Hill Heat

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.

1. The years 2010 to 2019 were the hottest decade on record.
2. Global atmospheric concentrations of the primary global warming pollutant, carbon dioxide—
   1. 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;
   2. are rising at a rate of 2 to 3 parts per million annually; and
   3. 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—
   1. temperature-related deaths and illnesses;
   2. air quality impacts;
   3. extreme weather events;
   4. numbers of vector-borne diseases;
   5. waterborne illnesses;
   6. food safety, nutrition, and distribution complications; and
   7. 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—
    1. are often the first exposed to the impacts of climate change;
    2. 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
    3. 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—
    1. 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
    2. 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—
    1. a significant rise in sea levels;
    2. extraordinary loss of biodiversity; and
    3. 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 mitiga tion 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.

1. 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.
2. 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—
      1. upgrade the public infrastructure to expand access to clean and affordable energy, transportation, high-speed broadband, and water, particularly for public systems;
      2. modernize and retrofit millions of homes, schools, offices, and industrial buildings to cut pollution and costs;
      3. invest in public health, in preparation for and in response to increasingly extreme climatic events;
      4. protect and restore wetlands, forests, public lands, and other natural climate solutions;
      5. 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;
      6. 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
      7. establish new employment programs, as necessary, to meet the goals described in subparagraphs (A) through (F);
   2. makes investments that enable—
      1. 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;
      2. greenhouse gas emission reductions;
      3. resilience in the face of climate change impacts;
      4. a racially and socially just transition to a clean energy economy;
      5. small business support, especially for women and minority-owned businesses; and
      6. the expansion of public services;
   3. avoids solutions that—
      1. increase inequality;
      2. exacerbate, or fail to reduce, pollution at source;
      3. violate human rights;
      4. privatize public lands, water, or nature;
      5. expedite the destruction of ecosystems; or
      6. decrease union density or membership;
   4. creates jobs that conform to labor standards that—
      1. provide family-sustaining wages and benefits;
      2. ensure safe workplaces;
      3. protect the rights of workers to organize; and
      4. 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—
      1. communities of color and indigenous communities;
      2. women;
      3. veterans;
      4. LGBTQIA+ individuals;
      5. disabled and chronically ill individuals;
      6. formerly incarcerated individuals; and
      7. otherwise marginalized communities;
   6. combats environmental injustice, including by—
      1. curtailing air, water, and land pollution from all sources;
      2. removing health hazards from communities;
      3. remediating the cumulative health and environmental impacts of toxic pollution and climate change;
      4. ensuring that affected communities have equitable access to public health resources that have been systemically denied to communities of color and Indigenous communities; and
      5. 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).
3. 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).

The Grid Services and Efficiency Act aims to foster cross-agency collaboration to identify gaps in grid services and operator platforms, and to provide funding opportunities for entities to upgrade their energy infrastructure to ensure that our clean energy transition is done in a cost-effective manner that ensures reliability and reasonable rates for consumers.

This Act would:

• FERC, in coordination with DOE, would provide recommendations on how to improve existing modeling, operational, and long-term planning practices used by grid operators across the energy system and the power market.
• DOE, in coordination with FERC, would develop an Advanced Technology and Grid Services financial assistance program to provide funding to grid operators, utilities, and state energy offices to update energy planning documents and operational energy market platforms.

• DOE, in coordination with FERC, would study the barriers and opportunities for advanced energy technologies that could make the transmission network more efficient at effectively delivering electricity.

• FERC would commission an outside report on whether regulators have the authority and tools to regulate the planning and siting of interregional transmission lines. The study would also report on potential deficiencies in interregional and regional transmission planning, and which transmission upgrades are needed between grid operator regions.
• DOE would prioritize grant funding through the Office of Electricity and establish additional funding opportunities to help integrate new energy technologies in the bulk electric system.

Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to implement an agenda to Transform, Heal, and Renew by Investing in a Vibrant Economy (“THRIVE”).

Whereas families and communities throughout the United States share similar hopes and dreams of a good life that is free from worry about meeting basic needs, with reliable and fulfilling work, a dignified and healthy standard of living, and the ability to enjoy time with loved ones;

Whereas the United States faces the stress of multiple, overlapping crises—old and new—that prevent the achievement of these fundamental human rights and needs, in which the COVID–19 pandemic has killed over 180,000 United States residents; tens of millions of United States workers remain unemployed; rising economic inequality has made working families vulnerable; tens of millions of individuals do not get the health care they need; and intensifying climate change increases the threats to our health, economy, and livelihoods;

Whereas these health, economic, and climate crises have magnified centuries-old injustices, causing high rates of death and hardship among Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities due to long-standing systemic racism—a fact spotlighted by an emerging, multiracial movement to end violence against Black people;

Whereas these crises are causing the inequitable workloads of women—particularly women of color—to grow, especially as women of color overwhelmingly make up the essential workforce, bearing the weight of the increased care needs of children, the elderly, and the sick;

Whereas, even before the COVID–19 crisis, many rural communities and independent family farmers suffered from poverty, declining economic opportunity, and alarming rates of farm bankruptcy, including loss of land from Black farmers and the exploitation of Black, Brown, and Indigenous farmers caused by predatory and racist public, private, and governmental institutions and policies;

Whereas the root of our interlocking economic and environmental crises is society’s historical willingness to treat some communities and workers as disposable;

Whereas it is necessary to counteract systemic injustice and value the dignity of all individuals in order to address unemployment, pandemics, or climate change and ensure the survival of the Nation and the planet;

Whereas the choices made in response to these crises will shape the United States direction for the 21st century and beyond, offering an opportunity to reshape our society to provide a good life for each of us and for our children and grandchildren; and

Whereas the United States has the means to support fulfilling livelihoods for millions of people—Black, Indigenous, Brown, Latinx, Asian/Pacific Islander, White, immigrant, urban and rural, old and young, of many faiths, genders, abilities, and talents—while working to heal harms, protect communities, and invest in a future that fosters justice, not crisis: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that—

1. it is the duty of the Federal Government to respond to the crises of racial injustice, mass unemployment, a pandemic, and climate change with a bold and holistic national mobilization, an Agenda to Transform, Heal, and Renew by Investing in a Vibrant Economy (“THRIVE”) (referred to in this resolving clause as the “Agenda”), to build a society that enables—
   1. greater racial, economic, and gender justice;
   2. dignified work;
   3. healthy communities; and
   4. a stable climate; and
2. such Agenda shall be assessed upon its ability to uphold its foundational pillars, including—
   1. creating millions of good, safe jobs with access to unions by—
      1. investing in projects including—
         1. upgrading our broken infrastructure to expand access to clean and affordable energy, transportation, high-speed broadband, and water, particularly for public systems;
         2. modernizing and retrofitting millions of homes, schools, offices, and industrial buildings to cut pollution and costs;
         3. investing in public health and care work, including by increasing jobs, protections, wages, and benefits for the historically unpaid and undervalued work of caring for children, the elderly, and the sick;
         4. protecting and restoring wetlands, forests, and public lands, and cleaning up pollution in our communities;
         5. creating opportunities for family farmers and rural communities, including by untangling the hyper-consolidated food supply chain, bolstering regenerative agriculture, and investing in local and regional food systems that support farmers, agricultural workers, healthy soil, and climate resilience; and
         6. developing and transforming 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;
      2. prioritizing the mobilization of direct public investments, while excluding false solutions that—
         1. increase inequality;
         2. privatize public lands, water, or nature;
         3. violate human rights;
         4. expedite the destruction of ecosystems; or
         5. decrease union density or membership;
      3. driving investment toward real full employment, where every individual who wishes to work has a viable pathway to a meaningful and dignified job with the right to form a union, including by establishing new public employment programs, as necessary; and
      4. subjecting each job created under this Agenda to high-road labor standards that—
         1. require family-sustaining wages and benefits, including child care support;
         2. ensure safe workplaces;
         3. protect the rights of workers to organize; and
         4. prioritize the hiring of local workers to ensure wages stay within communities to stimulate economic activity;
   2. building the power of workers to fight inequality by—
      1. reversing the corporate erosion of workers’ organizing rights and bargaining power so that millions of new clean energy jobs, as well as millions of existing low-wage jobs across the economy, become the family-supporting union jobs that everyone deserves, including by—
         1. passing the bipartisan Protecting the Right to Organize Act;
         2. repealing the ban on secondary boycotts;
         3. requiring employer neutrality with regard to union organizing;
         4. ensuring that “franchising” and other corporate structures may not be used to hinder collective bargaining on a company-wide, regional, or national basis;
         5. advancing sectoral bargaining in certain economic sectors; and
         6. ensuring that no workers are misclassified as “independent contractors;”
      2. expanding union representation for all workers; and
      3. creating ladders of opportunity, particularly for women and people of color, to access registered apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs in communities of all sizes across the country;
   3. investing in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities to build power and counteract racial and gender injustice by—
      1. directing at least 40 percent of investments to communities that have been excluded, oppressed, and harmed by racist and unjust practices, including—
         1. communities of color;
         2. low-income communities;
         3. deindustrialized communities; and
         4. communities facing environmental injustice;
      2. ensuring that investments in these communities enable—
         1. the creation of good jobs with family-sustaining wages;
         2. economic ownership opportunities that close the racial wealth gap;
         3. pollution reduction;
         4. climate resilience;
         5. small business support;
         6. economic opportunities for independent family farmers and ranchers; and
         7. the expansion of public services;
      3. ensuring that affected communities have the power to democratically plan, implement, and administer these projects;
      4. prioritizing local and equitable hiring and contracting that creates opportunities for—
         1. people of color;
         2. immigrants, regardless of immigration status;
         3. formerly incarcerated individuals;
         4. women;
         5. LGBTQIAP+ individuals;
         6. disabled and chronically ill individuals; and
         7. marginalized communities; and
      5. providing access to quality workforce training, including through registered apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeships to ensure real pathways to good careers, including those that have historically been inaccessible;
   4. strengthening and healing the nation-to-nation relationship with sovereign Native Nations, including by—
      1. making systemic changes in Federal policies to honor the environmental and social trust responsibilities to Native Nations and their Peoples, which are essential to tackling society’s economic, environmental, and health crises;
      2. strengthening Tribal sovereignty and enforcing Indian treaty rights by moving towards greater recognition and support of the inherent self-governance and sovereignty of these nations and their members; and
      3. promulgating specific initiatives that reflect the nuanced relationships between the Native Nations, including—
         1. the confirmation by Congress that Tribal nations can exercise their full and inherent civil regulatory and adjudicatory authority over their own citizens, lands, and resources, and over activities within their Tribal lands;
         2. the codification of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent as it relates to Tribal consultation; and
         3. the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, without qualification;
   5. combating environmental injustice and ensuring healthy lives for all, including by—
      1. curtailing air, water, and land pollution from all sources;
      2. removing health hazards from communities;
      3. replacing lead pipes to ensure clean water is available to all;
      4. remediating the cumulative health and environmental impacts of toxic pollution and climate change;
      5. ensuring that affected communities have equitable access to public health resources that have been systemically denied, which includes—
         1. upgrading unhealthy and overcrowded homes, public schools, and public hospitals;
         2. ensuring access to healthy food, mental health support, and restorative justice; and
         3. investing in universal childcare, care for individuals with disabilities, senior care, and a robust care workforce; and
      6. focusing these initiatives in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities that have endured disproportionately high death rates from COVID–19 due to higher exposure to air pollution and other cumulative health hazards as a result of decades of environmental racism;
   6. averting climate and environmental catastrophe, including by—
      1. contributing to a livable climate and environment for today and for future generations, including by—
         1. staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming;
         2. building climate resilience to keep communities safe; and
         3. ensuring sustainable resource use;
      2. deploying investments and standards in the electricity, transportation, buildings, manufacturing, lands, and agricultural sectors to spur the largest expansion in history of clean, renewable energy, emissions reductions, climate resilience, and sustainable resource use;
      3. transforming the power sector in order to move the country, by not later than 2035, to carbon pollution-free electricity that passes an environmental justice screen to prevent concentrating pollution in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities;
      4. prioritizing materials and parts that meet high labor, environmental, and human rights standards throughout the supply chain;
      5. supporting sustainable, domestic production of healthy, nutritious food that pays independent farmers and ranchers a fair price for their land stewardship; and
      6. ensuring that funding under this Agenda goes to workers and communities affected by the economic and environmental crises, not to corporate fossil fuel polluters;
   7. ensuring fairness for workers and communities affected by economic transitions by—
      1. guaranteeing that workers and communities in industries and regions in economic transition due to COVID–19, climate change, and other economic shocks receive—
         1. stable wages and benefits, including full pension and health care;
         2. early retirement offerings;
         3. crisis and trauma support; and
         4. equitable job placement; and
      2. investing in transitioning areas to support—
         1. economic diversification;
         2. high quality job creation;
         3. community reinvestment;
         4. retooling and conversion;
         5. reclamation and remediation of closed and abandoned facilities and sites;
         6. child and adult care infrastructure; and
         7. funding to shore up budget shortfalls in local and State governments; and
   8. reinvesting in public sector institutions that enable workers and communities to thrive by—
      1. rebuilding vital public services and strengthening social infrastructure in cities and counties, health care systems, schools, the postal service, and other services;
      2. investing in equitable public education opportunities, including career and technical education pathways that prepare youth—especially girls; Black, Brown, and Indigenous students; students with disabilities; students from low-income families; and other students from marginalized groups—for high-quality jobs of the future, and state of the art technology and schools, so that from the beginning students are prepared to transform society and preserve democracy;
      3. investing in the workers who provide care to children, the elderly, and communities burdened by neglect;
      4. creating new public institutions, inspired by and improving upon New Deal-era institutions, to ensure universal access to critical resources and to strategically and coherently mobilize and channel investments, in line with the above priorities, at the scale and pace that these times require; and
      5. coupling this institutional renewal with democratic governance and accountability to correct the systemic misallocation of resources and representation that prevents families and communities from meeting fundamental human needs and pursuing fulfilling lives.