Rob Verchick, author of the award-winning new book, The Octopus in the Parking Garage: A Call for Climate Resilience is Jen’s guest today.

Why this unusual title? As he describes: “One morning in Miami Beach, an unexpected guest showed up in a luxury condominium complex’s parking garage: an octopus. The image quickly went viral. But the octopus—and the combination of infrastructure quirks and climate impacts that left it stranded—is more than a funny meme. It’s a potent symbol of the disruptions that a changing climate has already brought to our doorsteps and the ways we will have to adjust.”

Replete with gorgeous writing and inspiring calls-to-action, The Octopus in the Parking Garage offers hope. Rob takes us on a journey with his words, including his description of kayak paddling with his law school class.  “A forty-odd-minute drive from New Orleans, Maurepas Swamp consists of about ninety-six square miles of flooded forest consisting mainly of water tupelo and bald cypress trees and the rootlike ‘knees’ of the latter poking out of the water like dragon’s teeth. Dripping with Spanish moss, their branches shade an understory of wax myrtle, pumpkin ash, and an abundance of things that slide and crawl.”

Rob is a leading climate law scholar who designed and implemented climate-resilience policies in the Obama administration. Before graduating from Harvard Law School, he  majored in English at Stanford where his senior thesis topic was “Mark Twain and Comic Theory.” Jen got to ask him about that. It’s not something you’ll see in his official buttoned up bio.

Rob holds the Gauthier-St. Martin Chair in Environmental Law at Loyola University New Orleans, is a senior fellow in disaster resilience at Tulane University, and serves as president of the Center for Progressive Reform. He has written four other books in addition to the Octopus in the Parking Garage of the podcast Connect the Dots.

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