The federal Environmental Protection Agency is telling states to adapt to climate change or potentially risk losing federal financial support. EPA said in a climate adaptation plan released Oct. 30 that it wants states to fashion their own plans so the nation can navigate coming changes in sea level, temperatures, the water cycle, and more due to continued release of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere from burning fossil fuel. To leverage states to act on adaptation, EPA said it plans on “incorporating climate change consideration into funding actions” to “build the climate change adaptation capacity of our partners, and make it less likely that funds will be spent on projects that will be damaged or destroyed by sea level rise or extreme storm events, or other climate change impacts.” California is ahead of many other states, already having adopted a climate adaptation plan, which it’s now in the process of updating (Current, Oct. 4, 2013). Under EPA’s massive plan—outlined in separate volumes for each of its program offices, as well as separate ones for each of its regions, such as Region 9 which covers California—the agency says it is contemplating leveraging adaptation through clean air technology grants for both the San Joaquin Valley and South Coast Air Quality Management District. It also notes that it may begin requiring states to adopt adaptation plans before they can qualify for revolving loans for wastewater treatment plants. * * * * * As Southern California Edison shuts down its San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station and as the future of Pacific Gas & Electric’s Diablo Canyon plant remains hazy with a pending 20-year license renewal at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a prominent group of climate scientists is saying that nuclear power is essential to heading off catastrophic global warming. The four scientists in their open letter Nov. 3 said that renewable energy technologies “will certainly play roles in a future energy economy, but . . . cannot scale up fast enough to deliver cheap and reliable power at the scale the global economy requires.” They continued, “While it may be theoretically possible to stabilize the climate without nuclear power, in the real world there is no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power.” Among the four signing the letter was ardent climate change scientist and activist James Hansen, now at Columbia University.