This year has been a doozy for climate change. February is on pace to break all sorts of records for the warmest ever recorded. Washington DC, for example, has temperatures similar to Honolulu the past few days. And it’s not just a blip: each year that passes has broken records from the previous year for hottest year on record.
Here in California we’re now experiencing what scientists have warned about: extreme drought followed by extreme rain. We just finished a record drought and are now on pace for record rainfall this year.
These extremes are badly stressing our infrastructure, from dams like Oroville to shuttered highway around the state. To discuss the state of infrastructure in an age of climate change, I participated today on a press briefing via Climate Nexus.
I was joined on the panel by:
- Noah Diffenbaugh, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Inst. for the Environment, expert on climate change & impacts in CA.
- Juliet Christian-Smith, Senior Climate Scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, expert on water infrastructure.
We received questions at the end from members of the press, but the discussion could be of interest to anyone. Here is the audio:
The Associated Press reports that it may be one more campaign promise that goes down with the reality of Republican control of Congress:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to tamp down expectations last week, telling reporters he wants to avoid “a $1 trillion stimulus.” And Reince Priebus, who will be Trump’s chief of staff, said in a radio interview that the new administration will focus in its first nine months with other issues like health care and rewriting tax laws. He sidestepped questions about the infrastructure plan.
In a post-election interview with The New York Times, Trump himself seemed to back away, saying infrastructure won’t be a “core” part of the first few years of his administration. But he said there will still be “a very large-scale infrastructure bill.”
He acknowledged that he didn’t realize during the campaign that New Deal-style proposals to put people to work building infrastructure might conflict with his party’s small-government philosophy.
“That’s not a very Republican thing – I didn’t even know that, frankly,” he said.
It shouldn’t be a shock, given Republican resistance to Obama’s infrastructure proposals. But at the same time, I wouldn’t be surprised if Republicans in Congress cave to Trump on this one eventually, particularly if the economy goes south. They’ll need the economic boost heading into the 2018 midterms, and Republican fealty to fiscal conservatism tends to go out the window once a member of their own party is in the White House (see Bush, George W.).
Still, it’s too bad if the program doesn’t happen, as low interest rates and a huge backlog of transportation needs across the country would make this a prime time to spend money on rebuilding and repairing our infrastructure.
Rev. Jesse Jackson backs Trump on one issue at least
Donald Trump has become the Republican nominee in part through divisive and hateful rhetoric. So it’s somewhat ironic that he and Jesse Jackson, the iconic civil rights leaders, agree on at least one important topic: the need for infrastructure investment at home, instead of nation building abroad.
As Rev. Jackson wrote in a recent column on the Flint water crisis:
This country continues to squander billions on failed “nation building” efforts on the other side of the world. We wasted over $2 trillion on the debacle in Iraq that has helped destabilize the greater Middle East. As Flint has revealed, we will face spreading calamities from obsolete water systems, dangerous bridges, crumbling roads, dated and insufficient mass transit. It is time we stop pretending we can police the world and start rebuilding our country here at home.
Compare that with Trump’s argument in the Washington Post about what’s ailing America’s inner cities:
And I just think we have to rebuild our country. If you look at the infrastructure — I just landed at an airport where, not in good shape, not in good shape. If you go to Qatar and if you go to (inaudible) you see airports the likes of which you have never seen before. Dubai, different places in China. You see infrastructure, you see airports, other things, the likes of which you have never seen here.
…
We have a country that is in bad shape, it’s in bad condition. You look at our inner cities, our inner cities are a horrible mess. I watched Baltimore, I have many, many friends in Baltimore, we watched what happened. St. Louis, Ferguson, Oakland, it could have been much worse over the summer. And it will probably be worse this summer. But you look at some of our inner cities. And yet you know I watched as we built schools in Iraq and they’d be blown up. And we’d build another one and it would get blown up. And we would rebuild it three times. And yet we can’t build a school in Brooklyn. We have no money for education, because we can’t build in our own country. And at what point do you say hey, we have to take care of ourselves. So, you know, I know the outer world exists and I’ll be very cognizant of that but at the same time, our country is disintegrating, large sections of it, especially in the inner cities.
And in an earlier interview with the Guardian, Trump expressed support for investing in mass transit.
Now I’m sure Jackson and Trump won’t agree on much else. But on such an important issue, it’s pretty amazing to see this convergence from such polar-opposite leaders.
Earlier this month, the HBO comedian/investigative reporter took on the crisis in crumbling infrastructure, such as dams, roadways, and bridges. It was an unprecedented 21-minute segment, featuring famous actors and plenty of action clips, with lots of implications for our transportation system. You can watch the clip here:
Oliver rightly attributes much of the problem to the fact that the federal gas tax hasn’t been raised since 1993, resulting in essentially a 30% decrease in revenue, given inflation.
But there’s a larger trend at work here that Oliver’s “reporting” reveals: the federal government (or at least most Republicans, who will probably dominate Congress until redistricting in the early 2020s) has no interest in raising the revenue necessary to fully fund our infrastructure. Perhaps there will be some politically viable alternatives, such as mileage-based fee. But to me it looks like the federal government will not be in the infrastructure funding game to much extent for the foreseeable future.
So where does that leave our infrastructure crisis? In short, states and local governments will need to step up. Many already are. In California, half the transportation dollars are now raised locally. And the state is experimenting with a mileage-based fee and other options for increasing revenue.
But this arrangement is not ideal. It will leave some states in good shape and some states (I’m looking at you Alabama) with some ticking infrastructure time bombs on their hands, due to their failure to raise revenue. And it will mean competing priorities for how this money is spent, as some local officials will want shiny new roadways, while state governments like California are trying to invest in projects that actually reduce driving (i.e. maintenance, bike paths, sidewalks, transit, and carpool lanes).
I’m glad Oliver is shining his spotlight on the problem, but it will ultimately take renewed political pressure to change the federal dynamic that he lampoons. Maybe his segment is a good start to launch that movement.
