New England state climate action assessment using the UCS resilience gap framework
This paper reviews existing state Climate Action Plans (CAPs), policies and legislation across the six New England states to assess their respective resilience levels, or how prepared they are to face their projected climate impacts. The purpose of the assessment is to identify resilience gaps; gaps between the threat levels that states face and their preparedness to handle these. This project builds upon the Resilience Gap Framework that was developed by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2016.
In the US alone, it is estimated that climate change will cost $2 trillion a year in federal revenue losses by the end of the century. Reaching 1.5°C of global warming will cause unavoidable increases in damaging climate impacts, with risks to human and ecological systems . This has created an urgency for near-term action to mitigate future climate impacts by reducing heat-trapping emissions, and to adapt aspects of our societies and economies to reduce vulnerabilities and improve our resilience to the unavoidable impacts of climate change.
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