Lack of Action on Climate Crisis Will Cost Us
Yesterday, according to reporting from the Washington Post, Senator Manchin withdrew his support for a broad package of climate spending that he has been negotiating with Democratic leadership. Outdoor Alliance is profoundly disappointed in the idea that Congress might abandon its efforts to address the climate crisis.
This package—last year known as Build Back Better and more recently, in slimmed down form, simply as reconciliation—sought to use budgetary procedures that would allow the Senate to pass a bill with just 50 votes, with the Vice President as the tiebreaking vote. Congress has considered a broad set of climate investments that would create good jobs for Americans, help land managers invest in climate disaster prevention through a Civilian Climate Corps and fund for wildfire mitigation, and invest in renewable energy to protect the climate and energy security.
“It goes without saying that climate change is the single greatest threat we face as a nation and a globe and that the worsening climate crisis is having a profound effect on outdoor recreation, public lands and waters, and the health and safety of communities across the country,” said Adam Cramer, CEO of Outdoor Alliance. “Lawmakers claiming concern for the well-being of their constituents, families, and the next generation should have no greater priority than addressing the climate crisis. Climate change is not an abstraction and hasn’t been for years. We are seeing it in the data and in our firsthand experience, through intensely hot summers, wildfires, poor air quality, floods, landslides, and increasingly common extreme weather events. Almost no one has been untouched by the effects of our warming planet.”
Even the very real effects of climate change and the billions of dollars that the U.S. government is spending annually on climate-related disasters have not been enough to spur lawmakers to action.
If the negotiations to pass climate legislation collapse in this Congress, it will mean worsening climate disasters, with more harm and more loss of life and property and health. We have a chance to forestall some of the worst effects of the climate crisis. We have a chance to spend money preventing climate disasters instead of responding to them. We have a chance to rebalance the scales, shift taxpayer dollars from subsidizing development and drilling to subsidizing renewable energy that will create jobs, protect the climate, and protect communities.
Congress has a real opportunity to take planet-saving measures, and if it takes a pass, the inaction will be devastating. These prolonged, painful negotiations reinforce the need for the Biden administration to do everything it can to protect Americans by taking up the charge and addressing the climate crisis by all means necessary.
While our confidence that Senate can get climate action across the finish line has eroded, Outdoor Alliance and the outdoor community will not give up on addressing the climate crisis. We remain determined that we can, must, and will address climate change as a nation and that we will continue to bring our energy and resources to addressing this problem and protecting public lands, waters, and people.