Flooding Deserves a Bigger Role in Climate Change Policy
The EPA issued a useful 2024 report, Climate Change Indicators in the United States: Fifth Edition, which uses indicators “to show interconnections in how climate change affects people and the environment, why the impacts matter, and examples of how people and communities are addressing these challenges.”
To me, the most near-term impact that is mentioned in this report but gets less attention than it should is extreme rain events, as pictured above:
“Heavy precipitation events can cause crop damage, soil erosion, and flooding. An increase in flood risk due to heavy rains can lead to injuries, drownings, respiratory health impacts from exposure to mold, and other flood-related health effects. Heavy precipitation also can overwhelm drainage systems, and the runoff can wash pollutants from land into water bodies, which can reduce water quality and affect the health of people and ecosystems.”
According to an August 2024 Rand analysis,
“Flooding has become the most expensive and frequent disaster in the United States. Since 2000, flooding events occur almost daily, and the cost of inland flooding alone in 2023 was nearly $200 billion.
Flooding also has major implications for human health and well-being through degrading housing conditions, loss of mobility and economic opportunity, and impacted ecosystems and environmental conditions.
Many of the households and businesses most vulnerable to flood risk have the fewest resources available to prepare for and respond to a flood.”
I wonder if reports, like the EPA indicators report above, focus so much on the extremes from a scientific perspective that they focus too little on what concerns most people in the United States. For example, the rise in sea level due to climate change impacts only those who live in a small geographic area of the United States, while flooding from extreme rain impacts people throughout the United States. Also, flooding is a long-term issue that concerns many people, regardless of climate change. So it’s a “two-fer” — just like actions to mitigate climate change also impact traditional air pollution, and vice-versa.
Here are some examples of what I mean.
- We lack data on how deadly these extreme events are in the United States. According to this NPR story,
“Despite the growing danger from climate-driven disasters, there is no single, reliable count of who is dying as a result of extreme weather in the United States. For any given weather disaster, multiple government agencies publish independent — and often widely differing — death counts.
That’s a problem, the federal government has long acknowledged, because who dies as a result of extreme weather, as well as how they die, is important.
That public health information can help protect people from increasingly frequent disasters and can even spur policies that address the reliance on fossil fuels at the root of global warming. And inconsistency over which disaster-related deaths get counted can lead to frustration and even financial losses for the families of those who died.”
- The climate change indicator for river flooding provided by EPA only goes until 2015 (see graphic above). Yet, as we see in the graphic in the previous section, we are seeing more extreme precipitation across the United States. Decision-making, however, is local, and that level of data (at least as represented by EPA) is almost 10 years old.
- In its 90-page report, EPA gives 2-pages on the topic of extreme precipitation. This compares to 10 pages on ocean impacts and 10 more pages on rising seas. To me, there should be at least as much space devoted to river flooding, if not more.
My concern is that this out-of-balance focus does not serve the information needs of the American public and policymakers at the national, state, and local levels. When I attend webinars with climate change experts, I ask why this occurs whenever I can get a question in, and I never receive a good response. Rather, they say — that’s a good point.
The bottom line is how can we get people in the middle of the country to care about taking action on climate change when they do not see the potential impact in their local communities?
To do that, we need a better understanding of the impact of flooding — now and in the future — throughout the United States on a local basis.
Here are some policy recommendations from the Rand report, that are well worth considering by a future Presidential Administration:
“Update the information environment: There is a lack of accurate and targeted information (e.g., climate change projections, floodplain maps, land use requirements, and data on previous flood exposure) readily available for communities and decision-makers.”
“Envision new futures with communities: Addressing flood risk and building flood resilience requires transformative approaches to designing infrastructure and investing in communities. Decisionmakers must partner with communities to develop shared visions of flood resilience using new tools and methods.”
“Strengthen the governance and financing of flood resilience: Building flood resilience requires finding and leveraging points of intersection and collaboration among existing governing structures and financing mechanisms.”
While opinions on the necessity of addressing climate change may differ, I believe that the issue of flooding is one on which there’s a broader consensus on the need for action. Let’s focus on where we agree rather than where we disagree.
This article is from my LinkedIn Inform and Influence S&T Policy Newsletter, which serves as a practical guide to the victories and struggles in Science and Technology Policy and how to make a difference. You can subscribe to it on LinkedIn.
