Congress Must Act to Pass Infrastructure Legislation With Climate and Clean Energy Investments

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(Reprinted from the National IPL Blog)

By Tiffany Hartung, Field Director

It is the moral responsibility of our nation, and our sacred task as people of faith, to care for our neighbors, our common home, and protect our children’s future. We must work for environmental justice and public health while addressing the climate crisis.

From historic wildfires to record-breaking extreme weather, climate change is devastating our health and destroying our environment. Links between pollution and the pandemic have put low wealth communities and communities of color at far greater health risks than other communities. COVID-19 has also exposed hidden health care disparities, environmental injustices, and economic inequities in the United States.

These competing crises have ignited an urgent call to action to address climate change and environmental injustice together. We need Congress to pass recovery and infrastructure legislation that includes critical investments in environmental justice communities as we seek to rebuild the economy in a resilient, sustainable, and equitable way.

Congress is putting together economic recovery and infrastructure legislation this spring and summer that gives us a historic opportunity to invest in safeguarding Creation; to address the harms of climate change and pollution caused by fossil fuel extraction and related industries; and to fulfill our moral obligation to leave a thriving world for future generations.

Rebuilding America will take a transformational investment plan that delivers jobs, justice, and clean energy to communities across the country and curbs the carbon pollution that is driving the climate crisis. We need Congress to approve these investments to create new jobs and a just, equitable, and sustainable economy.

If you haven’t already, urge your members of Congress to support a plan that truly tackles climate change.

If you are a faith leader or leader of a religious community, please add your name to this faith leaders’ letter to Congress.

IPL President Rev. Susan Hendershot wrote in a recent op-ed to Sojourners, “In many places, it is not possible to support a family with the jobs that are available. This is a spiritual issue; one that the American Jobs Plan has the opportunity to address by creating new jobs that will renew people’s hope as well as the life of our planet. What we need today is a visionary investment in new, sustainable, and equitable infrastructure that prioritizes clean energy jobs and renewable energy.”

This is an extraordinary, historic opportunity to invest in the future with a safer climate, a fairer, more inclusive economy, and modern clean energy infrastructure that improves our daily lives.

 

NM-IPL Supports the ‘For the People Act’ (H.R. 1/S.1)

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Our democracy is sacred, and voting is a sacred act. In a democracy, it is the people who should have a voice, not corporate polluters. When fossil fuel polluters can buy the influence of policymakers through their campaign contributions, we the people lose our voice.

That’s why IPL is supporting the For The People Act, H.R.1 / S.1. The For The People Act will rein in corporate polluters’ destructive influence in political decision-making and give power back to the people. It is a chance to take money out of politics and focus on things that affect real people, like securing access to clean air and water.

This bill will:

  • Stop “dark money” from fossil fuels. The oil and gas industry spent about $140 million last year trying to get their preferred candidates elected, much of it through super PACs that disguise the identity of the giver. The For the People Act would bring this money into the light of day by requiring those PACs disclose the names of individuals giving more than $10,000. It would also set up a new system for public matching of grassroots donations, leveling the playing field for candidates funded by their constituents rather than fossil fuel CEOs.
  • Protect the rights of Black voters and Black churches. Over 40 states have introduced voter suppression laws already this year, but perhaps the most prominent example has come from Georgia. A new law there aims to limit voting access, including making it illegal for counties to allow early voting on Sundays—the day many Black churches hold “souls to the polls” drives. Many other proposed restrictions in Georgia and beyond target Black, Indigenous, and people of color voters, through discriminatory voter identification laws. The For the People Act would protect and expand early voting and vote by mail, and require states to have fair and equitable access to the ballot.

Make sure everyone’s vote counts. Valuing all people, not just the powerful, is a basic tenet of both our faith traditions and any functioning democracy. Gerrymandering, the process by which politicians draw district boundaries for unfair political advantage, is used by lawmakers to ensure that some communities have more political power than others. This For the People Act would prevent our neighbors having their votes diluted by ending partisan gerrymandering. A democracy is where voters choose their representatives, not the other way around!

NM-IPL Supports Effort to Build a Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure

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As Congress turns to rebuilding our economy and our infrastructure, we urge you to support policies that will safeguard Creation, address the impacts of climate change on our most vulnerable siblings, and fulfill our moral obligation to leave a habitable world for future generations. Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities, as well as low-income communities, have been hit the hardest by the triple health, economic, and environmental crises we face.

We need to invest with justice, and we call on Congress to meet President Biden’s campaign promise that 40% of all funds spent combating the climate crisis be spent in the environmental justice communities hurt the most by our current polluting economy.

Furthermore, the devastating winter storms of February and the massive wildfires of 2020 demonstrate the urgent need to upgrade our infrastructure, including our electrical grid, power supply, and water infrastructure to withstand extreme weather events that are becoming the new normal. \

The American Jobs Plan is a bold roadmap that will create jobs and tackle environmental injustice and the climate crisis. Interfaith Power & Light is excited to see this proposal, and yet we also know that more is needed.

We call on Congress to take up President Biden’s proposal and strengthen it to be in line with the THRIVE Act, a plan sized to meet the needs of our infrastructure and our climate. Specifically, we are excited to support an infrastructure package that does the following.

  • Modernize the grid and expand clean, renewable energy sources
    •  Sustainable infrastructure makes us better prepared for climate-fueled disastersl. We need to modernize our electrical grid, increasing its climate resiliency and ensuring it is prepared for a future with solar panels on every roof and wind turbines across the country.
    • Clean energy creates jobs and cuts air pollution, a win for both our communities and Creation. Now is the time for a national Clean Energy Standard to get to 100% net-zero climate pollution in electricity by 2035, while also expanding investments in clean energy tax credits for wind power, solar power, and more.
  • Upgrade our water infrastructure to ensure clean, pure water for all
    • Too many communities, especially in low-income urban neighborhoods and in Indigenous communities, don’t have access to clean water. We must invest in lead pipe remediation, as well as programs like the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund and the Clean Water State Revolving Fund that help expand clean water access in rural communities.
  • Electrify transportation and expand public transit
    • Incentivize electric vehicles—from personal vehicles, to school buses, to commercial truck fleets and more. We must invest in battery technology and manufacturing, while also enacting policies that make it easier to buy electric vehicles, build charging infrastructure, and ensure they are affordable to all.
    • Invest in mass transit infrastructure and electrification. Nearly 3 million essential workers depend on safe, reliable public transportation—by extension, we all do. If our transit systems don’t make it through this crisis, it will be a disaster for both our communities and our climate. Congress should provide emergency funding to keep systems running during the crisis as well as longer-term investment aimed at expansion and electrification of existing services.
  • Include the RECLAIM Act (Revitalizing the Economy of Coal Communities by Leveraging Local Activities and Investing More Act – HR 2505)
    • The RECLAIM Act will distribute $1 billion for clean up and economic development in communities with abandoned coal mines. The Abandoned Mine Land (AML) funds are already collected and ready to use to clean up abandoned coal mines and the lands and waters polluted by them. AML restoration will also promote economic diversification, targeting our neighbors in the most economically distressed coal communities across the nation.

States and tribes can use the money to develop strategic mine reclamation projects that are linked to development projects on the reclaimed sites. The RECLAIM Act will assist communities struggling with job loss by diversifying their economies and creating jobs doing mine reclamation across the country.