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Infrastructure Bill Makes First Major U.S. Investment in Climate Resilience

The measure includes $47 billion to help communities prepare for the new age of extreme fires, floods, storms and droughts

• https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/06/climate/infrastructure-bill-climate.html

• https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/climate-change/the-infrastructure-bill-is-stuffed-with-climate-change-policies/

November 6, 2021

WASHINGTON — The $1 trillion infrastructure bill now headed to President Biden’s desk includes the largest amount of money ever spent by the United States to prepare the nation to withstand the devastating impacts of climate change...

The money is the most explicit signal yet from the federal government that the economic damages of a warming planet have already arrived. Its approval by Congress with bipartisan support reflects an implicit acknowledgment of that fact by at least some Republicans, even though many of the party’s leaders still question or deny the established science of human-caused climate change.

“It’s a big deal, and we’ll build up our resilience for the next storm, drought, wildfires and hurricanes that indicate a blinking code red for America and the world,” Mr. Biden said in a speech in late October.

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Congress passes President Biden's infrastructure plan, the largest climate change investment in U.S. history

GLASGOW, Scotland — When the House of Representatives passed the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill late Friday night, it took the largest congressional action to confront climate change in U.S. history.

The bill contains $150 billion for clean energy advancement and adaptation to the effects of climate change, surpassing the 2009 economic stimulus package, which spent $90 billion on clean energy development and deployment. The new package also includes $73 billion for modernizing the U.S. electricity grid. Among other things, that will help transmit wind and solar power from the places where it is generated to large population centers.

“The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal will create a generation of good-paying union jobs, build better roads and bridges, ports and airports, broadband for all and electricity transmission to combat the climate crisis,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm in a statement released Saturday morning. Yesterday, Granholm told Yahoo News that she expected the bill to pass and that her foreign counterparts in Glasgow knew Biden was going to get his climate agenda through Congress.

• https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2021/10/22/infrastructure-bill-could-be-strongest-ever-us-climate-action-if-congress-acts

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