock to stabilize the shoreline, are an improvement over conventional concrete seawalls but can have some of the same damaging impacts. Beach restoration projects can also harm the ecosystem of the beach as well as the sites from which sand is taken.

Still another manmade threat is the failure to provide space for coastal ecosystems to migrate landward as seas rise. As the inevitability of stepping back from the current coastline is better recognized, land areas that are safe from storms and rising seas will be committed to meet human needs. Ecosystems could lose out on this valuable space.

Strengthening Protections

So what do we do?

The good news is, we already have a lot of the tools and programs we need to make sure that coastal ecosystems are protected as the climate warms. For example, the Coastal Zone Management Program supports state planning for coastal protection. But existing programs need to be strengthened and expanded.

A key first step should be a careful mapping of existing coastal ecosystems and of the potential for successful landward shift of these resources. With such an atlas in hand, governments and nonprofit organizations can identify upland areas that can become coastal ecosystems over time. Special attention needs to be given to mapping fish and wildlife and assessing ecosystem services, so that gains or losses can be tracked and migration corridors protected as these ecosystems shift geographically.

Some coastal mapping initiatives are moving in this direction. For example, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has developed a Regional Coastal Resilience Assessment that identifies “resilience hubs” and other information to guide local conservation planning. Likewise, the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy includes a “blueprint” that identifies places for conservation and restoration.

When it comes to diminishing manmade threats, some states have restricted the use of seawalls and similar hard protection structures. Development on some coastal wetlands is limited by the permit program under section 404 of the Clean Water Act. Nonprofit organizations like the Nature Conservancy are working to protect these resources though acquisition or purchase of easements.

But that won’t be enough.

Protecting both existing ecosystems, and the areas these ecosystems will migrate to, will require major new investment in planning and significant new funding to implement plans.

Federal agencies will need to work with state and local governments and nonprofit organizations to successfully manage a long-term landward migration of coastal ecosystems. This will require creating a planning process able to make hard decisions to find space to allow ecosystems to migrate inland.

States and localities also need to consider alternatives to seawalls and other coastal protection structures that pose barriers to inland migration of coastal ecosystems. Can flood waters from coastal storms be accommodated by elevating buildings or critical infrastructure? Is the permanent inundation that comes with rising seas better managed in the long-run by stepping back from the shoreline to safer ground? The federal government needs to provide the science, policy guidance, and funding that state and local governments need to cope with these questions.

Any effort to protect coastal ecosystems from more severe storms and rising seas has a better chance of success if it occurs in the context of a larger effort to protect communities and infrastructure from these risks. For example, existing federal policies related to flood insurance and disaster relief need to be updated to reduce incentives to locate in risky coastal places. This will reduce future demand for structural protection that harms ecosystems. New national policies to require disclosure of flood and sea-level rise risks to a property at time of sale would also help steer investment away from risky areas.

Finally, the federal government should help coastal homeowners avoid devastating financial losses as growing flood risks drive down property values. For example, the government could buy risky property well ahead of rising sea levels and allow current owners to stay — paying rent but not flood insurance premiums — until the property becomes unsafe. Such a program would give these homeowners financial freedom to move to safer ground, reduce the chance of widespread structural protection projects, and expand options for landward migration of ecosystems as well as communities.

To increase the odds that healthy coastal ecosystems will line the U.S. coast 100 years from now, governments and nonprofit organizations need to act fast to ramp up existing protection efforts and be effective advocates for these threatened resources.

A Changing Climate Means A Changing Society. The Island Press Urban Resilience Project, Supported By The Kresge Foundation And The JPB Foundation, Is Committed To A Greener, Fairer Future.​ This Article Was Originally Published November 21, 2019 in the American Society of Adaptation Professionals' Blog.

Major coastal storms commonly kill hundreds of people and wreck homes, businesses and communities resulting in billions of dollars in damages. And in a warming climate, more intense storms and rising seas will expand risks to life and property.

The country has provided hundreds of billions of dollars to recover from recent coastal storms but done nowhere near enough to prepare for the more damaging storms and coastal inundation that are coming. ASAP members will play a critical role in helping to get the country on track to managing these risks.

What should we do to rethink our approach to protecting the coasts? Over the past several years, I reviewed the literature and talked to experts on this critical topic. In my book, A New Coast: Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas, I suggest five places to start.

First, we need to treat coastal storms and rising sea level as a single problem. Planning for one risk without thinking about the other can lead to fragmentary and ineffective response strategies. For example, elevating buildings is a reasonable strategy when applied to the problem of temporary flooding from storms but it fails when rising seas bring permanent inundation.

In addition, existing federal programs for flood insurance and disaster relief urgently need reform. The flood insurance program encourages people to stay in risky coastal places that will eventually be overtaken by rising seas. Disaster programs do a good job of providing relief after a storm but need to refocus on smarter investments to avoid disasters in the first place.

Some state and local governments are making progress in coping with coastal flood challenges, but the federal government should provide significant new funding for both planning and implementation. These plans need to reflect local needs and conditions but be guided by national frameworks. For example, states and communities need help to evaluate tradeoffs between structural protection (e.g., seawalls) and phased relocation of homes, businesses, and infrastructure as seas rise.

We also need to invest in planning to protect coastal infrastructure and ecosystems. The federal government needs to work with state and local governments to protect or relocate critical infrastructure, such as military bases, transportation assets, and water facilities. Ecosystems, such as beaches and wetlands, need space to migrate landward and the federal government should be an advocate for these natural resources.

Finally, coastal homeowners need help to avoid devastating financial losses as growing flood risks drive down property values. The federal government should buy risky property well ahead of rising sea levels. Current owners should have the option to stay until the property becomes unsafe, paying rent but not flood insurance premiums.

A warming climate will bring stronger storms and rising seas to the nation’s coasts. Now is the time to reform and strengthen the national effort to prepare for growing coastal risks.

This Article Was Originally Published November 15, 2019 in The Center for Climate & Security's Blog.

The United States Department of Defense is coming to grips with the implications of climate change for national security, including the threat that more severe coastal storms and rising sea level pose to domestic military bases.

Because military bases depend on surrounding communities, decisions about how to protect or relocate military facilities need to be made in cooperation with state and local officials. More importantly, a determined effort by the Department of Defense to prepare bases for storms and rising seas could prove to be a catalyst that prompts the country as a whole to better recognize and respond to these risks.

Impacts of Storms and Rising Seas on Defense Facilities

Major coastal storms commonly kill hundreds of people and wreck homes, businesses and communities. Defense facilities are also at risk. In 2018, Hurricane Michael caused catastrophic damage to Tyndall Air Force Base near Panama City, Florida. Estimates of rebuilding costs are between $3.6 and $5 billion. Just a month earlier, Hurricane Florence damaged hundreds of homes on Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune on the coast of North Carolina. Scientists predict that, as the climate warms, coastal storms will become more intense.

A warmer climate also is melting glaciers and ice sheets and accelerating the rate of sea level rise. Global sea level is likely to rise between 2 and 4 feet by 2100 and continue rising for centuries after that. The National Intelligence Council estimated that some 30 domestic defense installations, especially naval bases such as the Norfolk Naval Station, are at risk from rising seas.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) evaluated eighteen domestic military bases and concluded that by 2100 nearly half of the sites studied are likely to lose 25 percent or more of their land area in the event of about three feet of sea level rise and 50 percent or more in the event of about six feet. Some of the hardest hit installations include Naval Air Station Key West in Florida, Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia, and the Marine Corps Recruit Depot on Parris Island in South Carolina.

Military Response to Storms and Rising Seas

In 2018, a Military Expert Panel made up of retired flag rank officers working with the Center for Climate and Security concluded that “sea level rise, coupled with projections of increasingly frequent and intense storms, present significant risks to critical coastal military installations at home and abroad.” Still, the panel noted that “despite these strategic concerns, a comprehensive assessment of sea level rise and broader climatic impacts on U.S. military and national security strategy has not yet been conducted.”

The Panel went on to explain that “conducting assessments of strategic impacts will, however, not be sufficient,” and recommended that “information on the implications of sea level rise risks to military installations, and how it affects military and national security strategy, will need to find its way to senior leadership in order to drive high-level adjustments in strategic thinking about climate impacts.”

The message seems to be getting through to senior leaders. At his confirmation hearing in April 2019 to be the next chief of naval operations, Admiral Bill Moran noted “We are largely a waterfront service, so climate change when there’s rising waters are going to be a problem for us if we don’t address them. So we are in the planning stages to look at how to reinforce those areas.”

The fiscal year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, enacted in August 2018, includes several new directions to prepare military facilities for climate change including sea level rise. New military facilities are to be built two feet above base flood elevation or three feet in the case of critical facilities. Congress also provided new authority to improve access roads outside a base at risk of flooding or inundation by rising seas.

Military-Community Cooperation

In addition, military facilities are not isolated islands along the coast and rely on civilian infrastructure for water, power, housing, and related services. The new authority for defense spending to improve roads at risk of flooding outside of bases is a step toward building cooperation between military bases and surrounding communities in addressing coastal flood risks.

Retired General Ron Keys, United States Air Force, a member of the Center for Climate and Security Advisory Board, aptly described the challenges posed by storms and rising sea in a 2016 speech: “We need to start considering, what can we do? Now I can build a moat, or a barrier around Langley Air Force Base, but the problem is a lot of my people live in Newport News, live in Hampton. A lot of my electricity comes in from outside. My fuel comes in from outside. So at some point we get to the point: ‘I’ve got to move to higher ground.”

Given these interconnections, community planning for storms and rising seas needs to keep up with military planning and military planners need to engage and support local preparedness efforts. As sea level rises over time and relocation of bases is needed, decisions about use of land areas that are now uplands for military purposes need to be coordinated with state and local plans for relocation of communities, critical infrastructure, and ecosystems

Preparing coastal defense facilities for the more severe storms and rising sea levels of the future will require a new, comprehensive effort by the Department of Defense to develop long-term plans for protection or relocation of facilities at risk. In some cases, state and community officials may embrace this work but in other cases base commanders may need to convince them to join the effort.

At the national level, senior military leaders need to urge Congress to provide funds to protect bases from storms and rising seas but also to support comparable protection efforts for surrounding communities. Ignoring the synergistic relationship between bases and surrounding communities is simply bad strategy that will weaken national security.

Finally, Congress and civil society more generally are divided over the how to respond to a changing climate including impacts like more severe storms and rising seas. Senior military leaders can be persuasive voices to help build a national consensus, not just for protecting bases and surrounding communities, but also for extending these protection efforts to the entire American coast.

More severe storms and rising seas will inexorably push the American coastline inland with profound impact on communities, infrastructure, and natural systems. In A New Coast, Jeffrey Peterson presents the science behind predictions for coastal impacts and explains how current policies fall short of what’s needed to prepare for these changes.

Peterson outlines a framework of bold, new national policies and funding to support local and state governments. He calls for engagement of citizens, the private sector, as well as local and national leaders in a “campaign for a new coast.” 

Read Chapter 13 of the book, Novel Challenges of Storms and Rising Seas.

A Changing Climate Means A Changing Society. The Island Press Urban Resilience Project, Supported By The Kresge Foundation And The JPB Foundation, Is Committed To A Greener, Fairer Future.​ This Article Was Originally Published January 7, 2020 in U.S. News and World Report.

In the last democratic presidential debate, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar fielded a question about whether rising seas and other climate change risks would force cities to move. "I very much hope we're not going to have to relocate entire cities," she responded. Most Americans would agree that coastal cities are simply too big to move and thus will stay pretty much where they are, perhaps with fortified sea walls or some modest retreat from the lowest ground.

Could that change? Might there come a day when some coastal cities decide that fighting to stay, come hell or high water, is simply not a sustainable strategy? It is hard to imagine, but there are several factors that may eventually shift thinking from staying at any cost to moving at a high cost.

Climate change is delivering a one-two punch of more severe storms and rising seas to coastal cities. In 2017, three major storms – Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria – generated some $265 billion in damages and more than 3,000 deaths. Scientists predict that coastal storms will become more intense, bringing widespread flooding as a result of higher storm surges.

A warmer climate is also melting glaciers and ice sheets and accelerating the rate of sea level rise. Unlike storm flooding, the coastal flooding that comes with rising sea levels occurs everywhere and comes to stay. Globally, sea levels are likely to rise between 1 and 4 feet by 2100 and could rise by as much as 8 feet in a worst-case scenario. And seas will keep rising for several centuries after 2100, with as much as 30 feet possible by 2200.

American coastal cities face varying degrees of risk from storms and rising seas over the decades and centuries to come. Also varied are the financial resources available to pay for response actions. What people in all these cities have in common is a strong attachment to the place they call home. Not only do people want to stay, coastal cities represent huge investments in public infrastructure and private property and the logistics and costs of moving are daunting.

Today, the common experience with coastal flooding is that water rises due to a storm and then retreats. Damages are repaired and rebuilding can begin, perhaps with elevated structures and hardened defenses. It is human nature to want to repair and replace homes or communities lost to random acts of nature.

In the decades ahead, the coastal flood experience will change as rising sea levels push more severe storms farther inland and permanently inundate some coastal areas. Permanent inundation could make rebuilding on the old site impractical from the point of view of utilities, emergency services and daily living. As coastal flooding is recognized as permanent inundation, the determination to rebuild at the same location will fade.

At the same time, sea walls and other structures built to provide protection from rising waters come with big limitations. Although sea walls have a reassuring quality of engineered permanence, getting the size right is hard. Bigger sea walls will work longer but cost much more. And, a sea wall can work for a time, but in the long term, even a monster sea wall will not be enough to save some cities.

As major coastal protection projects take a larger and larger share of city budgets, other city services, such as schools, transportation and housing may suffer and quality of life decline. The high costs and foregone services that come with these projects will force governments to make hard decisions about which areas to protect. Areas with high property values might look like the best investment, but low-income communities may strongly object to being offered less or no protection.

It seems likely that, faced with costs of building ever-higher sea walls to protect everyone, even the wealthiest cities will seek help from the federal government. With requests for major funding from rich and poor communities, the federal government will need to decide where and how to spend limited funds. Given that sea walls are often at best a temporary solution, federal taxpayers may be wary of major investments.

Federal taxpayers may be circumspect of more than costs. Structural protection projects for big cities will need to be coordinated with neighboring communities with fewer resources. Without a coordinated approach to the shape of the coastline, it is hard to maintain efficient transportation networks and other infrastructure. Decisions about how to support inland migration of beaches and wetlands as sea level rises become more complicated.

Unsatisfactory experiences with structural protection may make the idea of moving look a bit more attractive. Having a good plan for where to relocate might make moving look even better.

A new place should not just be safer, it should feel like home. American coastal cities are rich in culture and diverse communities. This social capital – the heart and spirit of a city – need not be lost even if the physical infrastructure is left to rising waters. A key challenge for the future is developing creative ways to transfer the social capital of coastal cities to safer locations.

The obstacles to moving even part of a major city to safer ground are legion. In addition to saving the heart and spirit of a community, a new location must be found, the nuts and bolts of infrastructure and utilities need to be designed, property rights must be considered, and the interests of neighboring communities and ecosystems need to be addressed. The financial costs are intimidating, although likely less in the long run than failed sea walls followed by inundation.

Microsoft Corporation is famous for asking job applicants, "How would you move Mount Fuji?" The question suggests that there may be answers to impossible-sounding problems and that a first step toward doing the impossible is asking how it might be done. Can a major coastal city successfully relocate to a safer place? We do not know. But, the stakes for America's coastal cities are high and it is time to ask the question.

On this epidode of the Capitol Beach podcast, Derek Brockbank sits down with Jeffrey Peterson, author of the book A New Coast: Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas. Drawing on four decades of experience at the Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Senate, Peterson presents the science behind predictions for coastal impacts. He explains how current policies fall short of what is needed to effectively prepare for these changes and how the Trump Administration has significantly weakened these efforts. While describing how and why the current policies exist, he builds a strong case for a bold, new approach, tackling difficult topics including: how to revise flood insurance and disaster assistance programs; when to step back from the coast rather than build protection structures; how to steer new development away from at-risk areas; and how to finance the transition to a new coast.

Capitol Beach podcast is a production of the American Shoreline Podcast Network. Thanks to the American Shore & Beach Preservation Association for their partnership in this endeavor. 

In an article written in collaboration with the Urban Resilience Project, Jeffrey Peterson (author of A New Coast) shares how leadership from the federal government can help minimize coastal flood damage aand costs.

"Today, most federal investments in coastal flood resilience are for protection structures. Relocation tools and programs are not well defined or funded," Peterson writes. "It is time for the federal government to provide the leadership needed to help state and local officials with these hard choices."

Read the full article published on The Hill HERE.