Hours after the release of a far-reaching government report on the impacts of climate change, President Joe Biden on Tuesday sought to paint a picture of the widespread and costly effects of extreme weather.
At the same time, the president made an appeal to the public: there is still time to act, and his administration is doing just that.
“I've walked the streets of Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, Florida, Puerto Rico where historic hurricanes and floods wiped out homes, hospitals, houses of worship – just wiped them right off the map,” Biden said Tuesday during remarks at the White House. “I've met with families in Texas, Kentucky, Mississippi, where catastrophic winter storms and tornadoes devoured everything in their paths: schools, businesses, police stations, firehouses. I've seen firefighters in Idaho, Maui, New Mexico, California, Colorado.”
“Solutions are within reach,” the president later said. “It takes time for the investments we're making to be fully materialized, but we just have to keep at it. We need to do more and move faster. We have the tools to do it.”
The fifth National Climate Assessment – a massive report taking stock of the impacts of climate change in the U.S. that comes out every four to five years – detailed a country warming about 60% faster than the world as a whole, one that regularly gets smacked with costly weather disasters and faces even bigger problems in the future.
“The previous administration tried to bury this report,” Biden said on Tuesday, taking a dig at his predecessor, former President Donald Trump. “We're sharing this report in detail with the American people to know exactly what they're facing and what we're gonna have to do.”
The impacts of extreme weather were on display this summer when Florida was slammed with one of its strongest hurricanes and Maui faced devastating and destructive wildfires in the same month – as FEMA warned its disaster relief fund at the time was running dangerously low.
In September, about 9 in 10 Americans (87%) said they’d experienced at least one extreme weather event in the past five years — drought, extreme heat, severe storms, wildfires or flooding. That was up from 79% who said that in April.
“Folks, none of this is inevitable. None of this is inevitable,” the president said on Tuesday. “From day one, my administration has taken unprecedented climate action.”
As part of that bid, Biden on Tuesday announced another investment of $6 billion from two of his signature legislative achievements – the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – to “make communities across the country more resilient to climate change.”
Of the $6 billion, $3.9 billion will go toward strengthening the electric grid, marking the second round of funding from the $10.5 billion allocated in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships Program, or GRIP.
The Inflation Reduction Act-funded Environmental and Climate Justice Community Change Grants program will award $2 billion to local projects that use clean energy to respond to climate challenges.
FEMA will give $300 million to communities to reduce the impacts of future floods and the Department of Interior will designate $100 million for upgrades to infrastructure that enhance drought resilience.
“We’ve come to the point where it is foolish for anyone to deny the impacts of climate change anymore,” Biden said. “But it's a simple fact that there are a number of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle – MAGA Republican leaders who still deny climate change – still deny that it's a problem.”
That comment marked a shift from July – as a heat wave was scorching the U.S. – when Biden declared “I don’t think anybody can deny the impact of climate change anymore.”
That notion was challenged during the first GOP presidential debate in August, with candidates appearing reluctant to embrace the idea that human behavior is causing climate change and one candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, calling it a “hoax.” The moment led Biden to tweet “Climate change is real, by the way.”
“My predecessor, much of the MAGA Republican party, in fact, feel very strongly about that,” Biden said on Tuesday. “Anyone who willfully denies the impact of climate change is condemning the American people to a very dangerous future.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report