Washington, D.C. — States are on the front lines of climate change, responding to extreme weather events and working to cut dangerous carbon pollution.
In a column released today, the Center for American Progress is calling on Congress to establish new revolving loan funds—what the Center for American Progress has dubbed State Future Funds — to strengthen the resilience of the nation’s infrastructure and to bolster state efforts to curb carbon pollution.
“Allowing climate change to weaken and destroy our nation’s infrastructure unchecked is a de facto unfunded mandate for state and local governments that leaves the American people vulnerable to extreme weather events and footing the bill for the damage,” said Cathleen Kelly, CAP Senior Fellow and co-author of the report. “By implementing funding mechanisms such as revolving loan funds, state and local governments can do the necessary improvements to avert dangerous damages to critical infrastructure now and be in a better position in the long run to avoid hundreds of billions in damage repairs in the future.”
The column calls for utilizing large, one-time revenue sources tied to tax reform to create revolving loan funds that each state can access in order to improve their infrastructure and leverage private investment that will reduce carbon pollution and provide much needed upgrades.
Global climate change is causing more and more instances of severe weather, and those incidents are putting significant stress on outdated and underprepared infrastructure. As a recent Center for American Progress report stated, the costs of repairing and replacing this infrastructure after a severe weather event could reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
Click here to read the column.
For more information, contact Tom Caiazza at [email protected] or 202.481.7141.