By Isabelle Aubrun, CCCL Intern (Brown University) In 2013, President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force devised the Rebuild by Design Competition. Applicants were to design a “fundable and implementable” infrastructure project to mitigate the dangers of rising sea levels and increasingly frequent extreme weather events in New York and […]
Adaptation & Resilience
By Alyssa Kutner, Summer Legal Intern President Barack Obama made an announcement on Wednesday, July 16th introducing a plan to improve the nation’s ability to adapt to climate change through investing in and planning a more climate-resilient infrastructure. Included in the announcement were new programs designed to increase the adaptive […]
By Diane Jung, Undergraduate Intern On June 19, 2014 both houses of the Rhode Island legislature passed the Resilient Rhode Island Act of 2014, which addresses climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience, and establishes greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets of 10% below 1990 levels by 2020, 45% by 2035, and 85% […]
Ethan I. Strell, CCCL Associate Director and Fellow On March 21, 2014, President Obama signed into law the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2014 (2014 Act), whose stated purpose is to “delay the implementation of certain provisions of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Texas Hurricane Damage (photo credit: FEMA) […]
Teresa Parejo Navajas Associate Professor of Law. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain) Visiting Scholar at the Center for Climate Change Law (Columbia University) Columbia’s Center for Climate Change Law has published a new white paper analyzing the Reverse Environmental Assessment tool for the adaptation of projects, plans and programs […]
A new paper by Katherine Carey looks at the different actions that state utility commissions in the Southeast have taken to ensure that their electric utilities are prepared for tomorrow’s storms. The Gulf Coast region in the Southeastern United States is at especially high risk of more severe hurricanes and […]
Ethan I. Strell, CCCL Associate Director & Fellow In an historic decision that will serve as a nationwide model, the New York State Public Service Commission on February 20 unanimously approved a settlement requiring Con Edison to implement state-of-the-art measures to plan for and protect its electric, gas, and steam […]
On June 25, 2013, President Obama delivered a major speech on the topic of climate change. In it he outlined a broad policy agenda aimed at addressing the challenges posed by the changing climate. The agenda, detailed in The President’s Climate Action Plan, relies almost entirely upon executive powers; Congress […]