[ad_1]
NRDC and SEIU to lawmakers: We need game-changing investments to address climate change and strengthen our care system—and we need them now.
Maria Angeles Tur, nurse, demonstrates heat-related illnesses
David Obach/Europa Press via Getty Images
This blog was coauthored with Mary Kay Henry from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
The Recent reportThe U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change demonstrates that there is no time to waste when it comes to climate solutions.
As Secretary-General António Guterres said recently about a previous United Nations’ Climate change report, “People and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change.” The findings called increased climate risks “unavoidable” and “potentially irreversible,” especially if swift action isn’t taken. You might think such a dramatic conclusion would be impossible to see, but it has, in the midst of multiple, overlapping global crises.
There’s no ambiguity in the U.N. reports: We must act now. That’s why we need Congress to urgently pass President Joe Biden’s proposed investments in solutions that will make our nation safer, cleaner, healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous.
This is especially true for the nation’s most vulnerable. Frontline workers are essential to the ongoing functioning of our society—and they need home care, childcare, and paid leave in order to care for all of us. Caregivers and the people who depend on their services—young children, seniors, people with disabilities, and others—are also more at risk in the event of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and wildfires, which are devastating communities with alarming regularity because of climate change. As the pandemic showed, frontline workers who are not supported, protected, and safe by their employers, cannot take care of their families or themselves.
To understand how climate change is threatening their lives, Congress should listen to their constituents. Care workers are responding to this threat every day. Maria Alvarez, a Santa Paula, California home care worker, was caring for Alex in 2018 when a wildfire broke out in their area. They couldn’t evacuate because Alex was confined to his bed and Maria wasn’t able to carry him, and the air was so thick with smoke that they couldn’t see a way out anyway.
The Thomas Fire is a blaze that rages on a hillside near Santa Paula in California on December 5, 2017.
Kyle Grillot/Getty Images
When the power failed, Maria took over for the machine that keeps Alex’s breathing regular. Maria manually maintained Alex’s airway open and pumped his lungs by lifting his head and moving his head back and forth. For two whole days and night, she sat at his bedside as fires raged. She was afraid of what would happen if her eyes fell asleep.
Millions of people like Maria and Alex don’t have the luxury of choosing between climate action or a stronger care system, and neither does Congress.
President Biden has committed to reducing greenhouse gasses by 50-52% by 2030. Meanwhile, the White House promised to advance investments that “will increase economic opportunity, advance environmental justice, and improve the health and safety of communities throughout the United States.”
We know that Congress must quickly pass major investments in climate change action to meet these critical goals. We also know that climate change is having an uneven impact on socioeconomic levels. This means that care workers, who are predominantly low-income, immigrant, and women of color, are at greatest risk. To invest in health care is to promote environmental justice as well as racial and immigrant justice.
However, even though it is a practical matter, one cannot assume that people will be able to escape danger economically and physically. By 2050, the number of seniors and persons with disabilities who will be affected by climate injustices and other environmental disasters is expected to increase by two-thirds. We’re already feeling those losses. Last June, 96 people in Pacific Northwest died of hyperthermia from the unprecedented heat wave. According to a local expert, this number is approximately 96. Analyse by Multnomah County, Oregon, “most of those who died were older, lived alone, and had no air conditioning.” That’s why we must invest in not only reducing climate pollution but in making our communities more resilient to the impacts we can no longer avoid.
We also need to invest in our nation’s care workers, like Maria, by creating even more care jobs and ensuring they’re good-paying, union jobs. Union care jobs give workers a voice to demand what they need—living wages, which bolsters families and entire communities, as well as proper training and protection to carry out their duties, even amid the most unpredictable circumstances.
Although these issues are complex, we want to convey to lawmakers that Congress has an opportunity to make historic and game-changing investments to combat climate change and improve our health system. It’s time to pass them without delay.
