“Today that down payment has increased significantly, but as a nation we have more to do,” said Kaniewski, executive director of Marsh & McLennan Companies, a consulting firm. “It will take investment from all levels of government, the private sector and each and every one of us to mitigate the risks.”
The government also announced a new effort by NASA to measure the effects of climate change. Called the Earth System Observatory, this initiative will include five new satellites that will go into orbit between 2023 and 2029 and cost $ 2.5 billion. Each satellite is specially developed for cooperation with the other satellites in order to enable a three-dimensional “holistic view of the earth from bedrock to the atmosphere”, according to the agency.
“It will study and measure the interactions between the atmosphere, land, ocean and ice,” said Bill Nelson, NASA administrator and former Democratic Senator from Florida, in an interview Monday. “By measuring these interactions, you will have a better idea of how to predict climate change in a broader sense – and, in a broader sense, the direction and speed and twists and turns of a hurricane.”
The announcement follows criticism that the Biden government has no longer made climate resilience a priority.
The government has been quick to press ahead with climate change, convening a summit of world leaders in April and announcing an aggressive new target to cut US greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030 compared to 2005 levels.
However, experts are increasingly calling on the federal government to prepare communities for the devastating effects of this warming.
The White House has started to respond. Last week, Mr Biden signed an executive order reintroducing an Obama-era rule that imposes higher standards on government-funded construction work in flood areas. (The White House initially said Mr Biden reintroduced this rule on his first day in office, but later said it did not.)
