Obama surrogate tells climate event Sandy represents 'new normal'

An Obama campaign surrogate said Thursday that super-storm Sandy amplified the need to more aggressively reduce greenhouse gas emissions and better protect coastal infrastructure.

“We’re at a place where we have to focus on both mitigation — reducing greenhouse gas emissions — and adaptation — starting to move our vital infrastructure out of harm’s way. We know this is going to be our future. This is our new normal,” Kevin Knobloch, who represented the Obama campaign as a private citizen and is president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said at an event hosted by Climate Desk.

Knobloch was responding to a question from Climate Desk’s Chris Mooney on how Obama might use his bully pulpit in a second term to address problems exposed by Sandy.

Earlier in the event, Knobloch had praised Obama for sidestepping Congress after cap-and-trade legislation failed in 2010 to pursue emissions reductions through the Environmental Protection Agency.

Knobloch said Obama’s push to bolster infrastructure through stimulus funds exemplified that he would continue to address the issue in a second term.

Knobloch said that is key because climate change means storms will remain violent. He noted that while scientists would not attribute Sandy to climate change, scientists attributed the storm’s intensity to it.

Factors such as ocean temperatures off the Atlantic seaboard registering 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal and sea level rises likely contributed to Sandy’s strength. Knobloch added that a full moon high tide — which was unrelated to climate — magnified the storm surge.

“So a lot of things were going on there. But what it really has shown, Chris, is our low-lying infrastructure is vulnerable,” Knobloch said.

Knobloch said Obama might not need to act unilaterally on climate-related issues in a second term, because events like Sandy, as well as this past summer’s record drought and wildfires in the West, could push Congress to move on the issue.

“It’s a relatively recent phenomenon that partisanship has entered into this debate,” Knobloch said, adding that the current Congress is starting “to connect the dots between extreme weather events and sea level rise and climate change.”