Melanie Winter

Ep 73: Reimagining Flood Risk and Insurance — Water Talk A conversation with Dr. Kathleen Schaefer about flood risk and new approaches for community-based flood insurance. Released October 10, 2025.

We've got a new episode of Water Talk on flood risk and insurance with Kathleen Schaefer, an expert on the National Flood Insurance Policy and what she calls feminist floodplains www.watertalkpodcast.com/episodes/epi...

This looks amazing!

It’s a balm

Flood planning could shift with new river discovery Scientists uncover why some waterways form single channels, while others divide into many threads, solving a longstanding quandary in the science of rivers.

Developers ignored warnings from Southern California tribes about how the San Gabriel and Los Angeles Rivers jumped paths. Floods ensued. Here UC Santa Barbara geographers use satellite imagery to discern how rivers channelize. Or don't. #cawater #rivers #watersheds news.ucsb.edu/2025/021948/...

Here’s one on the west coast: earthfuneral.com

“To truly cool the city down, depaving LA needs to be just as much of a priority as shading LA. We need more of the space that's devoted to steering and storing cars to be busted up for bioswales and pollinator corridors.”

Absolutely. For now, this a fantastic and much-needed project.

BOOK REVIEW: Replumbing the City: Water Management as Climate Adaptation in Los Angeles Visit the Water Shelf main page Los Angeles’s water supply is a topic of near-mythological scope, extending back to its noirish capture of eastern Sierra water rights at the beginning of the 20th cent...

So excited to dig into @saydrandle.bsky.social 's new book!!

mavensnotebook.com/2025/05/26/b...

The city of LA should be doing this with vacant box stores in every neighborhood to try to claw its way out of its abysmal 90th out of 100 U.S. cities park ranking

We need to make more space for the grief and the disorientation, I think.

Same goes for climate liabilities

BYD’s 5-Minute EV Charging: Why Doesn’t America Have It Yet? We explain the barriers to ultra-fast EV charging in the U.S., from batteries to charging plugs and beyond.

Chinese automaker BYD debuts an EV that charges up to 250 miles of range in *5 minutes*, nearly eliminating the time difference in filling up a gas vehicle.

You can't get it in the US, though. We keep Chinese cars out so that our dinosaur automakers can keep selling bloated combustion trucks.

Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf Pine in North America by Matthew Olzmann —Southern Pines, NC Tell me what it’s like to live without curiosity, without awe. To sail on clear water, rolling your eyes at the kelp reefs swaying beneath you, ignoring the flicker of mermaid scales in the mist, looking at the world and feeling only boredom. To stand on the precipice of some wild valley, the eagles circling, a herd of caribou booming below, and to yawn with indifference. To discover something primordial and holy. To have the smell of the earth welcome you to everywhere. To take it all in, and then, to reach for your knife.

Diversity, complexity, love, friendship, art, creativity, nuance will persist because that is how the life force moves. Don't take it from me. Just look around with a long, wide view.

Thank you for articulating this. Also dealing with mucinous adenocarcinoma (stage 4 lung cancer) and trying to stay focused on experiencing moments of joy and being of service. Your words are appreciated and you have my gratitude.

There is no calamity so huge that there is not beauty and humor and joy to be had in the moments between actively working on solving or evading it.

Learning to take those moments, embrace the hell out of them, is what will make it all worth it, at whatever point you reach the end.

Increase the park space at the same time and you'd really have something.

I'd attend that! Love the game. Pre-ordered it and have played a dozen times over the past year, but I feel like there are nuances to the rules that I still may be missing.

Unified approach could improve nature, climate and health all at once The biodiversity, climate, health, water and food crises need to be addressed together rather than regarded as separate issues, urges a major report

"The major environmental, social & economic crises facing the world today are inextricably interlinked, & tackling them together has many benefits. Focusing on 1 issue alone can make the other crises worse." Someone ought to write a book about this. www.newscientist.com...

Except downzoning to reclaim open spaces for say parks or floodplains is often just as critically necessary as housing. Especially if you care about public health and climate change.

"maybe it'll be better this time"

Yep.

Mine says bikes are not allowed because they're bait for thieves, and it encourages break-ins to the garage. And a storage unit for said bike is a fire risk.

I live in LA and I can walk to all of those as well as:
Farmers Market
Locally famous hiking trail
Trader Joe's
Re_ grocery
Peet's
Dentist
Chiro
Pilates
UPS
Bookstore
3 good vegan restaurants
...and more.

Chose this neighborhood ~ 30 years ago for this reason.

‘Never experienced anything like this:’ The new reality of insuring a Texas home Texas homeowners are struggling to keep their homes insured, paying more for less coverage as climate change wreaks havoc on providers.

The longer we talk about prices rising/falling to reflect risk as a problem of consumer costs — rather than part of a deeper crisis of climate chaos/brittleness and a resulting loss of insurability — the more certain we are to lock in greater future losses.

www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/hom...

IIRC they passed state legislation to facilitate buyouts in wealthy coastal communities, but we can’t have the same for low income inland communities with high pluvial flood risk 🙄

People who think “the markets” will save us from climate change do not understand that capitalism created climate change.

Agree. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, we're about to pass an ordinance *incentivizing* housing in floodplains. Tomorrow, in fact. Despite months of protestation.

When I was a freshly minted "sustainability professional" I once said loudly in a room of my elders, "we need a whole new paradigm." And a woman, a feminist, a freedom fighter from Central America said, "We don't need a new paradigm we need to listen to the people who already occupy it."

‘We're not going to hit the climate goals anyway’: Eric Schmidt has a plan to drive sustainable data center and AI development – and it involves more AI The former Google CEO said AI will solve its own problems when it comes to pushing sustainability

When various billionaires say that we will miss climate goals anyway so we might as well give AI vast amounts of energy and trust it "solve the problem" I really want to know what conditions for nature, people, and human rights they include in the goal statement. www.itpro.com/techno...

> What LA, as a region, needs the most ahead of 2028 are simpler solutions like sidewalks, bike lanes, pedestrian plazas, urban greening, shade trees — things that don't necessarily require federal funding, just better leadership.

🔥🔥🔥