U.S. Center COP29 - November 20: Urbanization, Transport, Tourism Part 1
e hello everybody Welcome to the US Center event going to start so feel free to put your headphones over your ears you'll he everything's so much better that way they already should be on and working there's a on the side with there's a power button there's also a volume button where you can control the volume any point stops working just raise your hand and let us know excited for our first event here today um on how the US government is working with businesses and infrastructure Industries to build resilience and it's my honor to introduce uh Dr Rick spinrad the Noah administrator thank you Tom so yeah I am delighted to be here and appreciate Tom's introduction I also want to point I actually have two hats and one of them is as under Secretary of Commerce for oceans atmosphere and I emphasize that because well we like to think of Noah as that environmental intelligence agency really for the purposes of uh today's panel discussion it is about Commerce it is about industry and business and what I'm going to do is before I make my opening remark so I'm going to ask our distinguished panel to introduce yourselves you'll have opportunity here to make more complete comments but if you could please just identify yourselves in your affiliation for now for the audience that'd be great so Joe would you like to start perfect thank you so much and glad to be here I'm state Senator Joe win from uh the Seattle area and I chair our environment energy and Technology Committee in the Washington State Senate so our governor currently is Jay Insley so it's uh it's always fun to kind of see all the work that's being done here J Judy zakreski with the International Code Council and Chuck chivitz with the US Chamber of Commerce great thank you so let me start first uh by thanking our esteemed colleagues for being here today today uh and also the audience for uh being here early in the morning uh to join in this important conversation to talk basically about how we can better prepare for and build resilience against climate impacts and extreme weather events right now our Global Community is contending with what I would characterize as a new generation of extreme weather and climate events 20123 marked the hottest year on record 2024 is on record to or on track to be even hotter we're seeing record-breaking wildfires burning in several re regions of the Amazon uh several countries including Spain just a couple of weeks ago and continuing into the present day have experienced uh extremely deadly flooding prolonged droughts of affected regions across South America Central and Eastern Asia central Africa and North America and as of November 1st in the US there have been 24 conf confirmed weather and climate disaster events Each of which has losses exceeding a billion dollars that's record setting a climate ready nation is going to thrive by leveraging a really a deep understanding of climate science and that's going to enhance prosperity it's going to make our nation safer it's also going to allow us to grow uh while we minimize the impacts of these events we have a vision at Noah of a climate ready Nation we're doing that by investing in climate ready communities climate ready coasts and climate ready Innovation we support this this Vision uh by providing comprehensive observations that monitor crucial environmental parameters including things like temperature precipitation snow and ice pack uh drought Wildfire storms and carbon dioxide levels we use the data that we collect with these observational systems to uh provide decision support tools that analyze climate related risks and promote climate Readiness in communities around the world for example our forecasting capabilities allow communities to prepare for these extreme events in the coming days weeks months years decades and include uh events and impacts from extreme heat drought precipitation flooding and Wildfire some of you may be familiar with some of the products we've developed National integrated heat health information system National integrated drought information system and many many other you get the sense of how we convert these scientific products into useful tools now as we move into this Century that's going to be shaped by climate change we need to engage all sectors in building climate resilience the federal government doesn't alone have the resources to do it and many communities have been waiting generations for the tools for climate resilience support in July just by one example uh we used resources from the inflation reduction act to build a new program we called the climate resilience Regional challenge we had carved out $575 million for that we ended up receiving $16 billion doll worth of proposals so a 31 30 to1 demand signal if you will we are determined to work across sectors and with industry Partners to establish the priorities to address critical information gaps and ultimately to deliver the kind of climate risk reduction solution solons at the Nexus between environmental and information risks is data the highquality climate information that we produce at Noah is essential for accurate quantification of Hazards and is used by many Industries to quantify risks by putting increasingly accurate predictive data into the hands of decision makers across these sectors they can take more cost effective action for example big box stores are now utilizing our data to build forecasted climate impacts into supply chain considerations initiatives like one we call the industry Proving Ground Pro play a vital role in connecting Partners in that case informing industry's CL that we made to Foster collaboration with the reinsurance and insurance industry with architecture and engineering industry and with retail sectors to enable climate smart decisionmaking that protects lives property and the economy including underserved communities with each of the sectors I just mentioned we've established memoranda of understanding with formal relationships with key associations and we're engaging at the small team subject matter expert level to prioritize the development of products and services understand the needs and the requirements of these industries to ensure rapid decision making as well as long-term planning an example we're updating existing products and developing new tools to support the reinsurance sector including things like event cataloges for wind hail tornadoes hurricanes and extreme precipitation improved maps of storm Footprints and an update of the billion dooll disaster mapping and summary statistics the same ones that I just alluded to a moment ago to include less damaging more frequent events to the $100 million level not just the billion dollar impact combined this kind of information helps Ines and communities on these understand how will climate change occur in a given time period and in what ways and by how much and what will the financial impacts be so with that as a kind of scen Setter and you're having just been introduced to our panel I'm excited to start the dialogue and hear the perspectives of our experts on the panel repres representing business building code Industries local governments how can we work together across our sectors and levels of government to reduce climate risks and bolster resilience in our communities with that I'll start right in the questions and Judy I'm going to start with you and the question is uh what investments in infrastructure or building upgrades uh or new projects to enhance resilience against climate risks particularly in vulnerable communities so what are the Investments that you're looking at and how do you prioritize them thank you Dr spinrad for that question um so ICC is uh a nonprofit non-governmental organization based in the US that facilitates the development of model building codes that are used by communities throughout the United States and around the world we don't dictate what goes into the building codes we facilitate a process that is a public private partnership and a consensus process um we update the building codes every 3 years and they become a really great tool um to incorporate the latest uh learnings from prior disasters and uh they incorporate new technologies that are great for sustainability as well as resilience um and they they have the the most recent Hazard Maps um that help communities to build more resilient and more sustainable buildings so that's sort of at the core of what we do and so of course we recommend that jurisdictions cities states countries uh keep their building codes current there are many communities in the United States that are using building codes that are 15 20 years old and they just simply don't provide the protection that's needed against the increasingly frequent and severe natural hazards that we're seeing so that's sort of the Baseline um in terms of uh what we need to be doing excuse me excuse me to uh invest in uh the regulatory basis for understanding how how structures need to be built um but ultimately it becomes a very localized issue right you don't you don't build the same kind of buildings with the same resilience needs in Florida versus Alaska versus California and so uh the Investments need to be uh tailored for the local environment um and I will say that even though we the the the big disasters the floods and the hurricanes and the wildfires are uh you know much more sort of impressive when you see them on the news the the greatest cause of death from natural disaster is extreme heat and that's sort of Silent um so uh simple things like planting trees to avoid Urban heat zones um Urban heat islands are designed in with ventilation options uh you know it doesn't have to be extreme Hightech building Sometimes It's Going Back to Basics and making sure you can you can survive because you can open your window and get some cross ventilation I really appreciate your um invoking the regulatory aspects on this I before I took this job I left my home in the high desert of Oregon where there were no regulations with respect to addressing fire hazard and yet we'd seen in the 20 years that we had that property add dramatic change due to climate impacts on the fire threat for that property so I think the point about being a little bit more serious and and intentional about the regulatory issues is really important let's move from that chuck to the uh business perspective and I like to ask about in incentivizing investment specifically can you talk about how uh businesses and communities can be incentivized to invest in resilience measures that mitigate some of these climate related risks thanks so much uh Dr spinrad uh for including the chamber in this important discussion um as as you know Noah has been a really great partner uh on issues around resilience and you were kind enough to to work with us during cop 28 on a couple events that that we held there um and it's great to be here at at the US Center I I'll mention two things so uh the first thing is we must continue to make the case for what I call the economics of resilience um uh investing in something in advance of a crisis um that's hard um it's hard to make that case and so uh the chamber together with our foundation and All State uh recently released a report called the preparedness payoff and what it says is that for every dollar invested in resilience or pre- disaster mitigation measures you get $13 in economic savings you you may be familiar with the old numbers and they were really focused on the return on investment from uh to the taxpayer from federal Investments um and that said one to six and what we our additional modeling showed was that uh if you invested in these measures you'd get economic Savings in terms of reduced loss jobs uh reduce loss to GDP and to income it doesn't mean you're going to eliminate the losses but if you do invest in the um in those particular measures um you'll the the economy will be able to recover more quickly and therefore communities and people will be able to cover more quickly as well um the second thing I'll mention is that um how can we incentivize households and businesses to implement hardening measures and that usually uh takes the form of of tax incentives um um there's going to be a tax debate in the US next year it's going to be very complicated um but these uh these particular incentives can be on the table to help households and businesses uh build resilience uh in their communities yeah thank you and I I especially appreciate in addition to talking about the return on investment that you called out the cost avoidance aspect as well and all too often we look at what what am I going to get for for for buying this so to speak but I know in our business we also look at what are the impacts that you're going to avoid by making those careful Investments thank you let's uh talk now I I've got to tell you Senator I'm delighted as a federal guy to be have you to have you on the panel because I think think what happens at the local level at the level um in in terms of of uh strategy investments is is also important and we look as Federal Folks at how can we dub tail and and thread the Investments appropriately so I wonder if you could talk about what kinds of uh resilience strategies and Investments uh have you seen implemented at the state level and local levels for that matter and are there certain ones that you think are more effective than others yeah thank you so much so Washington state has been leader on climate policies for about 12 years with Governor eny at the helm of some of that work uh I'm fortunate enough to work with him in that space so I'll give a couple of examples from a macro and a micro level from a high level wildfires is probably the best example in terms of what we've done to help mitigate some of the worst impacts over the last seven years there has not been a summer uh where you had choking smoke in major metropolitan areas generally speaking before then you'd have major brush fires in rural areas but we were starting to see uh very clearly the intensity that happens as well last year was was the first time that we didn't have major smoke and major wildfires in Washington state in over a decade and part of why that happened was because we like you said invested about $500 million in what we call the climate commitment act towards uh Wildfire mitigation we deployed uh remote firefighters so we were able to purchase helicopters and planes that can at any moment in time get to a fire within 30 minutes we were using AI technology we had cameras all across our Force where we had a large risk of wildfires and the moment they detected smoke you sent somebody there right away and we also worked with our utilities as well one of the major things is that often times wildfires are due to utilities uh being under bantag and because of that causes some some fires so because of all of those efforts we were able to mitigate some of that harm and and in terms of the economic impact we had one town three years ago called molden the entire town was decimated by Wildfire because you can imagine the economic impact associated with that as well so for us a lot of it is making sure that we have these resources in advance to make sure that we alleviate that from happening but the interesting part too in the in terms of the public private partnership and there's a few ways to go about this is we're a very hydr power dependent State and when you see your glaciers melting and you see more extreme weather you get a lot of water faster which means you don't get enough water in the summertime when you see droughts so a lot of the work that we're doing towards hardening our infrastructure is through energy development and because we have Microsoft and Amazon and others in Washington state they've been able to actually put in resources that we as a state could not do on a variety of levels they put billions of dollars towards future fusion and also smrs and other things as well so by having their resources partnering with them around how do you get more infrastructure we can actually make sure that their business is going to be successful but also Washington state is atted at the same time that's excellent and I actually would like like to follow up briefly and as you were talking I was thinking about uh how the nature of your response was very specific to the threats that you see in the state of Washington and yet I know from my own travels there are similar kinds of impacts and certainly in the Pacific Northwest and also in Alaska in the interior a lot of Fire is there the Western Governors who were very influential on the issue of drought in convincing the federal government to build one the national integrated drought information system I wonder if you'd care to comment on how the work that you're doing in Washington state comports with or is shared with other state legislatures other local jurisdictions to get the benefit of the work that's being done I first of I'll say it's nice to have friends Washington Oregon and California certainly becomes of a block often times we have the the climate Alliance that Governor Insley helped put on um and this might be a little bit controversial so as so my background is actually not in politics this is relatively new to me I've only been in office for about six years my observations are uh there's about really five or six functioning state governments in the United States uh what that what I mean by that they're all great legislators are fantastic what I mean is most legislators are part-time meaning they meet only a handful of times in a year a lot of them actually meet every other year most legislators uh are unpaid if they're lucky they get a PDM and most legislators don't have staff let alone policy analysts that can do some of the work for you so often times what happens is one of these five states will put together policies based off of research or data and you see that spread and that Dynamic certainly happens between Washington and California and being able to work with our partners in that space so so for me whenever we work on Building Code Council work for us whenever you work on climate policies my Paradigm is is not just how do we do this for Washington State I actually know that if we pass this bill likely 15 other states are going to adopt it so we have to be mindful of that impact as well so it's a it's a unique kind to be in thank you and and after we're done we're done we might ask you to name those five states but we won't do that right now um let's move on into a broader set of questions and the way we're going to do this is um I'll raise an issue or a question and give each of you should you uh want to opportunity to comment on that particular issue and the first area is one that I know has been of real importance to the Biden Harrison Administration and it's by by any definition it's fairness how do we deal with Equity how do we make sure that the kind of capabilities that we're talking about here on the panel are available to all Industries all communities and so the question uh for all of you is how can we ensure that the kind of risk reduction measures that you all have alluded to address Equity concerns at the same time particularly for vulnerable populations dis proportionately affected by climate change chuck would you like to start sure yeah happy to uh so as as you know we we were supporters of the uh the climate resilience Zone disaster resilience Zones Act uh which uh uh identifi the most at risk most vulnerable communities uh throughout the country um uh ba Based on data uh the you know the initial cut wasn't wasn't perfect but I think it it looked at you know identifying at least an initial 300 or so uh census areas that uh you know that we needed to Target um the it allowed uh the federal government to do to do was not you know not necessarily the uh having FEMA focus on funding there because the the the legislation didn't really come with any funding attached to it but it allowed other agencies to uh to also use that uh those designations as a way to Target their own funds and that was the real purpose of it uh we are working uh with stakeholders to see how we can uh Advance other uh other potential funding mechanisms that would allow those communities to receive funds uh but really important that we we look at the most at risk most vulnerable communities um and ways in which we can build resilience in them and the other thing that I'll mention is I I really do think that's uh transferable across party lines and in a in a bipartisan consensus um that you know many uh in for instance in Rural America fit fit those descriptions and those are uh communities which which I think it's it's fair to say that you know a next designation might focus on and equally as important that we focus on those communities uh as we look as ways to build resilience Across the Nation thank you Judy you want to come on on yeah thank you um I think that the equity piece doesn't happen organically it needs to happen through incentives or regulation to make sure that the the dollars that are available get directed um towards the populations that need it the most through the programs that you dis you discussed also the um the bipartisan infrastructure act provided additional funding to the FEMA brick program the building building resilience and communities which which also AIDS in that that but um you know that the changes I think you need the you need the funding from the federal level but the change needs to happen in a way or or the investment needs to happen in a way that um that respects the the humanity and the needs of the community that's affected right there's a lot of talk um that I've heard here this week about locally LED change and you know having the the funding available but then trusting the local the local government to know what the community needs and you know even even with those ident identification Maps um you know evening down allowing the the jurisdiction to know you know that if you if you move the people that are in this location to a more resilient space or location they may not be able to get to their jobs right so you it's much more than a a housing or location consideration it's it has to be viewed holistically and incen I IED uh to to happen so I want to tease that out a little bit because one of the important lessons I think the federal government is learning about is early engagement co-development um and I wonder if you could talk about from the perspective of code development for example how well are we doing in early engagement what are the challenges associated with early engagement engagement and codevelopment or whatever the equivalent kind of concept might be in terms of codevelopment yeah our our codes are developed through a very open process and it's free to everyone but us right you know we we underwrite this process and anyone in the world can submit a code change proposal on the three-year cycle anyone can come and defend or oppose the code change proposal and it goes through a a pretty rigorous cycle of committee hearings and um and public action hearings so it's it's a very transparent and small M Democratic process you know and I from other countries um who have a government entity developing a building code code they they're just flabbergasted they can't imagine how this this sort of um this construct happens in the United States so we do engage and we have people from um large cities federal government agencies and small towns and Indian nations um that are participating in the code development process and we're starting to get people from Global jurisdictions participating because they're also using our codes and they have experiences that can a in their countries that can benefit the the rigor of our codes it's not it's not that we have you know that that we're the the ones that can do this the best in the brightest actually more information from more jurisdictions around the world can actually strengthen what we have yeah thank you for emphasizing that International appreciated and and if I if I could add just uh just really quickly so I guess two two quick things one is that uh really important that we focus on technical assistance uh to those communities so and and that we allow them to to drive that process so that's really important the second thing is that um the the federal government doesn't do a great job of of initiating that and in fact fma's uh competitive process on the brick program doesn't allow for the most vulnerable communities often to have access to to those resources and so really important that we think about ways in which we can improve access to the technical assistance that unlocks the funding that those communities need yeah really important Point that's come up times here at cop and the role I think of the federal federal government in terms of supporting providing technical assistance capacity building is is uh I don't think well expressed in terms of the role private sector can play there too appreciate so Joe do you want to comment on the issue of uh Equity yeah no it's interesting so I I oversee our Department of Commerce for a lot of our clean energy work and what I found and I'm just I'll start with the negatives and go to the positives what I found that oftentimes there was a disconnect so I'll meet with communities and they'll say we weren't included uh we didn't have a say at the table and then you go to the agency that had to administer and said well we had these work groups we had these you know booths at this fair that nobody attended and uh we sent a couple of emails so we certainly did our work and I think the biggest component that I see in terms of how do you make this successful is early engagement the Cod development piece is crucial but you also have to understand how people react and how people behave as well often times in government in the legislature you have a very linear time frame this is your budget cycle the money is allocated this is when the program has to be developed that that is not how tribes work that is not how communities work if you're a mother who is impacted by climate change or energy bills are too high you're not going to take time out of your multiple jobs probably to go visit this booth that nobody knows about so for us we have to do a better job with the Outreach you have to reach out to Credible Messengers and you also have to do it in a way that uh builds a lot of respect and Trust so I happen to work with a lot of our travel nations in Washington state because it's important but also it's a key aspect in terms of our success and time and time again they'll say um well we don't know that person so why would we like that's great that they have money but who who cares I don't know who they are we allocated $10 million for tribal capacity grants and I thought that that was a good thing nobody used it and what was interesting was because they weren't even in a position to understand how they should use this funds or what it go towards and now gone and visited the yakam are one of the major ones multiple times and I and I don't bring up any policy what you do is you go and you sit there all day and you just listen and then maybe at some point it might you know become something but really you're just having a relationship and a conversation so when it comes to equity components unless you're using trusted Messengers unless you yourself have a long duration relationship it becomes very very difficult thank you let's uh shift gears a little bit and what I'm going to ask you to do is focus down a bit you've uh alluded to some general principles and general areas of progress but I'd like to ask you each is whether you can share an exam an example of a success success with respect to a a business or a community or a region uh that you believe has effectively managed some of the kind of climate risks we've been talking about through some particularly innovative solutions and anybody want to start yeah I'll go ahead please I'll go back back on the tribal component um we have uh 29 federally recognized tribes in Washington state and they all have varying levels of resources and efficacy when it comes to working with local governments and state governments and uh when we were working on a lot of our climate policies our goal was to engage as many as possible and we saw that not everybody was as inclusive as it could potentially could be and over the last few years uh we went from some travel Nations basically very frustrated with this whole process what fun happens to them is uh you'll have a number of developers reach out and say we want to build things and they they have no clue who they are so you you kind of become hardened because of it or you have a number of federal agencies and local agencies that say here's a 100 opportunities go figure it out and you know they're just doing their their own thing they're not sure what the what else is going on so to go from that Paradigm to now where it's a back and forth where we have true consultation where it's codevelopment where you're seeing tribes come and ask for things and lead on things so one of the most important things that we've done last year that we funded uh and and the body Administration did as well uh we have a tribe called the qual in the Olympic Peninsula beautiful area they're susceptible to um uh uh flooding and they're susceptible to tsunamis they're on the coast so we're moving their communities up higher and building out a micro grid there as well to ensure that they have their own uh hard hardened resiliency so for us to go from how do we work with tribes we historically have not done so to now being a trusted messenger in that space where we're co-developing these projects and they're non-controversial I think that that's huge the other one too go back to the yakal they've uh historically they have a unique personality all tribes are are different they're they're a little bit different their treaties are different as well they've opposed every single climate uh policy and they've opposed every single clean energy policy in Washington state not because they don't care uh if you walk into their facilities there's a twostory picture of an elder uh fishing in the Columbia River they showed me the picture of the current day of there it's a the dam that's there there's no fishing anymore so they've seen energy before and did not go well so they go from in this in this case very difficult to work with rightfully so to now we actually are helping them develop and the doe is as well two energy projects one is uh solar panels over irrigation canals and another is a is a type of pump storage as well so there is a way for us to engage it has to be more thoughtful but that's that's the success that I'm very proud of yeah good examples thank you uh Judy some examples of success sure I have a couple um from the US and and one from Australia so uh in the US I think it it takes an event unfortunately for to to Spur action um you know it is much better to to invest pre- disaster but what we see is actually some really strong resilience policies coming out um in the wake of disasters so one example is in New York City after superstorm Sandy in 2014 um they the New York City building code which is different from the New York State Building code was updated um and the uh American Society of civil engineers flood resistant design and construction standard was updated um that increased um measures against flooding freeboard requirements B updated flood maps which Noah can help with right um floor elevation prescriptions you know increased um dry and wet flood proving strategy um so it's a very strong resilient Citywide building code that was spurred by the events of superstorm Sandy um there was another example in uh Moore Oklahoma that experienced um three disastrous tornadoes uh over in less than 15 years and so they took um their city council at a very local level again you know a lot of this activity needs to be localized because sometimes you end up over engineering if you start to implement um res resilience measures at too wide of a scale um but they adopted a series of amendments to residential buildings um specifically aimed at mitigating damages caused by tornadoes and so standards were raised basically to um withstand higher winds um and at the time that was the most stringent code in the US for for wind hazards um in a more perhaps extreme example there was a very severe flooding in 2011 in the city the town of Grandam Australia and uh because the Outlook was not uh optimistic that this wouldn't continually happen the Australian government uh and I it might have been the um the uh the state government offered an incentive for to basically relocate the town the whole town to a a higher elevation um sounds similar to what what you're doing on the on The Indian in the Indian Nation um and it was an optional land swap with incentive um funding to rebuild at a in a different location and almost everyone took it it was it was an option but you know an incentive and people understood they had just lost so much in the flood y um so you know there there are examples like that and uh you know hopefully we'll see uh um improvements in North Carolina's building codes now yep after the devastation this year um there had been a freeze on updating building codes in North Carolina so it was a legislative issue also but hopefully you know we we won't see this um building in non-resilient areas um unfortunately After People experience a tragedy really it was a really G geographically and topographically just a there was no place for the water to go and so you know you it's it's it's it's somewhat of a practical issue that they just hadn't prepared for so really really challenging I'll I'll mention three three things um so one on a on a practical level and and I think folks have have certainly heard about this but the Mississippi River cities and towns initiative which is a coalition of 106 Mayors along the Mississippi River um recently engaged with Ducks Unlimited to install and the and the US Army Corps of Engineers to install nature-based Solutions on communities uh along the river um that had both resilience and mitigation benefits um uh to those communities and so that that I I think demonstrates kind of the power of nature-based solutions and the importance of resilience that you C can get multiple benefits in those cases um the second thing I'll mention is that we just sent a letter up to uh to to Congress supporting the disaster supplemental and it was signed by I think very importantly 270 state and local Chambers Across the Nation and what that demonstrates is that the importance to the business community and local communities um that resilience is something that is an important issue that uh that our government needs to pay attention to and then the last thing I'll mention and it's it's not anything in particular but the brick program which um as as I think all of you know you know it the when the when the program was established 6% of post- disaster funding outside the Appropriations process is put into a pre- disaster pot and so communities then can access those funding those funding and and the for the first time ever last year there was about two billion dollars in in the fund and they were over subscribed and so I think that in in terms of success and communities understanding that they need to invest in projects ahead of those disasters I think that speaks volumes It also says that the resources that that we don't have the federal resources to do it and they can't do it alone so uh we're going to need the private sector and others to invest in that as well yeah great examples and oh by the way thank you for your support on the supplemental we're keeping our fingers crossed in the federal sector as well uh I'm keeping my eye on the clock we had another question I'm going to ask um and I would ask if you could keep the responses relatively short not quite lightning round but I do want to get to this question and it's about critical gaps uh that need to be addressed particularly uh when it comes to data uh but the decision support tools so that you could also interpret this as what's at the top of your wish list and I would ask if you could think about what really is the one the one or two gaps or wish list items that you have and Judy you want to start with that I would say um downscaled climate data future focused climate data because building codes are all based on historical data which is not preparing us for the future um but there's this real difficulty with moving the mindset from um firm historical data to Future Focus data um and again downsizing or or downscaling that data so it's not so you're not over engineering you know it needs to be down to a very very um localized level in a format that can be integrated in building codes yeah great example and I will tell you from the perspective of federal agency whose models and data are the ones that start some of those downscaling it's a great opportunity for building a whole new private sector capability not unlike what happened with the commercial weather Enterprise in the last 40 or 50 years thank you Chuck do you want to take a shot at the wish list well I appreciate that and and I I guess I'll I'll I'll mention something that you know Dr spinrad that I I do work uh with the nidus team on some of the issues regarding drought um uh and uh there isn't a great deal of Engagement with the private sector as that moves forward and I guess on the top of my wish list is to continue to to use the existing data and analytics to help make that economic case uh you know we we did a little bit of modeling um you know with these 25 communities across the country and I think it invaluably shows that there's a need for investment but we don't we don't have enough information out there to make that economic case and I I think really important that we partner to do that that's great thank you and then for me I work at the local level and you know the the the analysis that we need for forecasting energy and also potential impacts is is critical for us but what I've seen is often times the success stories that we have with our local jurisdictions usually are random we happen to find somebody in that Community who cared and showed up that day and you had a conversation that day and you were able to figure out policies that really impact their lives so for us it's more of a CRM type of solution where I think we as a state could do a much better job engaging our communities in a more authentic way hearing feedback but also interpreting it as well a lot of times that communication is very top down um I found a lot of success by showing up and just paying attention but that's that's not something that you can scale up that's not something that you can just fund um that's something that requires time and effort and and deep relationships and certainly there's ways that we can probably do it more efficiently but that's really what I would look at is how do I develop these deep relationships in the most impacted communities because for us in Washington state we actually did try to to Define overburden communities there's a number of ways to do it and they're all controversial but how do you ensure that you are actually reaching those people and doing things that they want because I've seen the difference between us saying you have to do this with your building codes in order for us to be successful and they get mad or if you do basically the same thing but in a very modified way that's Nuance everybody's on board so it's those little things that I think really can move the needle great comments thank you um and let me thank the panelist and ask the audience to thank the panelist for your contributions touch on so many important sociological economic technical issues it's now my job to try to wrap this up and I I know we could go for another three hours but we do have to close up and let me start by saying that I think it's it's obvious through what you heard here that today both communities and industries Across the Nation are grappling with the kind of increasing frequency and intensity and just nature of weather and climate extremes and as the challenges that we face do become more formidable the leadership that we've got is going to be measured by both our ability to meet communities where they are with resilient Solutions um and that means Innovation and deepening our toolbox but it but it also means building Equity into considerations of every investment that we make and we need to keep having conversations like this across sectors and borders I will tell you I was particularly excited by hearing uh the success stories and I suspect each of you could have gone on and on from the tribal engagement to the post Sandy updates to code to some of the Mississippi River nature-based Solutions and many many more as we look towards the climate related challenges ahead we think our approach is to find Solutions like the success stories that we heard we need to tailor our solutions to address the risk faced by our built environment by by our infrastructure by things like supply chain we didn't talk a lot about labor but worker Health other aspects of business and Society are important and quantifying these impacts in ways that allow us to develop strategies to develop compelling arguments to legislators Business Leaders communities communities and industries need environmental intelligence to evaluate and plan for and address climate Hazard at Noah we serve we believe as a trusted and authoritative source uh I think you heard some of that in terms of the way the different sectors are using our data sets our tools or informational products to Aid an adaptation efforts and while mitigation funding is essential and critical to protecting lives and livelihoods our Collective path forward will be to increase resilience and adaptation funding Noah is focusing on strengthening cross- sector Partnerships to support climate resilience Technologies and our ongoing Partnerships will be essential for growing this new climate economy that I was alluding to earlier and advancing our capabilities driving inov Innovation Expediting the introduction of new technologies to the market and adapting our infrastructure and building resilience to weather and extreme weather events New industries that are at the intersection of climate resilience and economic interests are set to be on an exponential rise Bank of America estimates that within 5 years there will be a potential market share of over over $2 trillion dollar in climate adaptation as we Shore up resilience so Prosperity Health security of all forms energy security food Security National Homeland Security as well as sustained growth in our future are going to be deeply rooted in our ability to face the impacts of climate change a climate resilient Nation will be a sum of climate resilient Parts I want to thank all of you for working with us to build this infrastructure for the next Generations once again please join me in thanking Joe Judy and Chuck for sharing their knowledge thank you we loved having you join us at the US Center please remember to return your headsets as you leave
2024-11-27 22:07
