Tell our Members of Congress & President Biden: Fight for a 21st Century Budget that Prioritizes the Climate Crisis
Call BOTH of your Senators.
Call ONE of the Representatives. Note: only one of these Congressmembers represents you. Find out which one here.
Contact the White House via their comment line or web form.
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Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
For President Biden: President Biden, the climate crisis already threatens public safety and our economic security today; tomorrow it threatens the very lives of our children. The climate emergency is the single most important issue facing us and everyone else in the world. It is the issue that we most need to hear you address strongly, consistently, and boldly. It is the most important issue area for wielding your executive powers. It is the most important funding priority for your FY2023 budget. While the increases you propose are a good step, they are insufficient and inadequate. It’s time for bold leadership, bold ideas, and a bold budget proposal that reflects the true scale of the growing climate emergency.
For the Senators and Representative Speier: Today, the climate crisis threatens public safety and our economic security; tomorrow, it threatens the very lives of our children. The climate emergency is the single most important issue facing us and everyone else in the world. It is the issue that we need to hear you address strongly, consistently, and boldly. It is the most important funding priority for the FY2023 budget. While the climate-related increases in President Biden's budget proposal are a good step, they are insufficient and inadequate. As a Democratic member of Congress, you need to go beyond incremental measures to provide bold leadership and bold ideas, and fight for a bold budget proposal that reflects the true dimensions of the growing climate emergency.
For Speaker Pelosi: Today, the climate crisis threatens public safety and our economic security; tomorrow, it threatens the very lives of our children. The climate emergency is the single most important issue facing us and everyone else in the world. It is the issue that voters need to hear you address strongly, consistently, and boldly. It is the most important funding priority for the FY2023 budget. While the climate-related increases in President Biden's budget proposal are a good step, they are insufficient and inadequate. You have always said that the budget reflects our values. In FY2023 those values must include fighting the climate crisis while creating green jobs. To accomplish that, you must provide bold leadership and bold ideas, and fight for a bold budget that goes beyond incremental measures to reflect the true dimensions of the growing climate emergency. We urge you to pass a budget which prioritizes these values.
Background
Last week, the President released his FY2023 Budget which, for the first time in history, included the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) formally accounting for risks of climate change. This is in keeping with Biden’s Executive Order last May that directed the OMB to develop and publish an annual assessment of its climate-related fiscal risk exposure, as well as develop new methodologies to quantify climate risk within the Federal government’s economic assumptions.
The proposed FY2023 Budget allocates funding to many urgent and necessary aspects of dealing with the climate crisis, which was created by ignoring global warming for so long. We wanted all of these components to be fully funded in last year’s budget proposal, too. (Check the references below to learn about the Department of Energy’s Justice40 initiative, which calls for federal funding to deliver at least 40 percent of benefits to marginalized communities.)
In a reality-based government like the majority of Americans want, reducing the climate crisis would be a top priority in every section of the federal budget. Unfortunately, Congressional Republicans have prioritized increasing their political power by undermining the Biden agenda. They have gotten their wealthy donors to recruit two Democrats to help them do that. Therefore, the lofty aspirations of President Biden’s previous budget had to be repeatedly scaled back to be passed. Republicans are planning to shout about “deficit reduction,” but President Biden has done very well at that so far and our MOCs should insist on underscoring that success
But the questionable danger of “deficits” is nothing compared to the consequences of wasting even more time without addressing the climate crisis. In 2018, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that we had just 12 years to act to keep human-driven global warming below 1.5° C. We lost four of those years under the corrupt Trump regime. The IPCC’s 2021 report (linked below) is even more alarming.
Most alarming is how little the budget invests in what is arguably the greatest threat facing both our country and the world: just $45 billion, compared to the $813 billion it allocates to “national defense.” If fighting to keep the planet livable doesn’t qualify as defense, what does?
Our national security establishment has been warning about global warming for decades now. We need to fight to keep every dollar of climate action spending in the FY2023 budget.
References
FY2023 Budget
Quantifying Risks to the Federal Budget from Climate Change | The White House, 4/4/22
New OMB assessments: 21. federal budget exposure to climate risk (PDF) and a new section in the 3. long-term budget outlook focused on climate change.
Inside Biden's $5.8T budget: More for climate, clean energy - E&E News, 3/23/22
President Biden's Budget Provides Climate Vision | NRDC, 3/29/22
Energy Department to Flex $62 Billion Funding Muscle on Equity, 1/28/22
IPCC report: 'Code red' for human driven global heating, warns UN chief, 8/9/21
21st Century Defense Budget / National Defense Authorization Act
Tell your Members of Congress & President Biden: we oppose the NDAA, Indivisible SF, 11/16/2021
Cut the Military Budget and Address Our Real Needs in the NDAA, Indivisible SF, 6/30/2020
Formal Letter to Our MOCs RE Their Support for a Flawed NDAA, 1/28/2020
January 2004:The Pentagon released a report on the perils of abrupt climate change that startled the country for a while. It wasn’t written by global- warming activists, but by Peter Schwartz, former head of planning for Shell Oil and sometime CIA consultant, and Doug Randall of the Global Business Network, a California think tank.
In October of 2009, the CIA established a new Center for the Study of Climate Change.
Pentagon planners in 2010 included climate change among the security threats identified in the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Congress-mandated report that updates Pentagon priorities every four years.