Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer declared that global warming and climate change will be worse than the coronavirus pandemic without action like Democrats are planning in large spending packages.
“We are surrounded by evidence of the climate crisis — the fires out west, the heat waves, the floods. Everywhere you look. Because of global warming, things are getting worse and worse,” the New York Democrat said in a press conference on Wednesday.
“COVID was horrible,” Schumer said. “But if we do nothing on climate, starting within a few years from now, each year will be worse than COVID, and each year will be worse than the previous year.”
‘CIVILIAN CLIMATE CORPS’ TO BE PART OF SENATE DEMOCRATS’ INFRASTRUCTURE BILL
Democrats plan to include a “civilian climate corps” in the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, a proposal supported by far-left Democrats, including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that aims “to provide employment opportunities; invest in natural climate solutions, clean energy, and resilience; and address environmental justice through locally-led, science-based projects.”
Schumer touted that program.
“As the crisis comes closer and closer, more and more upon us, we’ll have an educated corps of people ready to fight it,” he said.
“Everyone knows the crisis. It’s only people with their head in the sand, or some of our Republican colleagues who are in the palm of the oil, gas, and coal industry, who don’t realize it or don’t want to realize it,” Schumer said.
Schumer was joined by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“We’re in a good place to reach the goals that are set out,” she said. “When they make that vote, it will be signed by Joe Biden, a pro-climate champion in the White House.”
The Senate majority leader said that climate change will be addressed not only in the reconciliation spending bill that is still being crafted and can pass through special rules without Republican support but in the bipartisan infrastructure framework being negotiated.
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“Through the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the budget reconciliation bill, the Senate will make our largest investments to tackle the climate crisis and environmental justice ever — ever — in our nation’s history,” Schumer said.
He also pledged that an infrastructure package will “reduce carbon pollution at the scale commensurate with the climate crisis we face.”
