As lawmakers in Washington continue to negotiate over an infrastructure bill that Democrats say needs to include major new funding to address the climate crisis, much of the U.S.
The group of 10 Republican and Democratic senators recently proposed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package, but many Democrats have criticized the deal for not doing enough to address the climate crisis, among other issues.
The debate over infrastructure and combating the climate emergency comes as western states are facing daily reminders of the crisis, including drought, water shortages and extreme heat.
She’s the author of Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American States.
Welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us, Professor Stokes.
Scientists are saying that in some parts of the West they’re seeing a drought that’s worse than we’ve seen in, you know, something like four centuries.
The drought, the heat waves that you talked about, setting record temperatures all across the western United States, and really even reaching into parts of the Midwest, these are the signatures of climate change.
You know, there have been lots of actions, whether that’s against Line 3 or for these kinds of infrastructure negotiations, that have been trying to raise awareness of lawmakers of just how urgent the climate crisis is.
And the good news is that just a week or two ago, a group of senators — we have over 12 senators at this point now — have said, in the line of Senator Markey, “No climate, no deal,” meaning that if there is not climate change in the package that moves forward this summer, they’re not going to move a package forward this summer.
There was a two-pager that came out a couple days ago, and it said that there would be about $600 billion in new spending, so things like, overwhelmingly, roads and bridges and sort of that kind of infrastructure.
And Senator Sanders, in particular, has said that he is not interested in a proposal that does that, nor is President Biden, who campaigned on saying that he would not raise taxes for anybody making $400,000 or less.
You know, I’ve only lived in California since 2015, and the droughts and fires and heat waves that I have experienced in that short time are really unprecedented.
This is why scientists are beginning to talk about things like megadroughts and megafires and mega-heat waves, these huge-scale events that don’t just span the western United States but go all the way to the Midwest, with record temperatures happening in June and then another record event likely to happen next week.
And we have already had the president propose this American Jobs Plan at the end of March, and we have been waiting for almost three months to see Congress act.
We are seeing reports all around the country now that state governments have more cash and more surplus than they’ve ever had in their histories, as a result of rebounding tax revenues and also federal assistance.
So, I think that you’re right that governors should be looking at spending money on climate change, building, for example, clean energy, helping to build more public transit and support that infrastructure, because if you put the money in at time one, it can actually pay you back over many years.
And that is really just a down payment on the scale of the crisis.
So, several months ago, I worked with the Sierra Club to research: What are utilities planning to do? And they put out a lot of corporate pledges, saying that they wanted to decarbonize by, let’s say, 2050.
And so, how do we reconcile these two things? Well, we have to recognize that if we really want to clean up our infrastructure, we need to have federal legislation, specifically a federal clean electricity standard.
So, if we really want to get on top of the climate crisis, the power sector is the most important place to start, because if we have clean electricity, like 80% clean power by 2030, because of this clean electricity standard, and we combine that with electrification — things like electric vehicles, electric stoves and heat pumps — we can actually decarbonize about 75% of our economy.
And that legislation at the federal level can actually be an investment to help them do things and to help them get on track with the pledges that they claim that they want to fulfill.
AMY GOODMAN: Leah Stokes, we want to thank you so much for being with us, assistant professor of political science at University of California, Santa Barbara, researcher on climate and energy policy, author of Short Circuiting Policy, also co-host of the podcast A Matter of Degrees.