Disasters

J. Andrés Gannon, Stanton nuclear security fellow at CFR, discusses the likelihood of Russian deployment and use of nuclear missiles against Ukraine or its allies, and the implications for the United States should that occur. Jerrold T. Bushberg, chairman of the board and senior vice-president of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, discusses preparedness for nuclear and radiological disasters at the state and local level in the United States. TRANSCRIPT FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations State and Local Officials Webinar. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president for the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Thank you for taking the time to join us for today’s discussion. As a reminder, the webinar is on the record and the audio, video, and transcript will be made available on CFR’s website, CFR.org. CFR is an independent and nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, publisher, and educational institution focusing on U.S. foreign policy. We are also the publisher of Foreign Affairs magazine. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Through our State and Local Officials Initiative, CFR serves as a resource on international issues affecting the priorities and agendas of state and local governments across the country by providing analysis on a wide range of policy topics. We’re delighted to have participants from approximately forty U.S. states and territories. I’m pleased to introduce our speakers today, Andrés Gannon and Jerrold Bushberg. Andrés Gannon is the Stanton nuclear security fellow at CFR. Previously, he was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center and a Hans Morgenthau research fellow at the Notre Dame International Security Center, as well as a defense fellow at the NATO Defense College. His research focuses on the political origins of military power, what capabilities states arm themselves with and why, and how the distribution of military capabilities affects states’ conduct in international affairs. Jerrold Bushberg is a clinical professor of radiology and radiation oncology at the University of California Davis School of Medicine. He’s an expert on the biological effects, safety, and interactions of ionizing and nonionizing radiation and holds multiple radiation detection technology patents. He is also the chair of the board of directors and senior vice president of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements—the NCRP—a congressionally-chartered institution which formulates and disseminates information, guidance, and recommendations on radiation protection and measurements, and he previously served as a commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve where he was executive officer of the Chemical/Biological/Nuclear Technical Unit 120 Pacific. So thank you both for being with us today. We appreciate it. Andrés, can you talk first about the possibility of deployment and/or use of nuclear weapons in Russia’s war in Ukraine, and U.S. options in response to such action if it were taken? GANNON: Sure. And thank you, again, for having me and thanks to all for participating. Nuclear use and Ukrainian nuclear use, in general, is, to sort of start, a low probability/high magnitude event. So like we think of a lot of natural disasters, we’re forecasting worst case scenarios because the consequence would be incredibly high. Even though it’s unlikely, those are things that we have to prepare for. I think in the Ukraine context there’s three distinct nuclear scenarios that we can see for potential use by Russia, and I sort of order these from the least immediately consequential in terms of sort of death counts, casualties, and other costs to most. The first is, as a signal, I think that Russia has not tested a nuclear weapon since they were the Soviet Union in the sort of late ’80s. But I could see them testing a nuclear weapon either somewhere remote in northern Russia, possibly somewhere near Ukraine, in the ocean or in the sea, to demonstrate a willingness to use a nuclear weapon. Even though the casualty of such an event would be close to zero—such an event would be designed to have a low casualty—there are environmental effects and, more importantly, effects on sort of morale and people’s thinking about the likelihood of using nuclear weapons. So when we think about the consequences that would have for other countries thinking about acquiring or detonating nuclear weapons, there’s, potentially, second order ramifications on that sort of international system. The second scenario is one in which a sort of smaller tactical battlefield nuclear weapon is used and this is a tricky one to think about because, as we’ve seen with a lot of other weapons that are things like chemical weapons, it’s really difficult to predict the effects of even small nuclear detonations an hour, a day, a week later. The radiation that would happen from such an event could be one that blows back towards Russia in ways that could negate their benefits. It could create a sort of no man’s land in the region in Ukraine that will be impassable for some short period of time by military personnel on both sides. But I think that’s precisely the reason such an event could happen or could be sort of logical or strategic on Russia’s end as a way of halting Ukrainian advances. I think that we can think of tactical Russian use of a nuclear weapon in some of these cases where they’ve been losing ground and where the Ukrainians have been seizing territory as being a way of creating sort of a large tank ditch that would be impassable for a short period of time to stop Ukraine from advancing. So I think that that’s the logic that could exist there, particularly in the eastern Ukrainian region. The third most immediately consequential scenario for Russian nuclear use would be a strategic use of a nuclear weapon that wouldn’t necessarily be a sort of large strategic ballistic missile but will be targeted at civilians. This could be civilians that are in Ukraine. This could be civilians that are in nearby NATO countries. I think that the latter scenario is very unlikely since Russia and NATO, I think, so far has sort of tacitly agreed to limit by design the degree to which they’re interacting with each other directly. But I could see a situation where Russia feels that a sort of way to escalate the current attacks that they’ve had on the public in Ukraine, the sort of missile strikes that they’ve been doing recently, to ratchet that up with nuclear use could be a way to break morale in a way that would make Ukraine halt their advances and possibly give up in the conflict, in general. So I sort of want to wrap up there from where I started, which is none of these scenarios are incredibly likely but they are all very consequential. And so I think that when we think about what the U.S. response should be to these situations we can think of the response ex ante—what are things that the U.S. can do in advance to make sure that these events don’t occur—and then what would be the U.S. response ex post in the sense of if they did occur what should we do. In terms of ex ante, I think it’s really important that the U.S. continues to communicate to Russia behind the scenes where red lines are but to remain ambiguous about the consequences of crossing those red lines. A lot of research that has been done on sort of these sorts of threats and red lines indicates that being clear that any nuclear use would be unacceptable but remaining ambiguous about what sort of retaliation or consequence Russia would face is the way to make sure that these threats are both credible because there’s a clear line in the sand that we’re telling Russia not to cross while still making sure that the United States has flexibility in how it decides to respond afterwards, given new information that’s revealed about the consequence, that motivation, the situation at hand, et cetera. And so there’s sort of a lot of secret information that’s existing at the government level but that communication has to continue to happen between the United States and Russia directly. In terms of ex post, I think a lot of the humanitarian aspects of nuclear use are relevant in all of these situations. There’s a lot of very good, important environmental monitoring that’s done by a lot of folks regarding, as I’m sure Jerrold will talk about, the sort of radiological effects of these sorts of weapons, what effect that has on crops and agriculture. We have already seen sort of the effect of the conflict on wheat exports and prices in Ukraine, which would only be amplified in this situation. Transportation, mobility, possible refugee flows out of the region is something that has to be anticipated. And so I think that these are things that sort of matter at the state and local level in the United States because public opinion also matters in a lot of these things. There are about twenty-nine U.S. states that currently have nuclear power plants and there’s 10 (million) to 15 million people last I checked that live within ten miles of a nuclear power plant in the United States. When sort of radiation, detonation, anything that involves the power plants in Ukraine, anything that happens there, I think, would be directly relevant for how U.S. people in state and local regions here feel about the consequences of having nuclear facilities nearby and whether or not that’s something that would, potentially, pose a danger to them. Thank you. FASKIANOS: Thank you very much. Let’s go now to you, Jerrold, to talk about emergency preparedness for nuclear and radiological events in the U.S., what it would mean if such an attack would happen, and how states and locals can best prepare for the threats of this kind. And you are muted. You could unmute or—hold on a minute. BUSHBERG: There we go. FASKIANOS: There we go. Perfect. BUSHBERG: Thank you. All right. Very good. OK. So thank you for the opportunity to present this information, and I think you’ve set it up very nicely. We’re going to just take some—a few minutes to talk about the kinds of incidents that could occur and what their effects would be and the—in particular, those effects that would, if it occurred somewhere else in the world, what would that mean for radiation exposure in the United States and what particular actions, if any, would be implemented. So my comments will cover a broad range of different types of nuclear yields, most of them likely much greater than I would anticipate from the discussions that we’ve just talked about previously. But I think before we get into more of the detail, I want to make sure I give you the bottom line up front, which is that even if there was a very large detonation anywhere in Europe there would be no need to take protective actions if you’re living in the United States or even its territories and outside the continental United States, including Hawaii and Alaska so—and the reason for this is several fold. One is, is that—and we know a lot about this because there have been a number of nuclear detonations, I think over four hundred up until 1980. So we know about what the distribution of radioactive materials is like, and there are two principal things that occur. One is that the material—the radioactive material—gets injected into the atmosphere and at different levels in the atmosphere it behaves in different ways, and primarily a material that goes into not the troposphere but above that—in the next level above that, which is over about six thousand feet or so, that material pretty much stays there for a relatively long period of time, and the material that’s lower and the percent that goes into the lower versus the upper really depends on the yield and how far above ground it was detonated and a lot of other technical factors. But I really think the point here is, is that there’s a tremendous amount of dilution that occurs because of the normal dispersion of this material, and also if you look at the air currents in that—in the world they move from west to east. So even if there were a detonation somewhere in Ukraine it wouldn’t take the four-thousand-mile shortcut directly to us. It would have to go kind of the long way around the Earth, which will result in even greater dilution. The other aspect of it is that the radioactive material has different life spans, if you will. We call them half-lives. But I think one way to characterize it is that after twenty-four hours approximately 80 percent of the radioactive material that was generated will have decayed and after about two weeks or so it’s about 90 percent. So the concerns are, really, for people that are in that region or for the sort of immediate aftermath within the twenty-four, forty-eight hours, and for them the critical issues are—and we’ll talk about this in a minute a little bit more—are about seeking shelter and preventing contaminations and fallout. OK. A couple other things I wanted to mention. There are a number of guidance documents that are available both from the NCRP and from the federal agencies, and we can provide that link later and make it available to those who are interested. The radioactive material that’s produced, as I said, mixes up in the atmosphere and the dilution and decay result in very, very little of the radioactive material ending up in the United States from a detonation outside of the United States. And so one of the questions that often comes up is, well, can you—would we detect any increase in radiation and the answer is, yeah, we would. Why is that? Well, because we have incredibly sensitive radiation detectors and the amount that we can detect with our detectors is, literally, tens of thousands of times smaller than the level that would be of concern for public health. So the mere detection of a(n) increase would not necessarily pose a health threat and there are, as mentioned earlier, a number of monitoring stations in the United States that are run by governments and states and universities that monitor radiation levels 24/7/365. So we would know if the increase occurred and also if it occurred from a nuclear detonation as opposed to some release from a nuclear power plant. Experts can distinguish between those kinds of releases. So there has been a tremendous amount of study into this, and those kinds of rapid determinations are well within the United States’ and other countries’ capabilities. So I think one of the important things that—lessons learned from other releases—accidental releases—that have occurred like at Hiroshima—I’m sorry, like at Fukushima and at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident—is that people have seen a lot of material either on social media or on the internet telling people to take various anti-radiation drugs or so forth and so on, and that should not be done either. There is no reason to take these kinds of medications and, in fact, the vast majority of them are only good for very specific radionuclides and they do have side effects. So the most important advice is to listen to your state and local officials and follow that guidance, and so there will be official guidance available both at the local, state, and federal level. And to help put some of this—the amount of radiation into perspective for you, let’s say that we go back to the 1980s and China’s last aboveground detonation was in multiple megaton, which is a very, very large nuclear weapon, and the average dose to people around the world was, you know, about 1/1000, so about 1 percent of the dose that we all get from natural background radiation. Just to say a little bit more about that, you know, all of us are exposed to radiation all the time from what we refer to as naturally occurring background radiation and it comes both from cosmic rays and as well as the naturally occurring radioactive material that’s in the ground and that gets into the plants and, therefore, gets into the animals, and we eat plants and animals and so we have radioactive material in us. And so, on average, the—in the United States the typical background radiation is about three millisieverts per year and the amount of radiation that you might get, which is—well, to put that in perspective, it’s about the amount of radiation you get from a thoracic CT scan. That’s the amount of radiation, and the amount that you—that people got from those detonations, the very large aboveground nuclear test, was, you know, hundreds of times less than that. So the take home point, really, is that regardless of the yield anywhere outside of the United States, the amount of radiation we receive will be very small. There are very accurate monitoring stations around the United States that can detect very small increases in radiation and the government has a very well thought out and very rapidly implemented program for responding to such events to provide both information and monitoring information. And I think that as long as we don’t overreact to a situation like this and, you know, it is a critical situation but we need to remain calm, listen to the authorities, not overreact or certainly don’t take the advice of individuals who might be going on television or might be coming from other areas but are not representing what we typically refer to as, you know, the consensus of scientific opinion, I think we’ll be fine. So, with that, I’ll wrap it up with that and then be happy to respond to any questions that come up. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you very much. And, yes, we will send out a link to the sources that you recommend after this. Now let’s go to all of you for your questions and comments and, of course, we—this is a forum to share best practices. So if there are things that you’re doing in your municipality please share those with us. It’s good information for your colleagues. So you can either raise your hand by clicking on the icon and I will call on you. You can also write your question in the Q&A box, and if you do write your question then please also include your affiliation and state so that we can give context. So I’m going to look now for any raised hands. We have two already. So I’m going to go first to Mike Ladd and if you could unmute yourself—accept the unmute prompt, rather—that would be great. Q: Yes, ma’am. Can you hear me OK? FASKIANOS: We can, and identify yourself. Q: Yeah. My name is Mike Ladd. I’m the deputy emergency manager for Clay County, Florida, which is just southwest of Jacksonville. First, thank you so much for the presentation and answering this niche. I think the one assumption that’s made and kind of want to get your thoughts on it is, largely, this discussion is circulated around an initial or one or a singular nuclear detonation. However, there’s a lot of doctrine out there that that may trigger more and what if we have a whole bunch and not—you know, the whole retaliation? I understand that’s very hard to scope and scale. But in some of the commonalities that were discussed about 90 percent, you know, degradation of radiological hazard after about two weeks, what are your thoughts as far as how to sew that into a comprehensive emergency management plan? BUSHBERG: Well, I think that the most important thing to understand is that if you’re talking about a detonation that would be in the continental United States or let’s take it the other direction, say, that there are U.S. citizens in a region where a detonation occurred, you know, the most important thing that one can do is to—you know, is to seek shelter and to tune in to the local emergency broadcast for further information. The real risk is to those individuals that are outside the zone of lethality but are in an area where there could be significant amounts of fallout that could occur over the hours, days, and weeks later. But in the first few hours is really the most important response, or I guess most critical response time. And for that you would want to seek as much shelter that puts—in a building, maybe in the center of a taller building that puts a lot of material between you and the fallout, and that can substantially reduce the risk and the amount of radiation that individuals would receive. So if we’re talking about the sort of worst case situation where individuals are close to such a detonation that would be the appropriate actions. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next to Jeffery Warren. And, Andrés, if you want to add anything please feel free to jump in. Q: Thank you. Jeff Warren, Memphis City Council in Memphis, Tennessee. I just was wondering what Andrés thought about the possibility of this going completely south—it goes along with the question prior to that—and how aggressive we should be on the local level to be thinking about stocking fallout shelters and doing things that have occurred before. GANNON: Yeah. It’s a good thought. I have two sort of things I’m thinking about in response. The first is a weird part of the way that we’ve thought about it, the logic behind why a nuclear weapon wouldn’t be used is your target will fire back and neither side wants to be on the receiving end so no one will use it. That logic seems to make sense until the first missile is launched, in which case if Russia launches a missile on the United States and it’s—well, we’re supposed to respond. That’s what all the books have said, you know, since the 1950s. And that’s sort of a tricky and a hard thing to think through. And so I don’t think that we know, thankfully, given lack of experience, of what that escalation trajectory would look like. But I do think that the military and sort of high-level political officials involved are starting to think about the role that nonnuclear weapons would play in response and having this sort of cross-domain or cross-capability conflict. What that sort of means at the state and local level, I think, is difficult to figure out. But it’s a place that the research is going now that, I think, is important. In terms of what this means for state and local officials in the United States if this were to go south, there’s a lot of sort of research that we don’t know that’s classified regarding targeting that, I think, is something that’s worth thinking about. Nuclear strategists think about targeting, broadly speaking, in two dimensions. You can target what your opponents value, meaning their population centers and civilians, or you can target what is strategically important, meaning their military installations. You know, U.S. targeting is, largely, classified with the exception of some recently early Cold War documents. We don’t know what Russia’s targets would be in the event that they were to attack the United States but they probably have some plans there. I think if I were to speculate, the smartest thing to do in the early phases of a war is to target your enemies’ military capabilities. Those are the things that could be launched sort of against you and that would cause the most damage. So what this means is that states and localities where U.S. nuclear weapons are housed—our ICBM facilities that are in the Dakotas, you know, Wyoming, Nebraska, the Midwest in general—also, possibly places on the coast where U.S. nuclear submarines are based from or where they sort of get their intelligence, refueling, and maintenance. If I was Russia that would sort of be the first round of attack before I started thinking about the Los Angeleses, the D.C.s, the San Franciscos, et cetera. And so I think that that’s sort of a way to think about where this thing might go south if it were to start going in that direction. Now, how far would the escalation go? Would we end up with all military targets on both sides taken out and then we’re swapping city for city? It’s hard to say. But I think that if we think about the first step it would be places that are militarily-valuable targets for Russia to think about in the United States. Q: Well, in Memphis, you know, we just worry about logistics with FedEx. So we’re, you know, wondering how—where we would be on their list. GANNON: Yeah. I can’t speak to Memphis itself but I do think that your point about sort of transportation, infrastructure, logistical hubs is really important. I know that, for example, in Long Beach they’ve put a lot of work into making sure that the ports there are safe and secure in detecting, you know, possible radiological use and, you know, possible terrorist attacks that could happen there precisely because of the value that these ports have. So I think that that emphasis is well placed in the same way that, you know, we have things like TSA, not necessarily because airports are the most likely to be targeted but because the cost is really high. I think that infrastructure hubs that can do similar measures for security are putting resources in places that make sense. Q: Thank you. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take a written question from Linda Lewison, who’s with the Nuclear Energy Information Service—it’s a safe energy watchdog in Illinois—and the question written is other than modeling has there ever been an actual emergency response exercise for a nuclear power plant accident that would release large amounts of radioactive waste into the atmosphere in a relatively short timeframe? We, in Chicago, will probably have, perhaps, an hour or so to respond. Then she notes that there’s more radiological waste in Illinois than any other state. I don’t know who wants to take that. BUSHBERG: Well, I guess—I’m sorry. Was the question what would one do if there was or has there ever been a release from a—there have been—you know, so there was the Three Mile Island accident in the United States, which did not release a tremendous amount of radioactive material. In fact, quite, quite small amounts compared— FASKIANOS: I think— BUSHBERG: —to the others. But was there—and is there something else that they wanted a response to? FASKIANOS: It was more a question about is there—has there ever been an emergency response exercise. Like, what kind of gaming and— BUSHBERG: Oh. Yeah. FASKIANOS: —and responses to—you know, just like we have fire drills or— BUSHBERG: Yes. The— FASKIANOS: —those kind of things. BUSHBERG: Right. FASKIANOS: What’s happening on that front? BUSHBERG: Sure. So the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires all nuclear power plants in the United States to not only plan an exercise for a potential release but also work with local hospitals and medical and emergency response assets that would be responding to or supporting such an accident. There’s also very detailed emergency planning guidance that details evacuation zones should they be required. In the case of a nuclear power plant accident, you know, we’re concerned about sort of different radionuclides than we would from a nuclear weapons detonation. And there are things like radioactive iodine or something we’d be particularly concerned about and local health officials have planning guidance about whether potassium iodide, which is something that can block the thyroid gland from taking up radioactive iodine, would be necessary and they have stockpiles of this local to the nuclear power plants that are available for local health officials to dispense if that turns out to be a suggested guidance. But, you know, the most important thing one could do if you heard about any sort of radiological release in our national guidance, and this would apply even to a very large release, is to—you know, you would get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned. So if you just remember those three words or three phrases—to get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned—you will protect yourself from the vast majority of any potential harm that can occur because the real concern is fallout or deposition of radioactive material contamination. FASKIANOS: Right. So, Jerrold, there’s a written question, and this is for you to clarify, from Samer Jaafar, who is in Wayne County, Michigan, and, perhaps, this is not what you said but writing—you state not to take KI potassium iodide that you feel will not benefit and—benefit you anyhow. They are advised by the State Department of Environmental Quality of an air sample or dosimeter when it reaches a certain exposure level during our training preparedness for REP. So can you clarify what you meant? BUSHBERG: You bet. Yeah. Thank you for that question. FASKIANOS: That would be great. Thank you. BUSHBERG: Thank you for the question. What I was saying is that if there was a detonation in Ukraine, there is under—there would be no circumstances under which potassium iodide would ever be recommended because there is just not going to be enough exposure to warrant it. Now, that’s different than what I just talked about, which was maybe a release from a nuclear power plant, for which potassium iodide is very effective at blocking just radioactive iodine. None of the other nucleotides that might be released; potassium iodide would not have any effect on those. So planning guidance does provide for state and local officials guidance on environmental monitoring and at what levels they might suggest the distribution of potassium iodide, but that would be a public health decision in coordination with both the state and federal agencies. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. I’m going to go next to Ted Voorhees, who has a raised hand, from Orange County in Virginia. If you can unmute yourself. Q: No question. I’m sorry. FASKIANOS: There we go. Oh, you don’t have a question. OK. Q: No. Thanks. FASKIANOS: All right. Thank you.                     I’m going to go next to John Jaszewski. And excuse my pronunciation. And if you can unmute yourself. Q: Now can you hear me? FASKIANOS: We can. (Laughs.) Q: OK. Thank you. I’m John Jaszewski. I’m calling from Mason City, Iowa, which is in northern Iowa. And I’m curious as to whether or not you can forecast, if Russia releases a tactical weapon in Ukraine or somewhere in Eastern Europe, would it follow that they’ll eventually release a strategic weapon toward the United States. GANNON: I can start with that one. I don’t—what that answer depends on is what do we think is Russia’s goal in Ukraine, what do we think is Putin’s goal in Ukraine. And there’s a variety of different answers that all point to different expectations about the degree to which they would go further and escalate in a conflict. Maybe their goal is just material and strategic. Maybe Russia does want this territory, these sort of four areas that they’ve taken, and they want Crimea because they think that it’s a part of Ukraine, and maybe access to the naval base in Sevastopol is helpful. That’s fairly limited. Maybe it’s a little bit more, in that there’s some sort of nationalistic impulse of people that they think are truly Ukrainian people, sort of pushing back against Western expansion and embarrassment since the end of the Cold War and NATO expansion, in which case Russia’s aims are a little broader. Maybe Russia just wants to sort of once again be an imperial superpower and the most dominant state in the world, in which case they really want to push back against the West and they have greater sort of territorial and reputational ambitions. In reality, it might be some combination of all of these things. We don’t know and I don’t know that we’ll ever know. But I think whatever events we start seeing about Russian escalation shed some light on what we can infer as the likely motivations. I think that tactical nuclear use in Ukraine would be helpful—potentially be helpful for Russia towards any of those gains. I explain sort of one way in which it could be helpful to them militarily, and it would be helpful in terms of taking territory and showing the West that sort of they are a powerful, dominant country. I think that if they were to then take the next step and attacking NATO or the United States directly with a strategic nuclear weapon, that’s not a decision that you make if your goal is to get access to a naval base and if your goal is to have control over these four regions, some of which you have kind of controlled so far. That demonstrates sort of larger imperial ambitions maybe at the personalistic level for Putin himself that are very different. So I know that that doesn’t really answer the question because it doesn’t tell you what I sort of think are the likelihood of all of these things, but that’s because I don’t think that that can be answered ahead of time. And I think that people that sort of have—the stronger someone’s opinion is about what is Russia’s true motivation, the less confident I am in sort of the reasons that they’ve given for why that’s the case. But I think that the scenario in which Russia decides that their aims are best served by directly attacking the United States with nuclear weapons is a situation where Russia and Putin’s geopolitical ambitions are largely unparalleled and inconsistent with a lot of actions that we’ve seen so far. And whether or not he thinks that that’s something that would help him because he’s backed into a corner and this is sort of a Hail Mary strategy for maintaining power, or whether he thinks that this is the nail in the coffin for defeating the West, I think both of those scenarios are hard to say. So I think that we have to see many, many other actions happen first before we get that scenario. It wouldn’t be a bolt from the blue. FASKIANOS: Great. There is a written question from Cailey Hansen-Mahoney from the Ohio General Assembly: Have you seen any successful legislation to protect nuclear power facilities/storage at the state level? Any recommendations for best practices for state legislatures to support incident command/emergency planning as we discuss this possibility? BUSHBERG: Well, starting sort of with the last part first, yes, there is—are some outstanding documents. NCRP has a number of documents that speak to these questions directly. NCRP Report 165, which is entitled “Responding to Radiological or Nuclear Terrorism Incidents: A Guide for Decision Makers,” this is free to download from the NCRP website. The NCRP website is ncrponline.org. And so that document is freely available, and there are a number of other documents that NCRP scientists have put together that go into some significant detail about both preparing for, planning, and executing response to radiological releases. Now the—now I’m forgetting what the first part was. Oh yes, the fuel onsite—protecting the onsite fuel. So the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has regulations about the storage or protection of this radioactive waste, which are essentially the materials that once the fuel rods have been in the reactor for a certain period of time and they have expended their practical usefulness that are taken out. And at that point, they’re extremely radioactive. They’re put into pool storage where water is circulated to remove the heat, and then ultimately are put into what’s referred to as dry storage. In the United States today, all of that sort of spent nuclear fuel is stored onsite at the reactors because we don’t have a long-term storage repository in the United States. So the—all of the utilities have precautions and protections of that material, and it is stored in very robust and hardened facilities that would make the release of that material very, very difficult. (Pause.) OPERATOR: Irina, can you please unmute yourself? FASKIANOS: Yes. There you go. (Laughs.) I want to go next to Bill, who has raised his hand. And if you could identify yourself. Q: My name is Bill Stoutenborough. I’m in Madison County, Illinois. I think we’re being a little bit naïve in saying we don’t know what Russia’s goals are. It appears that—let’s go by what they’re doing instead of what they’re saying. They want to weaken NATO. They want to exercise controls over the EU. They had controls with oil lines, pipelines, fertilizer, et cetera. What they—the strongest control they can get is food, and Ukraine has more production area than any other in the European area. They supply over 30 percent of the food to Europe and to other areas of the world. Now, they’re not attacking military targets; they’re attacking infrastructure, such as knocking out the electricity. That is being done here in the United States. We talked about nuclear. Their former president has indicated they want to move battleships armed with their hypersonic weapons within the areas of the—political areas of the allies supporting Ukraine. They even specifically indicate Washington is within the 600-mile range of hypersonic missiles, which cannot easily be detected because they’re a low-trajectory item. What type of—I guess at some point in time I think we’re going to have to fight Russia. We are being reactive and never proactive. I think that we should proceed in getting the other two Scandinavian countries into NATO. I think we should even allow Ukraine to start its—restart its process into NATO and Article 5. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Thank you very much. Andrés, do you want to respond to that comment? GANNON: Sure. Yeah. Thank you, Bill, for those thoughts. I think that there are sort of ways that we can infer what Russia’s goals might be based on what they’ve done. You’re certainly correct about that. What I think is challenging to do in the long term is figure out: Where would Russia be satisfied? What, for them, is an outcome where they will say we’re OK with this, there’s no other changes that we want to make to the world? Does that mean having part of Ukraine be Russian territory? Does that mean all of Ukraine? Does that mean NATO pushes back to the sort of pre-NATO-expansion boundaries? Does that mean NATO doesn’t exist? Does that mean the United States doesn’t exist? These are all sort of hypotheticals that I think are hard to think about, but all are very different in terms of what they think that—or, what they suggest the U.S. strategy should be. As far as the point about preempting what Russia is doing, I think that’s something that’s currently in discussion by national policymakers. But what’s tricky is Russia isn’t the only thing that the U.S. is concerned about when it comes to great power competition. We saw in the recent National Security Strategy increased concern about China’s activities, the U.S. sort of starting to think about a new tripolar or trilateral world, where there’s two threats that we’re thinking about simultaneously. And so I think that as we think about what, if anything, should we do to weaken Russia, where those resources come from is an open question that I don’t have the answer to, but that I hope that those that are in charge of making those decisions are thinking about. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. Jeffrey Semancik has written a couple things in the Q&A—suggestions, best practices. And I thought maybe you could just share with the group rather than having me read. And so I would like to invite you to unmute yourself. Q: Yeah, hi. This is, yeah. Can you hear me? FASKIANOS: We can. If you can just identify yourself too for the group and just— Q: Yeah. This is Jeffrey Semancik. (Off mic.) FASKIANOS: OK, we can’t hear you now. (Laughs.) Jeff, can you—we can’t hear you anymore. OK. Q: I got it. No, I got it now. FASKIANOS: OK, good. Q: So, yeah, I’m sorry. Just we’re in a conference room here trying to organize some stuff. But so just wanted to point out a couple resources available to state and local officials. I think Jerrold presented NCRP reports. There was also some recent guidance from FEMA related to a nuclear detonation published in May of 2022 that’s available from FEMA’s website. And finally, there is a group that we’re working with to try to build nuclear subject matter experts on nuclear—on response to nuclear and radiological events. It’s called the Radiological Operations Support Specialists, the ROSS. And I provided an email address for folks that are trying to work through some planning guidance. And these are folks that are volunteers of a type by FEMA that can come in and provide consistent—you know, some information consistent with the latest guidance documents, help you understand the consequences, answer your questions on a local and state level. So may be something that folks might be interested in. And I provided an email contact to FEMA if you’re interested. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. So, yes, in the Q&A—and Jeff is with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. The email address is [email protected]. And, again, we will be sending our links, and we can include that email address too, so that you can go there as well, along with the Report 165 that was published by the NCRP. OK— BUSHBERG: Let me just mention, if I could— FASKIANOS: Yes, go ahead, Jerrold. That’s great. Thank you. BUSHBERG: You know, Jeff, thank you for reminding me about those, that I hadn’t mentioned them. But, you know, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration, the CDCPA, and FEMA, as you suggest, all have excellent documents on various aspects of responding for—responding to and planning for such events, from very small to very large. And we will provide all those things to the audience, for their use after the conclusion of this event. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. I don’t see any more questions from new people, so I’m going to go back to Linda Lewison, who has written a few in the—in the chat. But maybe you could talk a little bit about how is the U.S. protected from the new super weapons from Russia that are going around the world in submarines? Are they—can get they got into a position to attack our coastlines? And, Andrés, maybe you can answer that. GANNON: Yeah. So the new Russian weapons have largely puzzled me, to be honest, because they don’t offer anything new for Russian in terms of targets that they can hit, or in terms of the lethality of potential strikes that exist there. It’s largely been an open secret among the superpowers, even since, you know, the Strategic Defense Initiative way back during the Cold War, that missile defense is almost impossible. It’s incredibly difficult to do. If there was a target in the United States that Russia wanted to hit, they have been able to hit it for decades. What these new weapons do is they provide some degree of speed, which might be helpful in terms of—to minimize the amount of preparedness that can happen at the local level. But I think that that’s largely minor. And a lot of it is political. It’s a way of showcasing their sort of increase resolve or their willingness to do things, because they’re investing more in being able to sort of have a high-technology military. There’s also a lot of just prestige-related reasons why countries want to have the best and the shiniest military capabilities, even if they don’t offer that much strategic utility on the battlefield. We see this a lot with conventional military capabilities, where some of the best U.S. aircraft carriers, for example, or naval and air capabilities are ten, twenty, thirty, forty years old. And they’re really good. Nd the newest ones are marginally better, but not that much better than some of the capabilities that we’re largely relying on. So I think that we should think about these new advanced Russian hypersonic missiles, et cetera, as being less about having military utility in terms of giving them an edge in a conflict, and more about having political utility in terms of how Putin and the Russian government sell this to the Russian public, how they communicate this to the United States, and how they think these things would impact U.S. resolve. So I think a lot of it is theater. And I don’t say that to diminish it. I think that theater is really important. I think a lot of politics is about theater and communication. But it’s about sort of communicating things rather than enacting particular military things differently. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Cindy Wolf has raised—a raised hand. If you want to unmute yourself. Q: Hi. I come from a county that is surrounded by various military installations. But we are remote, and we are an archipelago. So I have some interest in a clarity on time scale and kind of some red flags that we might want to look for in terms of this Ukraine-Russia conflict escalating to something where we would start to need to be concerned about educating our people want to do on short notice. GANNON: I can start with that one. One place that Russia has been oddly unimpressive in the Ukraine conflict is electronic warfare. We have not seen many successful uses by Russia on that front. There’s some sort of hypotheses people are positing now for why is Russia’s electronic warfare so bad? And to clarify, what I mean by that is the parts of warfare that deal with, like, jamming, radar, and communications, making computers unable to work and function, radios, things like that, maybe Ukraine is really good at defending against electronic warfare. They have capabilities that are decent, but nothing that should be way better than what Russia is doing. Maybe Russia can’t jam because their equipment is too similar to the Ukrainians, and so they sort of get their wires cross and it could affect them. But I think that’s an under-discussed part of the Ukraine conflict that has ramifications for exactly what you described. If Russia were to sort of be engaged in a direct conflict against the United States, the first two things that they would need to do, or would be smart for them to do, is, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, direct kinetic attacks on capabilities that would be relevant in U.S. first strike. So targeting U.S. ICBM installations, places like bomber bases where we have sort of nuclear-based bombers, et cetera. And the second is for other things, especially naval and air capabilities, electronic warfare-type strategies to deal with command and control centers that communicate to U.S. capabilities that are deployed further away. So, like, U.S. submarines and surface fleets have communication with the mainland United States for the types of operations that they’re doing overseas. The sort of general best practice in militaries is rather than try to attack every single boat, attack the command and control centers that communicate with those boats to render them in the dark. And that’s a place where we’ve seen Russia performing poorly. So on the one hand, I think that’s some sort of vote of confidence, in an answer to your question, that I don’t think that Russia will be able to turn the lights out at U.S. military bases in the continental United States very, very quickly. On the other hand, that’s something that they know they’re going to have to do. And so I think that this is a place that I expect Russia to try to increase investments to how successful they can be at doing so, given sanctions and the amount of spending in their defense industrial base, I think is hard to say. But I think if you are in a locality that is militarily relevant for the United States, for reasons that are not the first forty-eight hours of warfare—meaning, ICBMs, nuclear bombs, et cetera—then I think that the electronic and the sort of grid capacity is the one that’s the most important to think about, in terms of the immediate effects. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take—go ahead, Jerrold. BUSHBERG: Yeah. The only thing I would add to that is I think she asked about, you know, preparation and training. And I believe Jeff was the one that mentioned the FEMA documents and all the planning guidance for response to a nuclear detonation. It’s the third edition that was published in May of 2022. And it is the most recent complication of information that provides guidance not only on preparedness but response and also the guidance for emergency response part of the community, as well as local and state assets. So I would heavily recommend that. And, again, we’ll provide these links after the meeting. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. I’m going to take a written question from Commissioner Tyler Shuff, who is the commissioner of the Seneca County Commission: Why aren’t our schools teaching kids what to do in case of the bombs getting stopped? Why and when did this stop? Andrés, have you studied this? GANNON: I have a bit. Part of it is—so, Jerrold was making some good points earlier about sort of the immediate blast radius, and sort of what happens afterwards, the sort of radioactive zone. If you’re in that immediate blast radius, stop, drop, and roll is not going to do a lot for you. I think there was some recognition of that during the Cold War when this was taught, but people need something. We think about sort of the human and the political element of this, I think it’s hard to tell people: Prepare for a nuclear attack the same why that you prepare for an earthquake or a tsunami or a typhoon or a tornado. There is a lot of overlap. Like, 80-90 percent of it is the same. A lot of what Jerrold said about, you know, stay inside, have water, have food, have access to information and batteries and flashlights—that’s the same for all these things. But that’s sort of deeply unsatisfying at sort of a psychological level for people to think, oh, there’s nothing that I should do? There’s nothing that can help if this is nuclear as opposed to just a tornado? And so think that’s a thing from sort of the non, sort of, physical science or radiological perspective. From the political perspective, that’s worth thinking about for messaging, is what can you do to make people feel as if there’s something that is within their control when they come to preparation. I think this is why, like, the iodine tablets are popular, because people can feel, just, I bought something that someone said could help me in certain situations. I think I carry one on me. Oddly, there’s, like, these very small $10 or $15 basically sheets of paper you can have that have a detection of how much accumulation of radiation you’ve gotten on your body. That is mildly helpful in some situations, but it’s not going to make a world of difference. But these are the kinds of things that people want to do and want to think about, something that’s sort of within their control, or some decision that they’ve made. And so I think that your point or your question about why has this stopped in schools is along those lines. That’s just we want to feel as if there’s something that we can do, but it’s really not any different than a lot of the other drills we do for safety. That is, stay calm, stay inside, and make sure that you’re getting your information from trustworthy sources. And I think that last one is a point that we haven’t really explored here and probably don’t have time to, but is an important one for state and local officials to do. We saw, you know, since the 2016 election a lot of misinformation that is coming about politics. And it’s hard to know who to trust. I would be very, very shocked if any nuclear attack was not accompanied by a flurry of misinformation by the attackers about is it safe to go outside? What pills should you take? Where should you go? Who should you listen to? And that’s a place where I think state and local governments can do a lot to inform their people. Here are all the websites, here are the accounts that will tell you the actual information about when it’s safe to go outside. Right, not the person you found on Twitter who sends a picture that says: I’m outside. Everything is fine. That’s the kind of place where I think a lot of education can go a long way, and make people feel as if there is something within their control that they are doing that’s helping with preparation. I think that that’s something that can happen in schools that’s different from fire drills or hide under your desk. But at this point, I think it’s more helpful. BUSHBERG: Yeah, just to amplify that point a little bit—thank you for that—you know, it seems somewhat counterintuitive but I think, you know, people think about evacuating an area that has been subject to such a detonation or an attack. But if you’re outside of that zone of lethality where you haven’t been killed by the blast, that there following such a detonation, people I think instinctively would try and evacuate, or run, or get away. But that’s the wrong thing to do. (Audio break)—detonation is to seek shelter, and seek shelter immediately. And the best shelter is the largest, closest building you can find and be in the—sort of as close to the middle of that building as you can, with as much building on top of you, below you, and on the sides. And this is really to reduce the amount of radiation one gets from fallout. But the most important part of it is that you’re not trying to evacuate, you get stuck in traffic, you know, you have fallout occurring now over the next hours, and that can be lethal from a nuclear detonation if you are exposed to it directly early on. And so I can’t overemphasize the importance of this very, very prompt seeking of shelter, and to stay inside until the emergency and local public health officials can provide additional guidance. FASKIANOS: We have two minutes left. I’m going to just try to sneak in the question—or, a question from Eno Mondesir. If you could be quick, that would be great. And then people—you know, Andrés and Jerrold, if you can answer and give you closing thoughts, that would be terrific. And you need to unmute yourself. OPERATOR: Looks like we’re having some— Q: Sorry. FASKIANOS: Oh, there we go. No problem. Q: Yeah, I just wonder if any of the two experts could tell us how many nations already have nuclear capabilities, and what are the potential ones also? GANNON: So I think the count now is around nine nuclear states. U.S., Russia, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, U.K., France, Israel. The states that are most likely to develop a nuclear weapon coming up would be Iran, sort of the one that’s being discussed. South Africa is the one case of a country that had a nuclear weapon and voluntarily sort of gave up that capability, which is a real interesting place to—that a lot of people are producing good academic work. So that’s where we are as far as who has nuclear weapons. There’s a weird way of thinking about who’s most likely to use nuclear weapons. Well, one answer is they’re being used every day, and that they are changing states’ calculations about what types of decisions to make and how they interact. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing I think is a subject of very important and unresolved debates, but one that hopefully continues. FASKIANOS: Jerrold, any closing thoughts? BUSHBERG: Well, I would just repeat, you know, really the two key items, which is, you know, if there is a detonation that occurs in Ukraine, there—it will not pose any serious threat to citizens of the United States. And if there were happen to be a detonation in the U.S., outside that zone of lethality it is survivable, if you seek shelter promptly. So we’ll leave it at those two comments. And, again, we can—we will provide these additional links to—where you can go into much greater detail after this seminar is over. FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Thank you so much. So we appreciate you both being with us, Andrés Gannon and Jerrold Bushberg. And again, we will send out the links to this webinar, as well as resources. Please, I encourage you to visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for more expertise and analysis. And you can email us at [email protected] to offer suggestions of other topics we should cover or speakers that could support the important work that you are doing in your communities. So thank you, again, for being with us today. We appreciate it. And we look forward to reconvening again. (END)

In October 2012, Superstorm Sandy made landfall as one of the most destructive hurricanes to ever hit the United States, causing tens of billions of dollars in damage and dozens of casualties. A decade later, climate change has continued to intensify the impacts of hurricanes in the United States, as made evident by recent Hurricane Ian. Our panelists discuss lessons learned in climate resiliency over the past decade, and how the United States can better prepare for natural disasters moving forward.  The Lessons From History Series uses historical analysis as a critical tool for understanding modern foreign policy challenges by hearing from practitioners who played an important role in a consequential historical event or from experts and historians. This series is made possible through the generous support of David M. Rubenstein.

Alice C. Hill, senior fellow for energy and the environment at CFR, and Leslie Chapman-Henderson, president and CEO of the nonprofit Federal Alliance for Safe Homes (FLASH), discuss factoring the risks from changing climate conditions into policy planning and building codes that safeguard homes against natural disasters. TRANSCRIPT FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations State and Local Officials Webinar. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president for the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. We’re delighted to have participants from forty-one U.S. states and territories to talk about “Adapting to a Changing Climate.” So we appreciate your being with us for today’s discussion, which is on the record. CFR is an independent and nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, publisher, and educational institution focusing on U.S. foreign policy. CFR is also the publisher of Foreign Affairs magazine. And, as always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Through our State and Local Officials Initiative, CFR serves as a resource on international issues affecting the priorities and agendas of state and local governments by providing analysis on a wide range of policy topics. So we’re pleased to have Leslie Chapman-Henderson and Alice Hill with us today. Leslie Chapman-Henderson is the president and CEO of the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes, the country’s leading advocacy organization for strengthening homes from natural disasters. She recently developed and launched the award-winning National Hurricane Resilience Initiative, #hurricanestrong, in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Association, FEMA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Weather Channel. She serves as a co-chair for the My Safe Florida Home Advisory Council, enacted by the Florida state legislature, and as a board trustee of Florida International University’s Hurricane Research Center, and as the Florida gubernatorial appointee to the FCC’s Warning Alert and Response Committee. Alice Hill is the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and Environment here at CFR. Previously, she served as special assistant and senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff under President Obama and as senior counselor to the secretary of homeland security, where she developed the department’s first-ever climate adaptation plan. Judge Hill is the author of the book The Fight for Climate After COVID-19. And she is also the co-author of the book, Building a Resilient Tomorrow. So thank you both for being with us today. Alice, I’d like to begin with you, to have you set the stage by talking about the primary concerns facing U.S. cities and states today vis-à-vis climate change, and what kind of—I can’t speak today—strategies and policies that you found to be most efficient and effective for dealing with them. HILL: Well, thank you so much for having me. It’s really an honor and a pleasure to be able to speak with everyone about this very important challenge, which has manifested itself before our eyes this year. Really, Americans can look out their windows and see climate change in action. For many years, we thought that climate change was a matter for the distant future. Most of our efforts focused on the cutting of emissions, the cutting of that blanket—accumulation of emissions around the globe.  That blanket that essentially trapped heat, just as it did when your mom threw a blanket on you when you were asleep at night. And has heated up global temperatures to about above 1.1 degrees Celsius, as a global average. And that’s, the scientists tell us unequivocally, as a result of human activity, the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, forming that blanket, from the industrial times. Pre-industrial times, it was about 280 parts per million. Now at Mauna Loa observatory, an observatory in Hawaii that has been measuring the accumulation of carbon since 1958, unfortunately, this May there was the highest-ever average reported number, 421 parts per million. And so why do we care about that? Because it brings these devastating impacts that communities across the United States have been experiencing. Whether it’s in the western states with extended drought, the worst drought in 1,200 years, wildfire threats. We’re seeing bigger, hotter wildfires form their own weather, firenadoes, those in the west I’m sure have heard of. Of course, flooding, very dramatic examples of that in terms of Kentucky this year. And just seeing what emergency managers call rain bombs—so much rain falling at once that none of our cities are ready to absorb that kind of rainfall. And we see flooding.  And then, of course, we have seen extreme heat events. Those are the most certain of events, and the most—events most closely tied to climate. We have a whole new area of science called attribution science. And that traces the fingerprints of climate change on various events. And that terrible heat wave we had not so long ago in the Pacific Northwest—heat, of course, is a big killer—scientists told us it wouldn’t have happened for that length without climate change. So we’re seeing all these dramatic effects on the ground. And the fundamental challenge for all of us is that the environment that we have enjoyed for the last eight thousand, ten thousand years—that time in which human civilization flourished, that climate was a stable climate. And it’s no longer stable. We’re seeing the acceleration of the climate impacts not quite but almost in real-time. And in the decades going forward, we will see more of these impacts. So although we all—many of us assume, oh, that’s the worst it could be. Ian’s the worst it could be. That’s just not the case. We will see bigger storms. We don’t know the frequency, but we’ll see bigger storms going forward. And the question is then are we prepared? And we have built an environment—our building codes reflect this, our land use choices reflect this, our dependence, our assumptions about what ecosystems we can rely on assume this—assume a stable climate. They assume that the climate of the future will resemble the past. And that’s simply no longer true. The climate of the future will be very different from the past. So if we continue to build as we’ve built in the past and live as we’ve lived in the past, we’re at great risk. Unfortunately, we’ve seen—in addition to the changing climate—we’ve seen many more people moving into areas at risk. That includes along our coasts. We all like to live near water. It also includes that wildland-urban interface, that area that’s near or in wildlands. And those areas are also more prone to fire. So what we’re discovering is that we have many people who are trapped. Either they’re trapped because they’re in an area of land that’s too soggy or it will burn, or they’re trapped financially. They cannot get out. They can’t pay the insurance premiums in California or in our coastal states. Or their community is trapped. And it’s trapped in a downward spiral as taxes go down, as kids can’t get to school, as people can’t get to work. And there’s a downward spiral for everyone involved. So the question for all of us is, what are we going to do about this? And those changes will primarily, in the United States, occur at the state and local, tribal, territorial, level of government. The federal government can give incentives, as it has very much so in the recent Inflation Reduction Act. But it really doesn’t make the choices on the ground as to how and where we build. And that’s why it’s so important that state, local, tribal, territorial governments look closely at their risk, and figure out what’s ahead, and then how do we respond appropriately to avoid having people be trapped and avoid having people die as a result of these accelerating climate impacts. So I’m looking forward to the discussion. It’s such a pleasure to join you. FASKIANOS: Thank you, Alice. And, Leslie, let’s go to you. Obviously, with your experience with hurricanes—we just saw Hurricane Ian hit Florida and up the coast so hard. Can you talk about the steps local governments and consumers can take to protect against these kinds of disasters and any trends or shifts you’re seeing in building practices and codes? CHAPMAN-HENDERSON: Sure. Thanks, Irina. Great to be here to talk about one of our favorite topics, which is building codes. And our organization has been working and talking and advocating and, you know, looking at this building code question for twenty-four years. We just marked the thirty-year anniversary of Hurricane Andrew, when this conversation really began in earnest after 1992. And across the disaster safety and resilience movement, which is very closely allied with the climate resilience movement because we have so much in common, our chief solution being that the foremost thing, which is building codes, we look back over thirty years and all the progress, the technology, the communication advances, emergency management process advances, systems, and everything else we’ve done, the great unfinished business of our movement is building codes. So approximately three years ago, our very diverse partnership of public, private and nonprofit partners came together under the leadership of DHS and FEMA as well as the private insurance industry. And we said: OK. It’s time to get serious about building codes because you can’t skip over it and have anything turn out better. And with the compounding challenges that Alice so beautifully just laid out, we really have to take a look at how we build, including where we build, and how we’re going to build with disaster safety and resilience in mind, as well as climate.  So one of the things—you know, our role in particular is to put out information and raise awareness and create outreach initiatives because, as we know, behavior change and social change must enjoy the support of the public, because the resources are—you know, we’re always competing for resources. And things like building codes do require resources. So first question we talk about with building codes is why codes? And just to restate some of the obvious—and we’re going to provide some of the great proof points to you as a follow-up for this discussion—there’s tremendous—and I’m going to talk last about probably the most important reason. But first and foremost, thirty years ago we didn’t have the economic proof that we have today. We didn’t have the long-term studies. We didn’t have the NIBS, National Institute for Building Science, benefit-cost ratio that proves that for every dollar spent on building codes you have an $11 return. We didn’t have the FEMA losses avoided study that says in California alone, just for fire and flood, over the next twenty years they’ll see a savings of $132 billion. These studies looked at buildings, disasters, actual buildings and models. And so we have all the economic proof of what we’ve known really intuitively all along, is that these building codes save money, OK? We also know, and what we’ve long talked about, is there’s a very strong case for building codes from a social equity standpoint. Why should the basic protections and the innovations that go into the new versions of the model code not be provided to every homeowner? Why should those safety and innovation upgrades that keep the roof on in high wind, keep the fire from igniting in a wildfire zone—why should those be upgrades? Shouldn’t the baseline construction of a home include what we know to keep that home intact? So building codes are very, very important to ensure that all homes, especially affordable homes, are built the right way.  Because no one can—no one is in a position to withstand the—you know, throes and results of disaster, but especially those in the—you know, in the realm of affordable housing. They have the most to lose and they have the hardest time recovering. And sometimes they never recover. And so we know that that’s another really strong case for building codes. There’s also universal benefits to codes that go beyond our focus on disaster, but just on an everyday blue sky basis—energy efficiency, ordinary fire safety. You know, all the things—plumbing and mechanical, you know, ways that more and more we have to look at things like water. You want all those extras that come with the new versions of the codes that are put forth every three years. But, as I said before, the most important reason for building codes, what we dial into and what we just saw again in Hurricane Ian, is basic efficacy. Building codes work. They prevent damage. They save lives. They prevent injuries. And they prevent damage. We saw—so I want to walk about Ian, because we have been very engaged in Ian, and our partners have been on the ground as early as the day after Ian. And this spans our NSF-funded teams through STEER and our academic partners as well as private sector and government engineers on the ground. One team recently just coming out of the field yesterday.  I told the news, the media, before Ian struck that what I expected we would see is that the damage to the homes would track very closely with the age of the home, ergo the use of, you know, which building code was used. And of course, I wanted to make sure that I knew what I was—you know, that I validated what I predicted. And I talked with the NSF-funded team first. And they said—they described the difference between building performance of older, pre-Andrew building code-era homes and post-Andrew code homes as a bright red line. And this is true for the water and the surge as well as for the high wind. Homes that are elevated and constructive with higher wind standards, they fared better. In fact, many of them survived even on Sanibel Island. So building codes work. And we know they work. And for disasters—for the benefit of codes today and for climate resilience tomorrow, there’s a tremendous, you know, logical case for codes. But there are some practical challenges with codes that come up. And I want to address a couple of those things to you, because we do have some new resources, as well as some new tools, and then after that we can talk about, you know, some of—you know, dig into some of those issues. So when we started really—you know, when we embraced this three years ago and said, OK, it’s time once and for all, we did a two-year study, qualitative and quantitative study, to try to check in with the public and say: Where is the public on building codes? And I bet you can guess. Nowhere at all. The public is not concerned about building codes, to a point, because they assumed that building codes were already handled. They likened building safety to car safety, and they are highly confident that their local, and state, and federal leadership are taking care of them. In our work, when we tested that presumption, it was eight out of ten that said, no, no, I’m not worried about codes at all because no one would let you build me a home if it weren’t just right.  So then we introduced the notion that what would you say and how would you feel if you found out either, A, that you didn’t have a code at all, or that your code didn’t have the hazard-resistant provisions necessary to protect you from something like a flood, or a high wind event, or a wildfire? Everything changed at that point, with both the attention level of those that we worked within the project as well as their expectations of their leadership.  So I pulled a couple of the statements from the research because I think they’re very important. As we probe through the question and the attitude level shifted and people became very engaged with codes. We realized the breadth of our challenge included education of codes, so that they’re not confused with, you know, some of the other historic preservation or zoning or different things. Because codes address the building itself, not where it’s placed. Although those questions are important too, for everything in this realm. One of the things that people told us is we asked them who they—you know, who they were counting on the most. And 90 percent responded their local officials and their state officials to get the building codes in place to protect them. And then we talked at length about the top two groups they were counting on. And it’s logical, they were counting on their builders and their leaders. So the research guided us to an important piece, which is codes are kind of a mystery and nobody even knows what code they have.  So out of that work, we decided that one of our first orders of business was to create transparency on the status of codes. Because how do we fix a problem when we don’t even know what our starting point is? So we have two wonderful resources out there now for expert audiences. We have the BCAT portal, the Build Code Adoption Tracker, manned by FEMA and quarterly updates by engineering review of hazard-resistant provisions in codes.  And then we have the inspect to protect.org transparency solution that we host, with the continuously updated and improved dataset that is consumer-facing, where you can go online to get a red, yellow, green analysis of the building codes where you live. You can get historic codes. And you can also find out, oh, OK, my house was built in 1998. It’s going to give you some recommendations based on your hazards of things you can do to improve the existing home you have. So we have different solutions. We have transparency emerging. What else do we need to enact codes? Well, obviously we need resources. There are now—there’s a newer program through FEMA that followed the DRRA enactment called BRIC. There are building code set-asides. It’s very new. And so it hasn’t had time to really sink in yet, but there are resources there for communities that want to adopt and administer codes. There are also different kinds of—when you have a disaster, you get your other kinds of federal dollars that even with COVID after disaster, or HMGP, dollars can be used for building codes. So there’s increasing flexibility there, recognition that communities that want codes and don’t have them need the resources to support the training and everything else that goes with them.  So those are some of the solutions for codes. I wanted to talk about before we go to Q&A is just talking about some of the typical concerns. The chief concern that you will always hear about codes is that they’re nice to have, but they make the house or the building too expensive. Back to the FEMA multi-year study, the cost of code compliance is 1-2 percent. And that is across a very significant dataset. It is something that pays for itself over time in durability, not to mention the inevitable disaster that comes along.  Another concern we’ve heard before is that small communities can’t adopt codes. But I really, places like Fayetteville, Texas, population 258. They have the building codes, the 2018 models. They use permitting fees to pay for up to about half of the fees necessary to have them. But they do so successfully. Hampshire, West Virginia, population 24,000, they outsource their codes to an engineering firm—or their enforcement—to a firm in Virginia. And there are places in Tennessee and other states where they get together regionally to do mutual aid to adopt and enforce and administer the codes. So codes work. They didn’t used to be cool, but I will tell you they’re cool today because everyone’s seeing in very vivid sense the success just avoiding the disruption—first of all, the life safety and the prevention of injuries—but the idea that, you know, in Hurricane Charley we have many case studies over the year where we go in and look at the relative building performance up or down of homes based on codes. And the idea that, you know, even if you have to evacuate, if you’re able to come back and resume your life, and your community is still intact with its tax base and its potential for growth and quality of life, codes are key to making that happen. So those are my comments on code. And I look forward to the discussion. FASKIANOS: Thank you very much to both of you. So now we want to go to all of you for your questions, comments. You can share what you are doing in your communities. You can either raise your hand on your iPad or your desktop, and when I call on you accept the unmute prompt and state your name and affiliation. Or you can write your question in the Q&A box. I already see we have several there.  So I’m going to start first there with Mike Hays. It’s a two-part question. From a policy standpoint, do you think states and cities should continue to take the lead on greenhouse gas reductions and other measures, or should the federal government continue taking steps such as the Inflation Reduction Act? It’s probably both, but with the politics the way they are which is the fastest? And two, should FEMA and the federal government start telling people where they cannot rebuild? So, Alice, do you want to start with that? HILL: Sure. Very important questions. The first question about the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, this is an all-in project. We need all states, all governments, looking at how greenhouse gases can be reduced. Unfortunately, we are seeing these events accelerate. And the scientists on a consensus basis tell us, in our International Panel on Climate Change reports, that every tenth of a degree of increase in heating carries much larger impacts.  So all of us need to have the goal of reducing carbon emissions. And I think governments can play at the local level, just as the federal government is with the Inflation Reduction Act, giving a lot of carrots to drive greater emissions. But that act won’t take us all the way. It will take us to about 40 percent reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions. But we’re shooting for a 50 percent. And so we need to have private industry and others step up as well to contribute to this effort. And then, as to the issue about FEMA and where people live, you know, we have a challenge here. We’ve all assumed that the climate will be stable. It’s no longer stable. And we’re discovering that some land that we thought was at one time safe to build on is no longer safe. I think that the federal government needs to provide clear assistance on vulnerability analysis that includes flood maps that are accurate. And if it doesn’t provide them, at least provide the source that others should go to.  There are philanthropic sources now where you can type in your address, First Street Foundation, and you can find your risk for your property. But we need that level for communities to understand, hey, this is the kind of heat events you’ll see—flood, drought. We know that these events come in on a very localized way. But we need to share that information across the board. And to the extent we don’t have it, it needs to be created to help planning on the local level.  And I think the federal government also needs to stop subsidizing new development in areas that we know will flood or burn. I do not see the federal interest. It’s not to stop development there, but I do not see the federal interest for taxpayer dollars to subsidize new development in areas at risk. And this is a pattern that the federal government has turned to in the past. We have these highly vulnerable barrier islands that are off our Atlantic Coast. They’re constantly changing and shifting.  And in the ’60s the federal government said: You know, maybe we shouldn’t be pouring money into those barrier islands, because they’re so vulnerable. So we’re going to say, hey, we’re not going to stop your development, but you won’t get federal resources to help you out. And I think that needs to be a clear signal to local governments that they can’t count on the federal government to bail them out of choices that aren’t wise going forward. We have a lot of built stuff already in these areas at risk. And the federal government needs to identify the risk and then figure out different programs to help people move away from risk. And then as we face rebuild, frank discussions about what the risks are going forward, and whether the federal government, for example, would continue to subsidize long-term flood insurance for properties that are therefore repeatedly flooding. Very hard discussions, but if we don’t have those discussions we will find, as we have, that more people have moved into coastal regions than out in recent years.  And more people—it’s the fastest-growing form of development—have moved into the wildland-urban interface, which is prone to burning, than out. We need to have frank discussions about accumulating people there, because there’s risks to health and safety, and then there’s huge economic risks just mounting as we’re placing more people in regions that are hazardous at this point. So I think it’s a very good discussion. A very difficult discussion to have. And a good place to start is new development, in my opinion. FASKIANOS: And I should have said that Mike Hays is the constituent services advisor for Pennsylvania Representative Joseph Ciresi. Leslie, do you have anything to add to that? Or shall I continue on? CHAPMAN-HENDERSON: No, I just agree. I think this is a very—I think it will be a very big conversation out of southwest Florida as well, to be thoughtful about what is rebuild and where, and what kind of solutions can be put in place, just like we saw after Sandy. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take a spoken question from Washington Senator Jesse Salomon. If you can unmute yourself. Q: There we go. Thanks. And, Alice, you kind of just touched on it so I lowered my hand but still got called on. So I will just go ahead and say that I agree with your position. So here in Seattle, rain city USA, rain is fifty days later. It’s still summer-like conditions. The rivers are extremely low. We have wildfires. And we are living in a campfire air environment—unhealthy for all groups. This has been something that showed up about four years ago and is now a regular part of our summer. Tends to show up August/September. So it’s kind of scary. And it’s for hundreds and hundreds of miles, where you just can’t get away from it. So I just want people to know that that’s what we’re experiencing here, and that’s clearly climate change. And so we have a growth management act where we do regulate, to some degree, what I think is irresponsible building, wildland, wildfire interface. We have fires that are burning out of control right now. So we would—you know, I think there are other state governments unrelated to the degree of danger that don’t have as much oversight about where building occurs. And I find that frustrating. And so I’m wondering if private insurance is backing away from wild—you know, building in wildfire interface areas, not—as well as flood-prone areas. And any more thoughts on that? And thank you. FASKIANOS: Alice, do you want to start? HILL: Oh, I can—sure, I can jump in. All very important points. I do think insurance will be a barometer of how we’re doing. Not so much in the flood insurance world, because the flood insurance is a federal program. And that program is trying to get to what we call actuarially sound premiums so that—let’s say you live right next to a river, and it’s in a flood plain, and we know, everybody knows, it’s going to flood. Theoretically, if it were private insurance, you would pay—you would be offered a very high premium, if you could get insurance. That hasn’t been how we’ve done it with our National Flood Insurance Program.  And, by the way, that program was born, again, in the ’60s. Private—we had a bunch of flood events. And private insurers said: We don’t like this risk. This is too risky. We’re going to move out of the private flood insurance for residential—we’re just not going to offer that kind of insurance. And so the federal government stepped in. Unfortunately, as the political process, there were some recommended guardrails for that program, and they weren’t put in place, perhaps for political reasons, that you wouldn’t reinsure repeat flooders. Private insurance won’t do that for you, or the premium is out the roof, and that you would charge actuarially sound rates. That really hasn’t happened. FEMA, who runs the flood insurance program, is driving towards that. But it’s very politically sensitive to actually charge people the cost of what insurance is needed, because the risk is so high. So we have that program for insurance. And then we have private insurance for home property insurance. And that would be, for example, in Florida, or would be for wind and some other kinds of damages to your property. And then in California, we have property insurance, which includes wildfire insurance. I chair a working group for the California Department of Insurance. We issued a report about things that we can do to help preserve the private insurance market, but we have seen insurers say even though California is the world’s sixth-largest insurance market—so there’s a lot of incentive for companies to want to remain there—hmm, this wildfire is getting too risky. In fact, I think in the wildfires of 2017 and 2018, twenty years of profits were wiped out for property insurers in California, those fires were so big.  So we’ve seen pressure on premiums. We’ve seen the California Department of Insurance tell private insurers: You know what? You’re trying to drop people or non-renew people that live in homes that are near areas that are recently burned. We’re not going to let you do that. You have to stay—you have to continue to offer them for another year. That’s not sustainable in the long run. And this will be a challenge for California, how does it get affordable wildfire insurance?  We’re seeing the same thing play out in Florida, Texas, Louisiana. What we’re seeing is that the premiums are going up. In Louisiana they’ve gone up 63 percent. And there are some backup government programs, the citizens programs, often called. Again, I think those were created—started in the ’60s, but some—a response when it gets too expensive there has to be a backup insurer you can’t—simply can’t get insurance because your property is deemed too risky by private insurers, and there’s a backup government-subsidized insurance. But in Florida, we’ve seen exponential growth in the number of people who have to resort to that plan. So this is a brewing crisis. I will say that the Department of Treasury just yesterday said they’re issuing questions to property insurers to try to get to the bottom of how big this risk is and what kind of preparations they’re making. But for those of you in state, local, tribal, territorial governments, you’re going to feel this most acutely right away when homeowners start describing how hard it is for them to insure their property.  And of course, if they go bare and they have no insurance, that has—and it’s widespread that people don’t have insurance—it has very serious consequences for the economic health of the community, because people walk away from their properties, they go into default, the tax base goes down, and they don’t rebuild, they go someplace else because they’ve got to get their lives back in order. And we need to look at the consequences of having an uninsured or diminishing insurance within our communities. It’s not just at household. It has ramifications for adjoining households, because that household is empty, or it's destroyed and never built back.  So really excellent point. And we are at the—frankly, at the beginning of the discussion. And the challenge is that private property insurance only write policies for one year. So they have a big hit, they can say, hey, next year we’re not so interested in offering insurance going forward. And that’s really tough on the real estate market when insurance isn’t available. And it’s often discovered right at the end of the transaction, I’m told, which makes it even more disruptive to closings and just the steady operation of the market. FASKIANOS: Thank you. So we—Leslie’s team just dropped into the Q&A box the resources, the links to the resources, that she mentioned. And we’re putting in the chat. To answer the question, we are also going to send, as a follow-up to this webinar, the link to the video and transcript as well as links to those resources mentioned, so you can get it in various places. So I’m going to go next to Joseph Brooks, county mayor in Claiborne County, Tennessee. While the points made for building codes are all good, how do you suggest rural counties can move in that direction? There is a vast majority of individuals who see building codes as limitations on their property rights. I am in favor of building codes, but I’m looking for insight as to how to move in that direction from others who have faced a similar challenge. Leslie, can—you might want to take that. CHAPMAN-HENDERSON: Definitely. So part of the research that was because of that very question because we—again, we started with validating that people are not worried about codes. So how do you advocate for something that people don’t want or don’t understand? And we have to—the political will has to be derived from people wanting it, because it takes resources. So one of the key challenges is communicating the benefit of codes and showing it. This we did the research in 2017 and 2018, and we’re going to retest. Because of the compounding effect—the things that Alice was just talking about with insurance.  I once chaired the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund, which is the rainy-day fund for Florida—the multi-billion-dollar fund that now there are some who project that it will be used up from Hurricane Ian, which will precipitate an even more compounding insurance challenge, I should just say crisis, for Florida. But if you start talking about building codes in the context of the solutions they provide, by preventing the losses in the first place on the individual level for you and your life and what it means for you as well as your community, because your neighbors are still there. Their jobs where—the buildings where they work are still there.  You know, communities that have gone down because of disasters that, you know, are not recoverable. And you start demonstrating the benefit of codes from that standpoint and taking away some of the fear of codes in terms of costs. That’s a key, important factor to show that permitting fees, balanced with cooperative agreements, can make codes affordable even for the smallest communities. And there are many who are doing it. We’re running an analysis right now in rural communities and building codes. And many, dozens and dozens, of successful administration of building codes in very small places that are not in larger states with bigger budgets but are in smaller states. And it gets done through a variety of ways. A lot of the resources for building codes—in the old days, you had to buy books. You had to buy them every three years. They were expensive. You had to have personnel. They had to work for you, in your government jurisdiction. That’s just not how it works anymore. The codebooks are available to code officials digitally. They can outsource to—through cooperative agreements. They can either outsource, like West Virginia outsources to an engineering firm in Winchester, Virginia. This is done all the time, and the economies of scale have kicked in and increased. I think that the International Code Council is working very hard on this. And there’s probably a good case here, Irina, for the peer-to-peer kind of conversations specifically about how to administer codes. And then things like the federal grants, that are just coming on, to help with building codes and the standing up of a building code system for a state or local government. There is recognition that you can’t just wave a wand and all of a sudden administer the building code, but the old way that was much harder and more expensive, there are other ways to do it today, and communities are doing it. The asker of this question I think you said was from Tennessee. I remember reading in an article after the Whitesboro, Tennessee flooding disaster, the mayor said: You know, we’d love to have building codes, we just don’t have the resources. And that’s very much the case in many places. But we can overcome the resource gaps, and then I think we communicate effectively to people who benefit from the codes. And in some places—like, right now in Alabama, the homebuilders, which are often opposed to building code enactment, are supporting the application of a statewide building code because they’re recognizing that building codes level the playing field. And if you have one set of codes, you don’t have to change what you learn and do or don’t do when you cross a highway into a different town. So there’s some tremendous benefits there, and through the course of articulating those, minds are changing as well. If there’s any follow-up work to that conversation, I’d be more than happy to help broker those conversations and post and get people together. Because that’s what helps solve it. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. Let’s go to Hawaii Representative David Tarnas. Q: Well, hi. I’m David Tarnas, state representative. I chair the Water and Land Committee in the statehouse. Building codes are very effective, and usually get carried out here through the counties. What do you find to be the most useful thing that the state-level statutory support for building coded option—what’s the most effective way that the state legislature could facilitate that happening? Because it’s usually done, like I say, at the county level, right? So do you have model legislation that could help implement building codes effectively? CHAPMAN-HENDERSON: Yeah. There are thirty states that have statewide adopted codes. They have different levels of opt-outs and enforcement, but they’ve adopted it at the state level, then they drop down to the counties, as you said. Often the ideal practice is to adopt the statewide code, allow jurisdictions to exceed it, but the best-case scenario is they can’t reduce it. And that’s really critical for flood insurance, and for flooding, and for flood elevation because the state of Louisiana adopts the model codes on time. I was actually on the commission after Katrina to create a statewide residential building commission, but unfortunately, they X-ed out the flood elevation for a number of years. But based on Ida and Laura and Delta and Zeta, and all of these events, they’re now strongly considering putting it back in. Statewide adoption is the best way to go with the floor. And one of the things that we used to hear in these policy discussions of code adoption is, “Show us some economic proof.” Well, the good news is, like I said, we have that now. There have been—there’s some great academic studies out there. Wharton has a four-to-one return on building code efficacy for Florida. You’ve got that losses avoided that’s looking across the country. So we have the proof points. We didn’t used to. We do now. Anything we can do to support you in those conversations, you’ve got experts at the Insurance Institute for Building and Home Safety has tremendous research. And we have people that will come and testify to support it. You know, third-party experts. So there’s a lot more ammunition to get those codes in place. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next question from Breda Krebs, who’s a resilience communications specialist for Miami-Dade Country. Will there be more federal government support for risk mapping open to all? For example, floodfactor.com used to be such a useful resource for average residents, and now it is a paid service called Risk Factor. Alice, do you have any— CHAPMAN-HENDERSON: I don’t know—yeah, I don’t know what their plans are for that, but I think, I guess, with the risk rating 2.0 program that’s coming in through FEMA, one thing they’ve been trying—they have done, and to Alice’s point, is to diversify the factors upon which the risk is calculated. So it’s not simply a matter of how high anymore. It may be whether or not the home has proper elevation, plus things like flood vents, you know, to allow for flow-through. Just sidebar on that, there’s some stories coming out of Ian where people had flood vents that didn’t understand why their building survived, because the flood vent allows—you know, evens out the hydrostatic forces, so the walls don’t collapse in a flood. And they were mad that the water came through.  But that was a success story because that’s how they’re designed. Just again, to me, it points up, we have so much educating to do so people really understand: If you’re going to be in those zones, you have to have these features. And this is how they work. People just aren’t as curious about their homes beyond the aesthetics. They’re naturally looking at paint colors and all the pretty, shiny things in the kitchen, and other items. And this is a shift that’s taking time. But I think the disasters that are striking us are opening eyes.  FASKIANOS: Well, that brings up an interesting question from Betty Arnold. I serve on the State Board of Education in Kansas. From an education point of view, for public education—she’s looking—talking specifically about K-12—what should our takeaway be? And how would we incorporate the subject into our curriculum? Maybe we need to start younger to educate. CHAPMAN-HENDERSON: Well, I’ll take first on that. I would tell you, one of the most effective things we’ve ever done—we’ll go anywhere for any audience. We’re a certified provider of professional training and accredited courses for design professionals. But the most impactful thing we ever did is we were—joined forces with our nation’s perhaps greatest storytellers at Disney. We were in Epcot for eight years and we created one of their edutainment experiences called “Storm Struck: A Tale of Two Homes.” And it was a 3-D experience with the glasses. Five-point-eight million people came through “Storm Struck” before we finished. And Carnegie tested it. And we changed people’s opinions, we changed their behavior. And it was through storytelling. But you’re right, we do have to get the kids.  There are a lot of different resources for—that can be absorbed into education. You know, we have the NOAA Hurricane Awareness Tour that goes out. Not to Kansas, but to different efforts. There’s no single effort, but I think that we have to touch every audience. And what “Storm Struck” taught us is that we create a value for things like how homes are built. It was—it was a foreign concept in the beginning. And through the testing and the one-year follow-on study validating, people were shocked to learn that not all homes were built to the same standard. But once they did realize that, they wanted to learn how they could be—make a difference. So we’ll look at additional kid-focused programs and different elements that you could adopt into your curriculum. They do exist. We created some through our work with Disney. And that, on the disaster side, we could be happy to share those. FASKIANOS: Alice, is there anything happening at the, you know, federal level? HILL: I’m not aware of anything at the federal level, but I will make an observation that one of our greatest challenges making good decisions around climate change is that we don’t have a well-educated workforce about climate change. You know, anyone who got their degree in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, maybe even in the 2000s, probably didn’t get much education about climate change. And it’s still hit or miss. You know, if you go to a college or a university and type in the English curriculum, they’ll give you a whole lineup about what you need. If you type in climate change, it could be a jumble of classes. And that kid has to have a lot of initiative if they want to learn about climate change. Unfortunately, this plays out at the highest levels. I think that our federal workforce still lacks sufficient numbers of people who understand the challenges posed by climate change and how it could affect their decision-making. And a recent study by a risk management company looking at the CFOs and CEOs of hundreds of companies doing $100 billion in revenues, determined that 77 percent of those were ill-prepared for climate risk. So many of our companies are ill-prepared. And then a separate study by NYU’s Stern Business School in 2019, the Fortune 100 top companies, their board members—1,188 board members—found that only—in a review of their resumes that were publicly available—only two listed anything to do with climate change. So we may have—be asking people to make decisions about an area for which they haven’t had an opportunity to learn about what’s at stake. And I think making more opportunities easily available will help us. These events will continue to worsen, even if we’re very successful in cutting our emissions, which I very much hope we do, because there’s a delayed response. It’s kind of like that blanket that you mom put on, there’s going to be a delayed response. We will see worsening events. And we need people who understand how those events could unfold, how we could better protect ourselves, what are the choices we could make now that would reduce our risks. You know, we’ve heard about the $1 to $11 for building codes. We know just generally, for every dollar we spend now in risk reduction—from that same National Institute of Building Sciences Study—we save somewhere between $4 and $6, likely, in recovery costs. So we need a paradigm shift to help people understand that you need to prepare for disasters, because more of them are coming. And we also need to shift away from just focusing on life safety, which is very important, but also how do these buildings perform. Because it’s one thing if we get everyone out and they’re safe. It’s another thing if we have a school that the kids can go back to. Because if we don’t, what’s our plan? So we need a workforce that understands these risks. So I am in favor of greater education. It will be affecting all of us during our lifetimes, but it will affect the kids even more than it’s affecting us now. FASKIANOS: Yeah. And I just want to commend to you, Brenda, we have launched here at CFR a World 101. It’s a library of free multimedia resources to provide an immersive learning experience in a variety of settings. And we have, on all sorts of topics, but we have a module on climate change. So you can go to world101.cfr.org and look specifically at our climate change module. And maybe that’s something you could pull into your curriculum in Kansas. So I’ll just give that shout-out. OK, so let’s see, going next to—I’m going to go to Diana Hopkins Manuelian. And Diana is—I’m trying to pull it up—a city council member in Atherton Town, California. Our California city is interested in banning leaf blowers during—on specific days. What agency do we have to aid in exploring creating this type of policy? Bay Area Air Quality Agency says it’s a good idea, but they don’t track particulates after they leave the air. Alice, since you are—you were in California, do you have any— HILL: I don’t—I am not familiar with this issue. I am familiar in the District of Columbia, where I live, I believe that we have banned—and the ban may not have come into place yet—fossil fuel-powered leaf blowers for electric, because they reduce the noise. But I don’t know fully this issue, so I can’t offer any insight at this time. FASKIANOS: OK. All right. So getting in another one from E. Keith Colston, director of the Ethnic Commissions Governor’s Office of Community Initiatives in Maryland, Commission on Indian Affairs. Two-part question. How are state-recognized tribes being engaged directly or indirectly in Maryland or this region? How can our commission assist with the approval of commissioner consent? I don’t know if either of you know that specifically. It might be a little bit too—we’ll have to—Leslie. CHAPMAN-HENDERSON: I don’t. But I did want to mention the—and, Alice, you probably had a hand in this anyway, but the new White House national initiative to advance building codes was kicked off on June 1. And I know that as part of the implementation and outreach for that we are in a—I serve on the building code secretariat and working group for that under FEMA. And the outreach includes workshops. They recently completed a workshop on the initiative for tribal and state and other partners. And so there’s an outreach effort underway right now that’s very robust, and I think will be continuous, to help everybody understand the goals, the resources, some of the things we’ve talked about here, and it does include all the different states and territories and tribal partners. One of the other things on resources, we do have a host of additional FEMA-produced resources, including adoption handbooks for jurisdictions and for states. And we’ll include those in the follow-up as well. They understand this—going back to the challenge—communication and helping people see the benefit, overcoming the concerns about cost and all these different resources. So there’s a lot moving out, and we’ll make sure that you have all of those, because the different pieces that can be addressed—this is a tricky one. It’s a very tough challenge to get these things in place.  But once they’re there and well-maintained, the benefits for insurability and affordability—not just the availability of insurance, but how affordable it is and some of the returns you get every year on savings. So I’ll make sure that we get all those to you, Irina. FASKIANOS: Great. Alice, any final remarks before we close? HILL: I will say, as distressing as these events are, I view this as also an exciting time. There’s huge opportunity for innovation, for rethinking our approaches, and for collaboration. One of the things about climate change is that humanity, humans, haven’t really confronted this challenge before, where the future does not resemble the past in terms of natural disasters. So we can all learn from each other. We can share best practices. It will be incumbent for us to reach out across regions because, of course, none of these disasters honor our jurisdictional boundaries. And we’ll be a lot better off if we plan together, resource together. So I see it as a moment of innovation, even as we are saddened to see the changes that climate change brings. But for each of us who engage in this area, I think it brings great excitement that we can produce a better future if we put our minds to it now and prepare. FASKIANOS: Leslie, you get the final word. CHAPMAN-HENDERSON: Well, thank you so much. I think what I want to say—I want to echo your sentiment. I think there’s a lot of hope that comes out of our concerns for how we build, because in my experience over these thirty-plus years, I’ve never seen so much focused effort on helping the states, the locals, the citizens, and others get the building codes that they need in place. And let’s not forget, building codes are minimum. So we need to help bring everybody up. But I see across all the different potential ways to help I see solutions coming online, I see resources. They are pre-disaster, not post-disaster. And I have great hope that this is—the great unfinished of our movement is about to get a checkbox. It’s going to take us a couple more years, but I really believe that we’ve got the right people and level of attention, resources, and effort in place to get it done. FASKIANOS: Well, thank you very much, both of you, for this hour, and to all of you for your questions. We really appreciate it, sharing your expertise and all the research that you have done to—and the work that you’re doing in your communities. So we will send a link to the webinar recording and the transcript, as well as links to the resources mentioned. You can follow Leslie Chapman-Henderson on Twitter at @lchenderson. And you can follow Alice Hill’s work at CFR.org and on Twitter at @alice_c_hill. We also encourage you to come to CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for more expertise and analysis. And please do email us, [email protected], to let us know how CFR can support the important work you are doing in your communities. Stay safe and well. Thank you for your time today. And we look forward to our next conversation. (END)  

Admiral Thad Allen discusses his distinguished career in the U.S. Coast Guard, including leading the federal responses to Hurricane Katrina and Rita and serving as the incident commander for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, his work as the former executive vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, and his current role at NASA. Lessons Learned is a roundtable series, open to term members and younger life members, which features distinguished speakers who reflect on their career experiences, the choices they made along the way, and the lessons they have learned from them.