In the aftermath of the storm called Sandy, there have been weekly calls for the federal government and for states to address how our country might adapt in response to a changing climate. A recent Government Accounting Office report, a petition to FEMA with which CLF has been involved, and the launch of a new Northeast regional web-based climate resource, all illustrate different aspects of this challenge.

Every year, the GAO provides an update to Congress as part of its “High Risk” series, detailing areas of government fiscal exposure and recommending actions to mitigate those. In this year’s report, GAO has added a new area of concern: “Limiting the Federal Government’s Fiscal Exposure by Better Managing Climate Change Risks.” The major finding? “The federal government is not well organized to address the fiscal exposure presented by climate change,” even though a National Research Council paper in 2010 concluded that “increasing the nation’s ability to respond to a changing climate can be viewed as an insurance policy against climate risk.” The conclusion? “The federal government needs a strategic approach with strong leadership and the authority to manage climate change risks….” Unfortunately, in areas such as federal flood and crop insurance, technical assistance to state the local governments, and disaster aid, there has been little progress to date.

This is illustrated by a petition filed in October by the Natural Resources Defense Council and National Wildlife Federation that calls on FEMA to abide by it’s statutory responsibility to include anticipated climate change effects in its approval of each state’s Hazard Mitigation Plan, the key document that the New England states use in planning how best to avoid weather and climate risks, and be eligible for disaster relief funds. CLF has urged our state congressional delegations to request that FEMA act on the petition, which it has thus far ignored.

As New England communities seek information and resources on best practices to assess and act on our changing climate, a new tool became available this week. NOAA, working with National Wildlife Federation, EPA, and others, has just opened the Northeast Climate Database, a searchable tool to provide regionally relevant climate information. Here you can look for reports and resources specific to a state, a geography such as the ocean shore, or an issue like public health in a warming world.

CLF has long been involved in these issues. From our active involvement in assuring that New England’s climate future is accounted for in National Forest planning, to tackling coastal adaptation issues in Rhode Island, and challenging the EPA for failing to address climate change considerations in its 2008 Lake Champlain cleanup framework, CLF has always been a regional leader in climate adaptation. As CLF staff attorney Anthony Iarrapino said, “Climate change is no longer an ‘if’ or a ‘when.’” I invite you to follow CLF as we act on CLF President John Kassell’s declaration that climate change is the key issue not just for CLF, but for all of us, over the next decade.

Transportation options in nothern tier states like Maine are a critical part of sustainable communities and a low-impact ecncomy. Photo credit: Lawrence Whittemore @ flickr

Let’s face it: population density is a critical factor in any decision to provide transit services. In CLF’s “northern tier” states, where dense populations are limited to a few metropolitan areas, transportation options like bus services  have been slow to develop, leaving people to drive. In asking for directions from one place to another, the response most often is: “You’re on your own.”

In Maine, for example, Portland and surrounding towns and cities are served by a number of independent municipal fixed-route bus systems, an inter-city commuter bus linking Portland with a few cities in southern Maine, and an outlying “on demand” provider. But there is no regular service between Portland and Maine’s second-largest metro area, Lewiston-Auburn, about 40 miles away. Maine’s L/A has a growing immigrant population and plenty of affordable housing, but greater Portland, where housing is expensive, is the locus of most employment expansion.

CLF Maine has been working with the elected leaders of these areas to promote new ways for commuters on this corridor to avoid single-occupancy vehicle commuting, and provide greater connectivity to Portland’s air, bus, and train transportation hub. Recently, at the urging of Auburn’s mayor, Jonathan Labonte and Portland’s mayor Mike Brennan, Portland’s city council voted to explore this option, as reported here.

It’s an encouraging step in the right direction and validates the work of CLF and its partners to create a unified transit authority for the entire southern Maine region. This would promote better customer service and alignment among providers as disparate as a ferry service, Amtrak, and local bus lines, and provide the potential for common investment and bonding authority.

We’re still counting the casualties and costs, but one thing is sure: after a second “hundred year” event in the last two years in New England (last year’s Hurricane Irene and this week’s Sandy), we need to pay some sober attention to building our region’s capacity to roll with the climate punches.

“Adaptation,” “adaptability,” “resilience,” “adaptive capacity,” and “vulnerability” are all part of the emerging vocabulary that seeks to describe a basic and simple question: what prudent steps should we be taking to ensure that we can lower the risks and minimize the effects of severe events linked to climate change even as we strive to lessen greenhouse gases? In the wake of this week’s destruction, it’s worth considering how best to engage our communities in the kind of thoughtful planning and action that can prevent or offset the worst effects of events like Irene and Sandy, and then enable us to bounce back.

As noted by my colleague Tricia K .Jedele in Rhode Island on this blog, many coastal communities like Matunuck sustained significant damage to their beaches, seawalls, and jetties. The storm surge temporarily returned Manhattan to being a real island, cut off from the mainland, and stranding millions without power and transportation. The economic cost of replacing damaged public infrastructure and people’s homes will certainly be in the billions of taxpayer, insurance, and private dollars, not to mention the economic damage done when a region is brought to a standstill.

Anticipating and planning for potential problems associated with climate change makes a difference. New York City, for example, has been working for several years already to implement a climate adaptation plan that will make its transportation system less vulnerable to precisely the kind of effects that Sandy brought about this week. Similarly, Groton, CT has engaged in a local effort to calculate how best to use its resources to minimize the local economic impact of sea-level rise and storm surge.

Protecting New England’s fresh and ocean waters has been a CLF program priority since the organization’s beginnings. Hurricane Sandy has caused wide-spread runoff of farmland and urban pollutants into our streams, as well as sewer overflows from inadequate and damaged urban treatment plants and systems. In some places, like Wells, Maine, local decision makers are including climate considerations into the kind of choices all towns face, in this case the replacement of an aging sewage treatment facility that will not function adequately as sea levels rise.

Deciding how repair, rebuilding and replacement take place can either repeat the mistakes that brought us here, like allowing houses to be rebuilt in shoreline flood zones, or make significant progress toward lessening the effects of future storms. For example, the coastal towns of New Hampshire, and five municipalities in southern Maine, are each working together to establish common regulatory standards that will protect lives and property as the shoreline reacts to climate change. Hurricane Irene’s destruction of stream and river banks in Vermont in 2001 resulted in wide-spread damage, but as we noted recently, also demonstrated the importance of preserving and enhancing wetlands as a way to mitigate some of those effects.

George Santayana’s dictum, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” together with Einstein’s definition of insanity, “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” should lead us to consider what we can learn from these events, and then act with our elected leaders and communities to build resilience that can prevent or mitigate the effects of a changing climate on New England.

New England Cranberry Harvest. Photo courtesy of Massachusetts Energy and Environmental Affairs @ flickr

Cranberries. Fall is the season for the sweet-tart fruit from this New England crop, grown and enjoyed across the region for generations. According to a recent story in the Portland Press Herald, this year’s crop looks especially abundant due to unusually warm weather. But these changes could come at a cost that’s greater than the price of cranberries to accompany your holiday turkey.

According to a Cooperative Extension cranberry specialist quoted in the Press Herald, the reason for the bumper crop may be warmer weather related to climate change. What’s more, this trend could make it possible to successfully grow other crops not usually found in northern New England, like peaches. One farmer has already decided to plant kiwi.

CLF is partnering with the American Farmland Trust and the New England Sustainable Agriculture working group to advance the regionally-produced share of agricultural products in our grocery stores, and to sustain New England’s working farms. With that goal in mind, this expansion of crops and diversification of business may seem like good news.  As any working farmer will tell you, adapting to changing conditions by selecting new varieties and hedging against loss is something they do all the time. But as that same farmer would tell you, gaining the opportunity for one new crop will likely come at the expense of losing another.

Cranberries did well this year because of an exceptionally early thaw. Many maple syrup producers, on the other hand, struggled with a much shorter tapping season, a situation that is becoming more likely every year. The maple trees will still be there (they grow as far south as Virginia), but the sap we love as syrup won’t flow if the ground hasn’t frozen for the required time.

Up with cranberries and down with maple syrup – the rise of one may come with the fall of the other. Is this a cost we are willing to accept?

Even though the exact path of climate change affecting both New England and New England’s agriculture remains uncertain, one thing is clear: our climate is changing – a reality already documented in the northern migration of harmful insects and the redrawing of the USDA plant hardiness map.  While we may applaud the efforts of New England farmers to adapt to changing circumstances and become more “climate resilient,” we can’t afford to ignore what’s causing the changes in the first place.  We need to do more to reduce the greenhouse gas pollution causing global warming. Our current climate trajectory involves risks, the scope of which we’re still trying to understand – and likely won’t be able to fully map until it’s far too late.

And so, as much I enjoy Maine peaches, it’s important that we recognize that there will be climate change winners and losers. Not only will this be on the farm: it will be true across New England’s economy. CLF’s support for sustainable regional agriculture, whether in a vacant lot in Boston or northern Aroostook County, Maine, will be critical.