(BIVN) – The Hawaiʻi County Council heard a detailed, and deeply troubling, presentation on climate change by Dr. Charles ” Chip” Fletcher on Tuesday.

Fletcher, the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Earth Sciences at the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) with the University of Hawaiʻi, went through a power point that explained the coming sea level rise, and its impacts on the world. The first slide was captioned “the next few years will be the most important in human history.”

According to the council’s planning committee communication:

Dr. Fletcher’s research focuses on Pacific Paleo-sea level history, beach processes, and modeling the impacts of the past, present and future sea level rise on island environments. The results of his work is used by government agencies to administer coastal policy, establish construction guidelines, and to plan resilient infrastructure. Data produced by his research is used by Kauaʻi and Maui counties in their setback ordinance, and is considered in permit decisions by the City of Honolulu and the Department of Land and Natural Resources.

Today, U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i), a member of the Senate Banking Committee and Chair of the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis, introduced the Climate Change Financial Risk Act of 2019. Sen. Schatz says the legislation will direct the Federal Reserve (“Fed”) to conduct stress tests on large financial institutions to measure their resilience to climate-related financial risks.

“While our federal regulators are legally obligated to manage and reduce risks in the financial system, they have been ignoring the growing financial risks of climate change,” said Senator Schatz in a media release. “We should not be treating some risks different from others: risks are risks. This bill will push the Fed to do their job and start taking climate risk seriously.”