12 Days to Go: Responding to the Climate Crisis
With just twelve days until the primary, I am using each day to discuss an issue I have highlighted on the campaign trail. For Day 12, I am highlighting the need for federal and local government to work together to protect our communities from climate change.
Some people encounter climate change as an abstraction: a graph, a headline, a wildfire somewhere else. But coastal communities like Hampton encounter it as surprise expenses, higher municipal budgets, and rising property taxes.
It shows up in rising flood insurance premiums, in crumbling and quickly deteriorating roads and sidewalks, sewer systems inundated with salt water, and in homeowners who can’t sell because prospective buyers can't get mortgages after underwriters have seen the maps.
Taking meaningful action on climate change will require pairing a local focus on the issue with bold, federal action.
Many politicians in Washington want to help, but the way that help is structured means that small towns can barely access it.
Major federal resilience programs are built around the assumption that every applicant has a grants office, a capital reserve, and months to produce a benefit-cost analysis. Most towns have one staff person wearing six hats, and my town, Hampton, only has two!
The programs that work the best are also the ones on the chopping block. The NOAA coastal programs that made Hampton's Roadmap possible, like the Coastal Zone Management Act, the National Sea Grant program, and the state Coastal Program are among the smallest line items in the federal budget and among the first targeted when budget fights begin. Dollar for dollar, these are some of the most effective federal investments we make.
Crafting legislation that addresses the climate crisis in a Congress that is frequently mired in partisan gridlock requires a specific local focus with an emphasis on results. Here is what I will push for in Congress:
Funding the small programs that work, like the NOAA's Office for Coastal Management, the Coastal Zone Management Act, Sea Grant, and the state Coastal Programs that distribute federal support to towns. These cost pennies on the dollar and buy real planning and action on the ground.
Rewriting federal resilience grants so small towns can access and use them. Cut the match requirements that disqualify communities that need the help most, and simplify the application burden for towns under a population threshold.
Funding coastal resilience like infrastructure, not like a sweepstakes. Move toward predictable, formula-based resilience funding that lets communities plan beyond a single grant cycle.
Reforming the National Flood Insurance Program around honesty and affordability, modernizing flood maps, and protecting primary-residence affordability for working- and middle-class families already living in floodplains, while pricing new development in high-risk areas fairly. Taxpayers should not be repeatedly rebuilding luxury second homes.
Treating working waterfronts as the infrastructure they are. Fisheries, ports, and small coastal businesses are not amenities; they are economies and communities. Federal policy needs to account for that.
None of this “solves” climate change, but it mitigates the worst impacts while we get serious about addressing the root causes. It's meant to keep small coastal communities afloat (and our property taxes steady).
We need a more robust federal response to the climate crisis, but we also need to make sure that our local communities have the resources they need to survive in the face of the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. I’m running for Congress to make sure we do both at the same time.
