Four states are still recovering from extreme winds and catastrophic flooding caused by Hurricane Ida. Here in New York City, the rapid flood waters trapped many in their homes and resulted in 13 people tragically losing their lives.
Our campaign immediately mobilized into action to provide support and connect our community members to resources they need to recover. Alexandria visited with impacted families over the weekend and our volunteers called and texted 100,000 people to check in on storm victims.
While we’re continuing to provide direct support on the ground to those directly impacted, we must also do everything we can right now to prevent future disasters like this. The damage we’re seeing from Hurricane Ida is just the most recent example of how vulnerable our country’s infrastructure is to extreme weather.
These disasters are going to become more frequent, and we must prepare by immediately transitioning away from fossil fuels and making investments to infrastructure to be more resilient to extreme weather.
Right now we have a historic opportunity to make those necessary investments by passing the budget reconciliation package in Congress. This package would include funding for programs like a Civilian Climate Corps: a jobs program dedicated to reducing carbon emissions, enabling a transition to renewable energy, and helping communities recover from climate disasters. Alexandria has been fighting against attempts from both sides of the aisle to water down our infrastructure spending, because she knows that this is the issue of our lifetime and she is not going to back down.
Year after year, it’s been politically acceptable to raise the defense budget without a question. Our government needs to treat our climate and infrastructure spending with the same degree of urgency.
But the politicians who are holding up that spending — who say it’s too expensive and too unrealistic — are the same ones who have weekly meetings with Exxon lobbyists to influence this debate.
There’s really no way to sugarcoat it: Doing nothing will cost so much more than investing in renewable energy and upgrading our infrastructure — in disaster costs, in healthcare costs, in lives lost.
And we can’t forget: The climate crisis is an inequality crisis that disproportionately affects low-income communities and communities of color. And it will continue to threaten the most vulnerable.
Many deaths in New York during the flooding last week occurred in basement dwellings, many of which are illegal and growing in number due to the unaffordable housing crisis and do not meet safety standards required to keep people safe in incidents like flash floods.
We can’t wait for the next hurricane, wildfire, or winter storm to act. There’s no more time to waste.
Right now we have a crucial moment to pass urgent climate action and strong investments in our infrastructure. If you can, please chip in $3 or anything you can today to help Alexandria continue this fight and pass historic climate action for working families.
Thank you,
Team AOC
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