The context for addressing climate impacts and adaptation in MEPA, NEPA and beyond (with special

mention of water management issues)

Seth Kaplan

Vice President for Policy and Climate Advocacy

May 6, 2012

Conservation Law Foundation

Boston Bar AssociationEnvironmental Law Section

Air Quality and Climate Change Committee

Land Use & Development Committee1

The Big Context: Why was this weekend important in history of the planet?

2

HINT

Source: http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/

3

Current climate, no place on earth has over 31C/88F “wet bulb” temp.

Business as usual, played out over 300 yrs: ½ of currently inhabited earth not habitable

Long Run: Hard to contemplate sober.Unless we GREATLY reduce emissions, eventually adaptation will no longer be an option.

The Medium Term: Multiple Models say 90% Probability of more precipitation in the Northeast

4

Source: Mahlstein, I., R.W. Portmann, J.L. Daniel, S. Solomon and R. Knutti, 2012, Perceptible changes in regional precipitation in a future climate, Geophysical Research Letters, 39, L05701, doi:10.1029/2011GL050738, PDF (0.7 MB)

Direct Impacts will be significant but ponder the indirect:• Population shifts as people flee the heating & drying south?• Disruptions to food and energy systems?

Climate Impact Poster Child:Flooding from Sea Level Rise

The real lesson of Sandy: We got lucky. For Boston: near miss.

Modeling just starting to grapple with interaction of river, rain and ocean flooding – this is going to get scary as we look at it harder

Increasingly water management and related law will wobble between issues of too much water (stormwater) and too little (interbasin transfer, minimum flows during summer time), sometimes in the same places

5

A Few Guidepost Principles

• Much adaptation will be about “riding it out” – like zoning for “living with water” – good first step

• We will systemically underestimate the risks:– Natural tendency to do what has been done before– New risks and trends always discounted

• Huge financial and legal exposures (liability for failure to plan?) lurking just below the surface– Insurance markets are starting to show this

• Don’t lose sight of legal & practical connections between emissions reduction and adaptation

6