over the 10th amendment. From Inside Climate News:
FEMA to States: No Climate Planning, No Money
Governors seeking billions of dollars in U.S. preparedness funds will have to sign off on plans to mitigate effects of climate change.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is making it tougher for governors to deny man-made climate change. Starting next year, the agency will approve disaster preparedness funds only for states whose governors approve hazard mitigation plans that address climate change.
This may put several Republican governors who maintain the earth isn't warming due to human activities, or prefer to do nothing about it, into a political bind. Their position may block their states' access to hundreds of millions of dollars in FEMA funds. Over the past five years, the agency has awarded an average $1 billion a year in grants to states and territories for taking steps to mitigate the effects of disasters.
Fortunately, this does not affect emergency funding:
The policy doesn't affect federal money for relief after a hurricane, flood or other disaster. Specifically, beginning in March 2016, states seeking preparedness money will have to assess how climate change threatens their communities. Governors will have to sign off on hazard mitigation plans. While some states, including New York, have already started incorporating climate risks in their plans, most haven’t because FEMA's old 2008 guidelines didn't require it.
And who is behind this change in policy:
Environmentalists have been pressing FEMA to include global warming in its hazard mitigation guidelines for almost three years. FEMA told the Natural Resources Defense Council in early 2014 that it would revise the guidelines. It issued draft rules last October and officially released the new procedures last week as partisan politics around climate change have been intensifying.
Emphasis mine - no surprise there...
And the 10th amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Short and sweet - the Federal Government does not have the power to do this if the State does not want it.
FEMA does a lot of good stuff - readers may remember that I am active in our local CERT program and in a new group of local preppers. We loves our FEMA.
For them to do this is not in the spirit of FEMA - this was probably cooked up by some desk-bound bureaucrat in the other Washington.
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