Adaptation

20 posts

This Is How We Solve a Heat Crisis

Every summer now feels like Groundhog Day. More heat records broken. Soon, we’ll have more school days canceled (take Philadelphia for example where nearly 30 percent of city schools recently shut down due to lack of cooling systems). We already have more heat-related deaths (in fact, according to a study, […]

The National Heat Strategy is a Strong First Step

On August 14 the federal government released the United States’ first National Heat Strategy. As it stands today, the Strategy is a major step forward for coordinated federal action to recognize and address extreme heat and it confirms that agencies across the federal government are making this a high priority […]

State “Climate Superfund” Bills: What You Need to Know

In the first months of 2024, legislators in four states—Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont—have pushed for legislation that would collectively require large fossil fuel producers and refiners to pay for hundreds of billions of dollars of state-level climate adaptation infrastructure. E&E News reports that similar legislation may soon be […]

IECC Appeals Could Undermine Electrification Requirements in New Construction

Building codes have a major influence on how local governments respond to climate change. They prescribe enforceable requirements for the materials that buildings are made of, for how living and working spaces are designed, and critically, for what kinds of environmental possibilities new buildings must be prepared to accommodate. For […]

Photo of Offshore Oil and Gas Facility

Decommissioning Offshore Oil and Gas Infrastructure in the Face of Climate Change and the Energy Transition

On August 31, 2023, the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), as part of their broader Climate Law and Finance Initiative, published two reports analyzing legal and contractual regimes governing decommissioning of offshore oil and gas infrastructure projects and identifying decommissioning-related risks […]

Elsberry, MO, June 20, 2008 -- A levee in the Elsberry levee district breaks, flooding farmland and houses in the area. Jocelyn Augustino/FEMA

A Climate Adaptation Toolkit for the Insurance Industry

On July 21, 2023, the Sabin Center launched its latest report, Modelling Climate Litigation Risk for (Re)Insurers. This report, which forms part of the Sabin Center’s broader Climate Law and Finance Initiative, provides a toolkit to help academics, attorneys, insurance practitioners, and industry regulators model (re)insurer climate litigation risk. Insurance […]

The Sabin Center Publishes White Paper on the Role of Climate Science in Adaptation Litigation in the U.S.

By Jacob Elkin While the most prominent climate litigation to date has primarily focused on mitigation—reducing greenhouse gas emissions—adaptation litigation will also increase as climate impacts become more frequent, extreme, and intense. Adaptation cases frequently rely on evidence drawn from scientific research into past and future climate change. In a […]