Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a resolution Tuesday asking Congress to declare that global warming is an emergency demanding a massive mobilization of resources to protect the U.S. economy, society and national security.
Over two dozen lawmakers, including most of the senators currently running for president, signed on as co-sponsors.
The resolution, introduced by Sanders (I-Vt.), Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), calls for “a national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization of the resources and labor of the United States at a massive-scale to halt, reverse, mitigate, and prepare for the consequences of the climate emergency and to restore the climate for future generations.”
The sponsors described a need for a mobilization of the nation’s resources and labor on par with when the country entered World War II.
“It’s time for Congress to formally acknowledge the scale and depth of climate change,” Blumenauer told reporters on a conference call announcing the resolution. “This is a national emergency; we need to act like it.”
The resolution comes just a day after an extreme storm flooded parts of Washington, D.C., with nearly a month’s worth of rain in an hour, and it follows record heat waves that sent Europe’s temperatures soaring to 114 degrees Fahrenheit.
Ocasio-Cortez said the non-binding resolution was a “first step” in addressing climate change and the human-caused greenhouse gas emissions that threaten to push global temperatures beyond the thresholds in the Paris climate agreement.
Ocasio-Cortez was also an author of the Green New Deal resolution, which similarly called for urgency and a massive intervention to tackle climate change, but which offered a much broader and more holistic approach by including other elements like Medicare for all and job guarantees. Because of that, the climate emergency resolution could be easier for Democrats and possibly some Republicans to stand behind.
If passed, the U.S. wouldn’t be the only country to declare a climate emergency. Canada’s House of Commons, Britain and Ireland have approved similar measures, as have several U.S. cities, including New York City and San Francisco. But despite a Democratic majority in the U.S. House, the U.S. resolution would likely fail in the Republican-controlled Senate.
‘Problem Is the Lack of Political Will’
Sanders, who’s running for president in 2020, said declaring a climate emergency could be a step toward helping Congress enact more sweeping reforms, such as making massive investments in sustainable energy, revamping the countries transportation infrastructure, and even holding the fossil fuel industry accountable for spreading what he called decades of misinformation.
Sanders said he’d like to see lawmakers work together around climate change with the same urgency as the country did after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, when Congress quickly passed sweeping legislation in response.
“I think the issue here is not that we cannot address this problem,” Sanders said of climate change. “The problem is the lack of political will.”
The resolution also comes just a week after hundreds of U.S. mayors urged Congress to place a tax on carbon emissions, citing the Trump administration’s moves to roll back environmental protections, such as freezing vehicle fuel economy standards or backing out of Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
Supporters Point to Recent Flooding, Fires
A string of weather and climate disasters over the last year, including deadly wildfires, increased flooding and intensifying storms, has also heightened national attention to global warming. And lawmakers Tuesday cited those events as evidence that the U.S. needs to act immediately to address climate change.
Last month was the hottest June on record globally, and one study has already linked Europe’s heat wave to climate change. Other recent studies linked global warming to an increase in insect-borne disease in the Northeast and to dangerous algae growth in the nation’s waters.
“There are many, many challenges facing this country,” Sanders said. “But at the top of the list must be the existential threat to our planet in terms of the damage that climate change is doing and will do.”
About This Story
Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That’s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.
That’s not all. We also share our news for free with scores of other media organizations around the country. Many of them can’t afford to do environmental journalism of their own. We’ve built bureaus from coast to coast to report local stories, collaborate with local newsrooms and co-publish articles so that this vital work is shared as widely as possible.
Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action.
Donations from readers like you fund every aspect of what we do. If you don’t already, will you support our ongoing work, our reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet, and help us reach even more readers in more places?
Please take a moment to make a tax-deductible donation. Every one of them makes a difference.
Thank you,
Kristoffer Tigue
Reporter, Midwest
Kristoffer Tigue is a staff writer for Inside Climate News, covering climate issues in the Midwest. He previously wrote the twice-weekly newsletter, Today’s Climate, and helped lead ICN’s national coverage on environmental justice. His work has been published in Reuters, Scientific American, Mother Jones, HuffPost and many more. Tigue holds a Master’s degree in journalism from the Missouri School of Journalism.
