New Episode of Resources Radio: “Preparing for the Coming Climate Disruption, with Alice Hill and Leonardo Martinez-Diaz”

WASHINGTON, DC—Resources for the Future (RFF) today released a new installment of Resources Radio: “Preparing for the Coming Climate Disruption, with Alice Hill and Leonardo Martinez-Diaz.”

In this episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Alice Hill and Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, authors of a new book called, Building a Resilient Tomorrow: How to Prepare for the Coming Climate Disruption.

Hayes, Hill, and Martinez-Diaz delve into the topics covered in the book, including 10 lessons for decisionmakers in building a resilient future. They discuss what resilience means in the context of climate change, how it relates to economic inequalities, and the potential legislation holds in addressing issues of mitigation, resilience, and equity.

Hill is a former US federal prosecutor who began work on climate change issues after joining the US Department of Homeland Security in 2009. As senior counselor to the secretary, she was tasked with helping the department understand how climate could affect its operations. Hill went on to the White House to lead resilience efforts as special assistant to President Obama. She is now a senior fellow for climate change policy at the Council of Foreign Relations.

Martinez-Diaz formerly served as deputy assistant secretary for energy and environment at the Treasury Department. He negotiated finance elements of the Paris Agreement and represented the United States on the governing bodies of major providers of climate finance, including the Green Climate Fund and the Global Environment Facility. He now works at the World Resources Institute as the Global Director for WRI’s Sustainable Finance Center.

Listen here.

Notable quotes from the podcast:

• “The reason it's so important to address future risk and build resilience is because these impacts are coming quickly, and we can learn from ‘no more’ moments, that is—a particular bad event … What our book hopes is that communities will take advantage of those ‘no more’ moments, but they will also, in advance, understand that the risks are here and that they need to build resilience.”―Alice Hill (5:00)
• “We have to be able to go beyond simply using this metric of economic losses avoided, and try to figure out, ‘How do we think in a bigger way that incorporates these equity concerns?’ … And there are various ways to do it, and it's a work in progress, but we have to be able to look beyond simply protecting the assets. Because down that road lies only more inequality.”―Leonardo Martinez-Diaz (21:15)
• “With adaptation and resilience, you're dealing with local problems. Ultimately, they're going to be manifested in very unique ways depending on where you are … [I]n every part of the country, in the world, the specific challenges of resilience are going to relate to the local situation, and the solutions will have to be local as well because they will involve choices, political choices and economic choices, by people who live there … The federal government is one of many players. It can certainly support and provide assistance through financing and data and so on. But you'll need a very strong combination, collaboration between business, local government, mayors, states certainly, as well as the federal government, to be able to get solutions going.”―Leonardo Martinez-Diaz (28:59)