As FEMA Unveils Flood Rule, Climate Campaigners Urge More Radical Overhaul

While welcoming the Federal Emergency Management Agency's new rule to better protect U.S. infrastructure from flooding, one climate campaigner stressed Wednesday that FEMA EMA still must be much more radically transformed to handle disasters of a rapidly warming world.

"FEMA's new rule to rebuild public infrastructure back higher to avoid flood damage is an important shift in policy, but FEMA still desperately needs to transform into a modern disaster agency poised to tackle the deadly fossil fuel-driven heat decimating the whole country," said Jean Su, energy justice director and senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement.

Extreme weather impacts of global heating—largely driven by humanity extracting and burning fossil fuels—include not only widespread flooding and stronger hurricanes but also record-smashing heatwaves and wildfires.

Extreme heat is currently impacting tens of millions of people across the United States. On the West Coast, it's believed to have killed at least eight people. In Washington, D.C., Tuesday was the fifth day in a row of 97°F or higher, with the upper 90s also forecast for Wednesday. It's "oppressively hot," in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is on track to set a record for the most consecutive days over 115°F.

Texas residents are facing high temperatures along with the effects of historic Hurricane Beryl, which made its third landfall on Monday after hitting Mexico and the Caribbean and kicked off what experts fear will be an "extraordinary" season in the Atlantic. As of Wednesday morning, about 1.7 million Texans still lacked power. The storm is now expected to bring flooding and tornadoes to the Northeast.

"This mindset should be extended to address the nation's enormous need for a bold game plan to save lives and help struggling communities through heat."

"FEMA's rule acknowledges the public impacts of the climate emergency, and this mindset should be extended to address the nation's enormous need for a bold game plan to save lives and help struggling communities through heat," said Su. "There has to be an urgent mass mobilization of resources to deploy lifesaving cooling centers, air conditioning, and community solar, not piecemeal efforts and lackluster leadership."

Last month, over two dozen environmental, labor, and public health groups—including the Center for Biological Diversity—petitioned FEMA "to amend its regulations to include extreme heat and wildfire smoke in the Stafford Act regulatory definition of 'major disaster.'"

"This simple but elegant amendment serves to unlock critical funds for state, tribal, and local governments and communities to manage and mitigate extreme heat and wildfire smoke—both natural catastrophes predicted to worsen in duration, frequency, and severity due to the climate emergency," the coalition explained.

Su and her group are also part of a movement urging President Joe Biden to declare a national climate emergency—which, as she and co-author Maya Golden-Krasner detailed in a February 2022 report, would "unlock emergency executive powers already granted by Congress to aggressively combat the crisis."

While facing pressure from campaigners like Su to go much further, the Biden administration is demonstrating with its new rule an example of the Democratic president's priorities versus those of his Republican predecessor, as they prepare for a November rematch.

As The New York Timesdetailed Wednesday:

FEMA first proposed the rule, called the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, in 2016 during the Obama administration. The proposal generated intense opposition, particularly from homebuilders who warned that new restrictions would lead to higher construction costs, according to Roy Wright, who ran disaster mitigation programs for FEMA at the time.

The National Association of Home Builders did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A few months after Donald J. Trump became president, FEMA withdrew its proposal. When President Biden took office, he directed federal agencies to once again set rules to protect the projects they funded in flood zones. FEMA again began the process of drafting a rule.

"The federal government really has a duty to account for a future flood risk when it's providing funding to build or rebuild homes or infrastructure, because it's using taxpayer dollars," Joel Scata, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council and an expert on flood policy, toldGrist. Under the new rule, he said, FEMA is "going to be building in a way that's not setting people and infrastructure up for future failure."

National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi said in a Wednesday statement that "President Biden is taking bold action—mobilizing historic investments to protect communities before the storm strikes, upgrade critical infrastructure to reduce vulnerability and risk, and boost our collective capacity to recover quickly after disasters."

"By using commonsense solutions like elevating or floodproofing critical infrastructure, today's rule will help local communities harness the best in science and engineering to better prepare for flood risks from rising sea levels and damaging storms," Zaidi added. "This important step will help protect taxpayer-funded projects, including fire and police stations and hospitals, from flood risks and is an integral part of the Biden-Harris administration's broader efforts to enhance climate resilience across the country."

The rule comes as Biden defies growing calls to step aside and pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris or another Democratic presidential nominee following his disastrous debate performance against Trump last month. Long before that, the president was facing criticism of his climate record—especially compared with his 2020 campaign promises.

While Biden has been praised for signing a "landmark" climate package and announcing a pause on liquefied natural gas exports, he has come under fire for skipping last year's United Nations summit, continuing fossil fuel lease sales, and supporting the Mountain Valley Pipeline and Willow oil project—as well as not declaring a national climate emergency.

Trump, meanwhile, has publicly pledged to "drill, baby, drill" if he returns to the White House, and earlier this year reportedly told fossil fuel industry leaders he would gut Biden's climate regulations if they raised $1 billion for his campaign.