After a Disastrous Summer, Some Lawmakers See a Chance for Climate

WASHINGTON — As the country reels from this summer’s cascade of deaths and destruction from record floods, heatwaves, drought and wildfires, President Biden and progressive Democrats are using this moment to enforce aggressive climate provisions in a comprehensive $3.5 trillion budget bill.

New York Senator Chuck Schumer, speaking in Queens on Thursday and who killed nearly a dozen people in flash flooding the day before, said the majority leader will include the following when he returns to Washington on Tuesday to continue working on Senate budget legislation. provisions designed to reduce fossil fuel emissions due to extreme weather conditions.

Congress is also considering a $1 trillion bilateral infrastructure bill involving money. help communities Against climate disasters, the Senate passed the bill last month, and the House is expected to vote by the end of September.

that legislation includes $47 billion over five years to improve the country’s flood defenses, limit damage from wildfires, develop new sources of drinking water in drought-affected areas, and move some communities away from risky areas. It also includes spending $27 billion to help harden power grids against extreme weather events that cause more frequent power outages.

Mr Schumer said infrastructure and budget bills are crucial to prepare communities for stronger storms, fires, droughts and floods and to stop pollution that will further heat the planet and lead to even more extreme weather conditions.

“Global warming is upon us, and if we don’t do something about it, it will get worse and worse, and that’s why it’s so imperative to pass two bills, the infrastructure bill and the budget reconciliation bill,” he said.

Of the two laws, the budget bill faces a more dangerous path. Republicans uniformly oppose it because it also includes a range of social expenses, such as funds for universal childcare. Some Democrats are also dissatisfied with the $3.5 trillion price tag and want to scale it back, but a few who were initially opposed to the cost now say they can make an exception when it comes to climate provisions.

Budget bill will include powerful tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – incentive program It is designed to replace most of the country’s coal and gas-fired power plants with wind, solar and nuclear power plants within the next decade. It will be the strongest policy to combat climate change enacted by the United States.

President Biden and progressive Democrats say the summer disasters that shocked the country, from the deadly flooding in New York to the severe drought in the Midwest to the severe wildfires in California, will give them an edge during negotiations around the budget bill. Progressive Democrats also hope to use the budget bill to get polluters to pay for these clean energy programs, for example, by imposing tariffs on goods imported from countries that don’t regulate greenhouse pollution and fees on emissions of methane, a planet-warming gas. leaking from oil and gas wells.

It is unclear whether these provisions will go into the details of the budget bill. Since no Republicans are expected to vote on the final package, Democrats will need every vote in the razor-thin House and Senate majorities to move the bill forward.

But this week, West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin III called for a “strategic pause” in Congress on the bill. a opinion article in the Wall Street JournalHe wrote, “I’ve always said that if I can’t explain, I can’t vote and explain why my Democratic colleagues are in a rush to spend $3.5 trillion.”

A spokesperson for Mr. Manchin did not send an email seeking comment.

Manchin, whose coal-rich state may suffer from climate legislation designed to phase out fossil fuels, remained neutral on his program to replace coal and gas-fired power plants with zero-emission energy sources. If he, or any Democrat from a coal, oil, or gas state, opposes the provision, he may be excluded from the final version.

But Minnesota Democratic Senator Tina Smith, lead author of the power plant supply, said she believes the extreme weather conditions that have recently scorched, flooded and devastated many parts of the country will make things more difficult in the next two weeks. any Democrat to justify the cut.

“For the past few days, this part of the state has been experiencing one of the most extreme droughts we’ve seen in a generation,” said Ms. Smith, from Minnesota, on the phone. “I spent yesterday talking to cattle producers, they liquidate their herds much sooner than they should. They don’t have fodder or fodder to keep their herds together. And I can’t believe I’m the only senator to hear that while I’m at home, when you consider the extreme weather conditions reaching across the country. And I think that dynamic has shaped the negotiations. I’m thinking.”

Meanwhile, two representatives, both moderate Democrats, Stephanie Murphy of Florida and Henry Cuellar of Texas, in a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, laid out the “overarching principles” that lawmakers wanted to see as they wrote the details of the budget bill. Both members were moderate and conservative Democrats. backfired in the beginning Pelosi made a series of commitments, including assurances that the measure would be fully funded and would not contain any provisions that could not clear the Senate.

But in the letter, it was first reported by Politico and two Democrats, later obtained by The New York Times, said they were willing to make a possible exception for spending on climate change because nonpartisan cost estimates “do not adequately account for the future costs associated with inaction on the climate crisis.”

While efforts to reduce emissions remain controversial, there is broader consensus on the need to prepare communities for the effects of extreme weather. Few corners of the country have been spared a series of disasters this summer: overflowing rivers in Tennessee, a hurricane in Louisiana, a deadly heatwave in the Pacific Northwest, and floods in New York.

The infrastructure bill, approved by the Senate, will mark a major shift in the federal government’s approach to extreme weather events. Rather than paying to rebuild communities after disasters, the bill would provide the largest ever infusion of federal money to prepare states and cities ahead of time for future climate impacts.

For example, the Department of Transportation will receive $8.7 billion to help states address future climate risks on their roads and public transportation systems. Much of the country’s infrastructure has been designed to cope with the weather conditions of the past, which are eroding as the planet warms. This week, the New York City subway, some of which was designed a century ago, was paralyzed as a storm poured large volumes of water into stations and tunnels.

Many of these provisions have received support from Republicans, including those who have denied the threat of climate change in the past. Inside meeting With CNBC this week, Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, urged his party to rally around the infrastructure bill after Hurricane Ida left a trail of destruction in the state.

“If we are going to make our country more resilient to natural disasters wherever they are, we must start preparing now,” Cassidy said. “I’m sure Republicans will look at my state and see this damage and say, ‘If there’s money for resilience, money to harden the grid, money to help sewer and water, maybe that’s something we should be for.’ ”

But while climate experts praised many of the resilience measures in the bill, they warned it would not be enough, as the nation’s needs are certain to increase as climate change fuels increasingly severe storms, floods, wildfires and droughts. In 2018, the federal government National Climate Assessment He estimates that adapting to climate change may ultimately cost “tens to hundreds of billions of dollars a year.”

“It’s not enough to issue a resilience bill once every five years if we really want to get ahead of the ever-sharpening climate impact curve,” said Rob Moore, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We need to start adding resilience measures to every dollar governments spend on infrastructure.”

For now, there appears to be little appetite in Congress to expand the compliance provisions in the infrastructure law, although some lawmakers are pushing for additional measures in the budget bill. For example, some progressive Democrats pushed for the creation of Civic Climate Alliances, modeled after a New Deal program that would recruit young Americans to work on various climate resilience projects.

But even if the adaptation measures receive broad bipartisan support, some experts warn that they may soon reach their limits unless countries like the United States rapidly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and slow the pace of global warming.

“We’re not even ready for the disasters that befall us right now,” said Rachel Cleetus, climate policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “And if we don’t get our emissions and climate change under control, there’s no way we can prevent what’s going to happen in the future.”

Emily Cochrane contributing reporting.