Climate Urgency

November, 2024

Lincoln — On the eve of our national elections, one issue outweighs all others. Margaret Renkl describes it well in her guest essay today in the New York Times.  Her analysis is nothing short of alarming.  

Despite the urgency needed to deal with the climate crisis, our nation's efforts are lagging badly, as described in two other reports, excerpted here below, describing the lack of progress in administering the climate provisions of both the Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act:

President Joe Biden approved the largest-ever investment to protect the nation against hurricanes, droughts, wildfires and other disasters being intensified by climate change.

Nearly three years later, the majority of that $33.6 billion remains unspent, POLITICO found in an analysis of federal data — a lag that imperils Biden’s hopes of building the nation’s resilience to the maladies of a warming world.

The money, provided by the president’s bipartisan 2021 infrastructure law, is meant for projects to harden the electrical grid, prevent wildfires, flood-proof communities and stabilize dwindling water supplies, among other efforts. The needs for this kind of spending are likely to be bottomless given the galloping pace of climate change, as seen by the devastation that Hurricanes Helene and Milton inflicted in just the past month.

But the progress of launching this work has been slow: Through the end of September, 80 federal programs that received $24.4 billion of the climate resilience money had awarded just $10.3 billion of it, according to POLITICO’s review of spending data provided by agencies.  

Tens of Billions Yet to be Awarded

From the Inflation Reduction Act, $61 billion in climate funding has been awarded for more than 6,100 projects (excluding loans, direct government spending, and tax credits) through September 5, 2024. We estimate that the IRA has just over $33 billion (or 35 percent) in remaining funding.... 

With our property in Nebraska, we have been trying our best as private individuals to participate in these efforts, with the expert assistance and cooperation of the Lower Platte South Natural Resources District.  See photo below.  We estimate that the carbon sequestration from this 71 acre conservation easement amounts to at least 100 metric tons of CO2e annually.  Unfortunately, this seems to be a rare project.  We are trying to encourage others, including state and local governments eligible for these funds, to do their part with their own appropriate properties.