[Congressional Bills 117th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 794 Introduced in House (IH)]
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117th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 794
To require the President to declare a national climate emergency under
the National Emergencies Act, and for other purposes.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
February 4, 2021
Mr. Blumenauer (for himself, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, Ms. Barragan, Mrs.
Napolitano, Ms. Meng, Mr. Welch, Mr. Espaillat, Mr. Nadler, Mr.
Quigley, Mr. Levin of Michigan, Ms. Velazquez, Mr. Lowenthal, Ms.
Norton, Mr. Levin of California, Ms. Matsui, Mr. DeSaulnier, Ms.
Pressley, Ms. Clarke of New York, Mr. Jones, Ms. Schakowsky, Mr. Cohen,
Mr. Gomez, Mr. Yarmuth, Ms. Bonamici, Mr. Neguse, Mr. Khanna, Mr.
Huffman, Mr. Bowman, and Ms. Jayapal) introduced the following bill;
which was referred to the Committee on Transportation and
Infrastructure, and in addition to the Committees on Financial
Services, Education and Labor, Energy and Commerce, Natural Resources,
Agriculture, and Small Business, for a period to be subsequently
determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such
provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
To require the President to declare a national climate emergency under
the National Emergencies Act, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``National Climate Emergency Act of
2021'' or the ``Climate Emergency Act of 2021''.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
(1) The years 2010 to 2019 were the hottest decade on
record.
(2) Global atmospheric concentrations of the primary global
warming pollutant, carbon dioxide--
(A) have increased by 40 percent since
preindustrial times, from 280 parts per million to 415
parts per million, primarily due to human activities,
including the burning of fossil fuels and
deforestation;
(B) are rising at a rate of 2 to 3 parts per
million annually; and
(C) must be reduced to not more than 350 parts per
million, and likely lower, ``if humanity wishes to
preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization
developed and to which life on Earth is adapted,''
according to former National Aeronautics and Space
Administration climatologist Dr. James Hansen.
(3) Global atmospheric concentrations of other global
warming pollutants, including methane, nitrous oxide, and
hydrofluorocarbons, have also increased substantially since
preindustrial times, primarily due to human activities,
including the burning of fossil fuels.
(4) Climate science and observations of climate change
impacts, including ocean warming, ocean acidification, floods,
droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather, demonstrate that a
global rise in temperature of 1.5 degree Celsius above
preindustrial levels is already having dangerous impacts on
human populations and the environment.
(5) According to the 2018 National Climate Assessment,
climate change due to global warming has caused, and is
expected to continue to cause, substantial interference with
and growing losses to human health and safety, infrastructure,
property, industry, recreation, natural resources, agricultural
systems, and quality of life in the United States.
(6) According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, climate change is already increasing the
frequency of extreme weather and other climate-related
disasters, including drought, wildfire, and storms that include
precipitation.
(7) Climate-related natural disasters have increased
exponentially over the past decade, costing the United States
more than double the long-term average during the period of
2014 through 2018, with total costs of natural disasters during
that period of approximately $100,000,000,000 per year.
(8) According to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, there are wide-ranging, acute, and fatal public
health consequences from climate change that impact communities
across the United States.
(9) According to the National Climate and Health Assessment
of the United States Global Change Research Program, climate
change is a significant threat to the health of the people of
the United States, leading to increased--
(A) temperature-related deaths and illnesses;
(B) air quality impacts;
(C) extreme weather events;
(D) numbers of vector-borne diseases;
(E) waterborne illnesses;
(F) food safety, nutrition, and distribution
complications; and
(G) mental health and well-being concerns.
(10) The consequences of climate change already
disproportionately impact frontline communities and endanger
populations made especially vulnerable by existing exposure to
extreme weather events, such as children, the elderly, and
individuals with pre-existing disabilities and health
conditions.
(11) Individuals and families on the frontlines of climate
change across the United States, including territories, living
with income inequality and poverty, institutional racism,
inequity on the basis of gender and sexual orientation, poor
infrastructure, and lack of access to health care, housing,
clean water, and food security are often in close proximity to
environmental stressors or sources of pollution, particularly
communities of color, indigenous communities, and low-income
communities, which--
(A) are often the first exposed to the impacts of
climate change;
(B) experience outsized risk because of the close
proximity of the community to environmental hazards and
stressors, in addition to collocation with waste and
other sources of pollution; and
(C) have the fewest resources to mitigate those
impacts or to relocate, which will exacerbate
preexisting challenges.
(12) According to Dr. Beverly Wright and Dr. Robert
Bullard, ``environmental and public health threats from natural
and human-made disasters are not randomly distributed,
affecting some communities more than others,'' and therefore a
response to the climate emergency necessitates the adoption of
policies and processes rooted in principles of racial equity,
self-determination, and democracy, as well as the fundamental
human rights of all people to clean air and water, healthy
food, adequate land, education, and shelter, as promulgated in
the 1991 Principles of Environmental Justice.
(13) Climate change holds grave and immediate consequences
not just for the population of the United States, including
territories, but for communities across the world, particularly
those communities in the Global South on the frontlines of the
climate crisis that are at risk of forced displacement.
(14) Communities in rural, urban, and suburban areas are
all dramatically affected by climate change, though the
specific economic, health, social, and environmental impacts
may be different.
(15) The Department of State, the Department of Defense,
and the intelligence community have identified climate change
as a threat to national security, and the Department of
Homeland Security views climate change as a top homeland
security risk.
(16) Climate change is a threat multiplier with the
potential--
(A) to exacerbate many of the challenges the United
States already confronts, including conflicts over
scarce resources, conditions conducive to violent
extremism, and the spread of infectious diseases; and
(B) to produce new, unforeseeable challenges in the
future.
(17) The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change projected in 2018 that the Earth could warm 1.5 degrees
Celsius above preindustrial levels as early as 2030.
(18) The climatic changes resulting from global warming
above 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, including
changes resulting from global warming of more than 2 degrees
Celsius above preindustrial levels, are projected to result in
irreversible, catastrophic changes to public health,
livelihoods, quality of life, food security, water supplies,
human security, and economic growth.
(19) The United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy
Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services found in 2019
that human-induced climate change is pushing the planet toward
the sixth mass species extinction, which threatens the food
security, water supply, and well-being of billions of people.
(20) According to climate scientists, limiting global
warming to not more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above
preindustrial levels, and likely lower, is most likely to avoid
irreversible and catastrophic climate change.
(21) Even with global warming up to 1.5 degrees Celsius
above preindustrial levels, the planet is projected to
experience--
(A) a significant rise in sea levels;
(B) extraordinary loss of biodiversity; and
(C) intensifying droughts, floods, wildfires, and
other extreme weather events.
(22) According to climate scientists, addressing the
climate emergency will require an economically just phase-out
of the use of oil, gas, and coal in order to keep the carbon
that is the primary constituent of fossil fuels in the ground
and out of the atmosphere.
(23) The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change has determined that limiting warming through emissions
reduction and carbon sequestration will require rapid and
immediate acceleration and proliferation of ``far-reaching,
multilevel, and cross-sectoral climate mitigation'' and
``transitions in energy, land, urban and rural infrastructure
(including transport and buildings), and industrial systems''.
(24) In the United States, massive, comprehensive, and
urgent governmental action is required immediately to achieve
the transitions of those systems in response to the severe
existing and projected economic, social, public health, and
national security threats posed by the climate crisis.
(25) The massive scope and scale of action necessary to
stabilize the climate will require unprecedented levels of
public awareness, engagement, and deliberation to develop and
implement effective, just, and equitable policies to address
the climate crisis.
(26) The Constitution of the United States protects the
fundamental rights to life, liberty, property, and equal
protection of the laws.
(27) A climate system capable of sustaining human life is
fundamental to a free and ordered society, and is preservative
of fundamental rights, including the rights to life, liberty,
property, personal security, family autonomy, bodily integrity,
and the ability to learn, practice, and transmit cultural and
religious traditions.
(28) The United States has a proud history of
collaborative, constructive, massive-scale Federal
mobilizations of resources and labor in order to solve great
challenges, such as the Interstate Highway System, the Apollo
11 Moon landing, Reconstruction, the New Deal, and World War
II.
(29) The United States stands uniquely poised to
substantially grow the economy and attain social and health
benefits from a massive mobilization of resources and labor
that far outweigh the costs climate change will inflict as a
result of inaction.
(30) Millions of middle class jobs can be created by
raising labor standards through project labor agreements and
protecting and expanding the right of workers to organize so
that workers in the United States and the communities of those
workers are guaranteed a strong, viable economic future in a
zero-emissions economy that guarantees good jobs at fair union
wages with quality benefits.
(31) Frontline communities, Tribal governments and
communities, people of color, and labor unions must be
equitably and actively engaged in the climate mobilization, in
such a way that aligns with the 1996 Jemez Principles of
Democratic Organizing, and prioritized through local climate
mitigation and adaptation planning, policy, and program
delivery so that workers in the United States, and the
communities of those workers, are guaranteed a strong, viable
economic future.
(32) A number of local jurisdictions and governments in the
United States, including New York City and Los Angeles, and
across the world, including the United Kingdom, the Republic of
Ireland, Portugal, and Canada, have already declared a climate
emergency, and a number of State and local governments are
considering declaring a climate emergency.
(33) State, local, and Tribal governments must be supported
in efforts to hold to account those whose activities have
deepened and accelerated the climate crisis and who have
benefitted from delayed action to address the climate change
emergency and to develop a clean energy economy.
(34) A collaborative response to the climate crisis will
require the Federal Government to work with international,
State, and local governments, including with those governments
that have declared a climate emergency, to reverse the impacts
of the climate crisis.
(35) The United States has an obligation, as a primary
driver of accelerated climate change, to mobilize at emergency
speed to restore a safe climate and environment not just for
communities of the United States but for communities across the
world, particularly those on the frontlines of the climate
crisis which have least contributed to the crisis, and to
account for global and community impacts of any actions it
takes in response to the climate crisis.
SEC. 3. EMERGENCY DECLARATION.
(a) In General.--The President shall declare a national emergency
under section 201 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1621) with
respect to climate change.
(b) Response.--In responding to the national emergency declared
pursuant to subsection (a), the President shall ensure that the Federal
Government--
(1) invests in large scale mitigation and resiliency
projects, including projects that--
(A) upgrade the public infrastructure to expand
access to clean and affordable energy, transportation,
high-speed broadband, and water, particularly for
public systems;
(B) modernize and retrofit millions of homes,
schools, offices, and industrial buildings to cut
pollution and costs;
(C) invest in public health, in preparation for and
in response to increasingly extreme climatic events;
(D) protect and restore wetlands, forests, public
lands, and other natural climate solutions;
(E) create opportunities for farmers and rural
communities, including by bolstering regenerative
agriculture, and invest in local and regional food
systems that support farmers, agricultural workers,
healthy soil, and climate resilience;
(F) develop and transform the industrial base of
the United States, while creating high-skill, high-wage
manufacturing jobs across the country, including by
expanding manufacturing of clean technologies, reducing
industrial pollution, and prioritizing clean, domestic
manufacturing for the aforementioned investments; and
(G) establish new employment programs, as
necessary, to meet the goals described in subparagraphs
(A) through (F);
(2) makes investments that enable--
(A) a racially and socially just transition to a
clean energy economy by ensuring that at least 40
percent of investments flow to historically
disadvantaged communities;
(B) greenhouse gas emission reductions;
(C) resilience in the face of climate change
impacts;
(D) a racially and socially just transition to a
clean energy economy;
(E) small business support, especially for women
and minority-owned businesses; and
(F) the expansion of public services;
(3) avoids solutions that--
(A) increase inequality;
(B) exacerbate, or fail to reduce, pollution at
source;
(C) violate human rights;
(D) privatize public lands, water, or nature;
(E) expedite the destruction of ecosystems; or
(F) decrease union density or membership;
(4) creates jobs that conform to labor standards that--
(A) provide family sustaining wages and benefits;
(B) ensure safe workplaces;
(C) protect the rights of workers to organize; and
(D) prioritize the hiring of local workers to
ensure wages stay within communities and stimulate
local economic activity;
(5) prioritizes local and equitable hiring and contracting
that creates opportunities for--
(A) communities of color and indigenous
communities;
(B) women;
(C) veterans;
(D) LGBTQIA+ individuals;
(E) disabled and chronically ill individuals;
(F) formerly incarcerated individuals; and
(G) otherwise marginalized communities;
(6) combats environmental injustice, including by--
(A) curtailing air, water, and land pollution from
all sources;
(B) removing health hazards from communities;
(C) remediating the cumulative health and
environmental impacts of toxic pollution and climate
change;
(D) ensuring that affected communities have
equitable access to public health resources that have
been systemically denied to communities of color and
Indigenous communities; and
(E) upholding the fundamental rights of all
Americans from the perils of climate change; and
(7) reinvests in existing public sector institutions and
creates new public sector institutions, inspired by and
improving upon New Deal-era institutions by addressing historic
inequities, to strategically and coherently mobilize and
channel investments at the scale and pace required by the
national emergency declared pursuant to subsection (a).
(c) Report.--Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of
this Act, and every year thereafter, the President shall submit to
Congress a report describing actions taken in response to the national
emergency declared pursuant to subsection (a).
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