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IU McKinney Law Professor of Practice Janet McCabe says that commuters frustrated with dodging potholes on city streets should consider how climate change is playing a role.

In a March 14, 2018 opinion piece in the Indianapolis Star, Professor McCabe notes that “While there are lots of reasons for potholes on our city streets, chief among them are the rapid freezing-warming-freezing patterns that have been the hallmark of Indiana’s recent winters. These conditions are the result of observable changes in Indiana’s climate that scientists predict will continue — and worsen — well into the future.”

Infrastructure has been designed and built with certain assumptions about temperature and precipitation, but facts on the grounds are changing, Professor McCabe writes. She suggests that government will ultimately need to create a plan for dealing with future logistical challenges of city streets that takes into account environmental change.

Read her comments here.

Professor McCabe is Assistant Director for Policy and Implementation at the Environmental Resilience Institute, part of the IU Grand Challenges Prepared for Environmental Change initiative.

She served in the EPA first as Principal Deputy, and from 2013-2017 as Acting Assistant Administrator, playing a lead role in framing, shaping and implementing Clean Air Act standards, including the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, and the Clean Power Plan and Ozone standards. A senior fellow at the Environmental Policy and Law Center in Chicago, she has taught Environmental Law as an adjunct professor at the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the Department of Public Health. She joined the IU McKinney faculty in Fall 2017.