Norton Cites Climate Change as Cause of Increasing Frequency and Severity of Natural Disasters at Committee Hearing
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today at an Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management Subcommittee hearing on disaster mitigation and recovery called climate change "the elephant in the room" and pressed witnesses on whether federal, state, and local governments are prepared to deal with the increasing number and severity of natural disasters, particularly in geographic areas where such disasters are unexpected.
"Climate change has exposed to country to the increasingly numerous and severe natural disasters that are occurring in areas never previously recorded," Norton said. "We have a moral and civic obligation to be upfront with the American people about federal, state, and local unpreparedness for new and unanticipated disasters. Both the funding and thinking in Congress is locked somewhere in the 20th century, failing to take into account what climate science already shows is occurring on an annual basis."
Norton got all of the witnesses, including two former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) administrators, the President and Chairman of the Board of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, the Director of the Oregon Office of Emergency Management, and a representative of a national coalition of insurance companies, to acknowledge the increasing impacts of climate change on unprecedented and unanticipated natural disasters.
After questioning by Norton, Former FEMA Administrator W. Craig Fugate, for example, asserted that climate change is real and that weather patterns are changing more rapidly than insurance companies are able to compensate. He said the highly volatile changes in climate are forcing insurance companies to either increase rates or stop writing certain policies altogether, both of which shift costs to American taxpayers. Administrator Fugate said that past weather data is unreliable today, and that federal, state, and local governments need to already be building stronger and well-designed structures to withstand the unanticipated natural disasters of tomorrow.