Susan Crawford On How The US Government Is Failing Adaptation

The Trump White House is taking a hammer to the federal agencies, programs, and initiatives that promote climate adaptation and resilience.

As part of its chaotic effort to shrink the size of government, Trump’s team is gutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the country’s premier climate agency, abolishing grants that states and cities use to build resilience against extreme weather events, and even directing government lawyers to go after state-level laws that promote climate mitigation and adaptation.

These policies all serve to undermine US climate readiness, and run counter to another Trump administration goal — making disaster preparedness and response a state, local, and individual responsibility, instead of something led from Washington, DC.

In today’s episode, climate adaptation scholar Susan Crawford reflects on Trump’s anti-climate policies and what they mean for the country. Susan is an emeritus professor at Harvard Law School and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She writes regularly about the intersection of climate change and finance over on the Substack Moving Day. In 2009, she served as special assistant to President Obama for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy.

Beyond policy, Susan talks about the financial architecture that underpins US climate resilience: municipal bonds and insurance markets. She warns of mounting risks in the muni bond market because of the current tariff chaos, potential tax policy changes, and investors’ failure to figure climate hazards into their pricing.

She also flags the slow-motion collapse of affordable insurance in high climate risk areas — and explains how local governments, desperate to protect their tax bases, are often incentivized to downplay or ignore escalating threats.

Whether you’re a climate finance pro, work in local government, policy development, or climate risk analysis, this episode is essential listening.

Listen below, download from the Podcasts page on Climate Proof, or tune in via Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

We talk about:

👉 How the Trump administration is gutting key climate science agencies like NOAA and defunding core adaptation programs, shifting responsibility to states ill-equipped to handle rising risks

👉 Why local governments often prioritize short-term tax base growth over long-term safety, incentivizing development in high-risk areas despite ever-worsening climate threats

👉 Tremors in the municipal bond and insurance markets and how they could expose communities to financial and physical precarity

👉 Why transparent, standardized climate risk data is essential for better public planning, and how the federal rollback of research capacity could leave a dangerous information void

👉 How cities like Jacksonville, Florida, are proving that proactive, data-driven resilience planning is possible — offering a template for others in the absence of federal leadership.

🗞️ Read Susan’s writings on Moving Day HERE

📚 Order ‘Charleston: Race, Water, and the Coming Storm’ HERE

Thanks for listening!

Louie Woodall
Editor