As thousands of Americans grapple with catastrophic flooding in the central United States, our thoughts and prayers are with those in harm’s way.

Here in Washington, federal officials are rightly focused on helping victims of this disaster rebuild their lives. But as the flood waters recede, we must shift our attention to the big picture: global warming is making tragedies like these more frequent and more intense.

The Midwest has now seen two 500-year floods in just the last 15 years. Just like no single one of Barry Bonds’ home runs can be directly attributed to steroid use, no one single weather event can be definitively tied to global warming. But just like we know Bonds’ steroid use inflated his home run totals, we know global warming is bringing us more extreme weather - more frequent floods, deeper droughts, and stronger hurricanes.

The National Wildlife Federation recommends these steps policymakers can take right now designed to ease the pain of future floods:

Realize that more levees are not the answer. The Army Corps of Engineers must adopt policies that restrict the construction of new levees, which not only encourage development in high risk and often environmentally sensitive areas, but most importantly convey a false sense of security to the people living behind them. The numerous levee failures of the 2008 floods make it apparent that the Corps’ preferred structural solutions are not sufficient to keep people and communities safe.

Discourage development in high risk areas such as floodplains. With the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) more than $17 billion dollars in debt, it is both fiscally and environmentally irresponsible to encourage development in flood prone areas. Instead, FEMA should recommit to a national hazard mitigation policy with emphasis on voluntary buyouts of high-risk flood prone properties and should dedicate high-risk flood-prone lands to open space uses or require increased building elevations, where practicable, to guide recovery and rebuilding.

Increase protection for wetlands, forests, and natural landscapes to provide natural buffers for flooding. During severe flood events, healthy wetlands and natural landscapes can act as sponges to rising waters, protecting communities and livelihoods, especially agriculture. Significant investment in these natural resources as part of clean water, farm, or global warming legislation will help keep these habitats healthy. Important steps include fully funding restoration programs such as the Wetlands Reserve Program and enacting the federal Clean Water Restoration Act to restore protection for all wetlands and streams.

Strengthen NFIP community land-use and building standards and update flood hazard maps to reduce unwise floodplain development, preserve open space and wildlife habitat, and improve public awareness of flooding risks. People living in floodplains-even low-risk floodplains-need to know they are at risk. Therefore, floodplain planning and maps must incorporate future conditions, including effects of urbanization and changing climate. Simply relying on past flooding histories is not enough.

Reduce global warming pollution to minimize future flooding. To limit the magnitude of changes to the climate and the impacts on communities and wildlife, we must curb global warming pollution. The National Wildlife Federation recommends that policy makers, industry, and individuals take steps to reduce global warming pollution from today’s levels by 80 percent by 2050. That’s a reduction of 20 percent per decade or just 2 percent per year. Science tells us that this is the only way to hold warming in the next century to no more than 2°F. This target is achievable with technologies either available or under development, but we need to start taking action now to avoid the worst impacts.

People in the Central United States are not imagining things. The last few decades have brought more heavy summer rainfall events along with increased likelihood of devastating floods. While no single storm or flood can be attributed directly to global warming, changing climate conditions are at least partly responsible for past trends. Because warmer air can hold more moisture, global warming is expected to bring more and heavier precipitation in the years to come.

At the same time, the losses from major floods have been compounded by over-reliance on levees and other strategies for taming rivers, which in turn encourage development in flood-prone areas.

The increased frequency of extreme weather events across the country forces us to confront the realities of global warming and look toward a cleaner energy future.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 10:10 am and is filed under Politics, Energy/Environment .