Files
Abstract
In the United States, law condemns poor people to their fates instates. Where Americans live continues to dictate whether they canaccess cash, food, and medical assistance. What’s more, immigrants,territorial residents, and tribal members encounter deterioratedcorners of the American welfare state. Nonetheless, despite repeatedretrenchment efforts, this patchwork of programs has provenremarkably resilient. Yet, the ability of the United States to meet itspeople’s most basic needs now faces an unprecedented challenge:climate change. As extreme weather events like wildfires andhurricanes become more frequent and more intense, these climatefueled disasters will displace and impoverish more people. How canthe United States adapt its welfare programs to assist Americans in theface of this threat?
This Article maps that uncharted territory. It contextualizes theclimate crisis in our scholarly understanding of the U.S. welfare state.It then canvasses the myriad disaster provisions in each major welfareprogram. Equipped with an understanding of the status quo, theArticle proceeds to evaluate how federal law has fared amid the recentspate of fires and floods. The Article attends to the role of Congress,weakened as it is by increased polarization and diminished capacity,and how the resulting delays and distortions in emergency relief havehampered the governmental response. The Article then brings stategovernment into focus, and in doing so, demonstrates how assistanceoften excludes the most vulnerable Americans. The Article alsoextracts lessons from the pandemic response and applies them toclimate adaptation of public benefits. The Article concludes with anagenda for how to adapt welfare programs to meet the climate crisis.That agenda starts and ends with the federal government, but itincludes policies states, territories, and Tribes could implement ifCongress and federal agencies do nothing or not enough. The Articlerepurposes what we know about how the U.S. welfare state functionsnow to inform what government should do next.