President Biden on Tuesday announced $6 billion in new funding to “strengthen climate resilience across the country.”
The money will be targeted toward investments “to make communities across the country more resilient to the impacts of climate change, including by strengthening America’s aging electric grid infrastructure, reducing flood risk to communities, supporting conservation efforts, and advancing environmental justice,” the White House said in a statement.
The funding will come from the $3.9 billion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that Biden signed in 2021.
Along with the new funding, the Biden Administration, in coordination with 14 federal agencies, released the Fifth National Climate Assessment, a comprehensive report on the impact of climate change on the U.S. economy as well as ecosystems and communities across the country.
“It’s the most comprehensive assessment on state climate change in the history of America—and it matters,” Biden said in a speech Tuesday from the White House. “This assessment shows us in clear, scientific terms that climate change is impacting all regions, all sectors of the United States—not just some, all.”
The Climate Assessment notes that the effects of rising temperatures are already “worsening across every region of the United States” devastating ecosystems by reshaping crops and forests while fueling deadly heat waves.
“We can’t be complacent. We have to keep going,” Biden said. “Above all, [the assessment] shows us that climate action offers us an opportunity for the nation to come together and do some really big things.”
Since 1990, Congress has required federal agencies to investigate climate change’s impact on the U.S., with a report due at least once every four years.
The latest assessment warns that without deeper cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions and an acceleration in adapting to changes already underway, “severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow.”
On Tuesday, Biden called climate change the “ultimate threat to humanity,” noting how it can destroy the livelihoods of American families through devastating floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters.
He added that “anyone who willfully denies the impact of climate change is condemning the American people to a very dangerous future.”
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