Inside the Biden White House: Climate Adaptation Wins, Misses—and the Road Ahead

In episode 232 of America Adapts, host Doug Parsons has a candid conversation with Laurie Schoeman, former senior advisor on climate resilience in the Biden White House. Laurie offers a rare, unfiltered look inside the administration’s climate resilience efforts.  Laurie helped coordinate adaptation strategy across agencies. While she didn’t lead the National Climate Resilience Framework, she had a front-row seat to its evolution—and its compromises. She speaks openly about what worked, what fell apart, and what was left on the cutting room floor. From the outsized influence of youth climate politics to the glaring absence of adaptation finance—and especially the neglect of communications—Laurie brings an insider’s experience in the development of federal climate policy. Doug and Laurie critique the performative nature of federal resilience efforts, the muddled conflation of climate justice and adaptation, and the critical failure to include communications in the resilience framework. Her message is clear: if we’re serious about climate risk, we need to rethink not just how we fund adaptation—but how we talk about it.  Laurie also reflects on her role in a groundbreaking blue ribbon commission on wildfire resilience in Los Angeles, which recently released bold recommendations positioning the city as a national leader in adaptation.

Topics Discussed:

• How adaptation finance was neglected, with no real champions for the complex work of funding climate resilience.
• Why the administration’s climate justice efforts were often more performative than impactful, despite unprecedented federal funding.
• The conflation of adaptation, equity, and justi