“Many climate and health calamities are colliding all at once”, Biden said at the time, adding: “Just as we need a unified national response to Covid-19, we desperately need a unified national response to the climate crisis.”
But nearly a year after the Department of Health and Human Services launched the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, Congress has failed to provide no funding, forcing it to operate without full-time staff at a time of worsening weather disasters across the country, according to interviews with four officials there.
“Right now, it’s an underfunded office,” said Admiral Rachel Levine, the U.S. deputy secretary of health. “What we really need is funding to have a permanent staff.”
In your budget plan released in march, Biden requested $3 million to support eight full-time climate office positions. The government funding package that passed the house last week he would deliver the full $3 million. So would the spending bill that the Senate Appropriations Committee released Thursday.
Yet government spending bills lawmakers released last year also included $3 million for the climate office, until that money was cut from legislation at the last minute as part of a deal brokered behind the scenes. That has fueled apprehension among climate office officials.
“The funding is not final until it is final,” said a Health and Human Services official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authorization to comment publicly.
Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, accused Democrats Thursday of using the spending bills to chase the green new dealthe liberal proposal to eliminate the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions for 10 years while ensuring good-paying jobs for all.
“The Senate Democrats’ bills seek to use the appropriations process to promote radical environmental and climate policies,” Shelby said in a statement. statementciting proposals to subsidize the solar industry and curb emissions of methane, a powerful planet-warming gas, from livestock.
A spokeswoman for Republicans on the panel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Without a full-time staff, the climate office has received staff on loan from other federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. But those employees could be called back to their home agencies if the office doesn’t receive funding in the next few months.
John Balbus, interim director of the climate office, lamented that there is a debate about funding his work in the first place.
“It should be non-controversial to establish an office to make sure our communities and health systems are prepared to deal with the extreme weather threats that climate change makes more prevalent and common,” Balbus said. “The world’s top 200 health journals have made it clear that climate change is the biggest public health threat of this century. This issue needs focused attention now.”
Jonathan Parfrey, executive director of Climate Resolve, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit, noted that $3 million pales in comparison to what some states are spending to address climate impacts. For example, California agreed to spend $100 million over two years establishing “community resiliency hubs,” where people can cool off during a heat wave or access power during blackouts caused by extreme weather events.
“When the state of California is outspending the federal government on its public health protections associated with climate change,” Parfrey said, “it’s a terrible thing.”
However, Levine said comparing the climate office to such efforts at the state level is like “apples and oranges,” as the office is intended to coordinate work across the federal government rather than create resiliency centers and related facilities.
In recent years, the medical community has increasingly recognized climate change as a major threat to public health. The Lancet, one of the leading medical journals, warned last year that global warming will become the “defining narrative of human health,” causing food shortages, deadly disasters and disease outbreaks that would dwarf the death toll of the coronavirus pandemic.
Rising temperatures have led to higher rates of heat illness, causing farm workers to collapse in the fields and the elderly to die in their homes. Smoke from wildfires has infiltrated the lungs and bloodstreams of people hundreds of miles away. Extreme droughts have caused crop failure, leading to severe hunger and food insecurity for the world’s most vulnerable populations.
These effects have fallen hardest on low-income neighborhoods and communities of color, who are disproportionately exposed to dirty aircontaminated water and other environmental threats, according to a growing body of research.
In San Jose, for example, temperatures are 6 or 7 degrees higher in poor neighborhoods that lack trees, making it difficult for residents to cool down during a heat wave. “We know those differences are widening over time and have a real impact on children, seniors and others who might be vulnerable,” said San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, a Democrat.
In Albuquerque, authorities recorded a difference of 17 degrees between the coolest and hottest parts of the city on summer afternoons. Higher temperatures pose the greatest risk to the homeless and those without access to air conditioning, said Kelsey Rader, the city’s sustainability officer.
Biden has made addressing these inequalities a centerpiece of his climate agenda. Under the Justice40 initiative, pledged to “deliver at least 40 percent of the overall benefits of federal climate and clean energy investments to disadvantaged communities.”
In May, as part of that initiative, Health and Human Services announced the formation of a new Office of Environmental Justice. It is housed within the Office for Climate Change and Health Equity, which means it is also underfunded.
“Certainly frontline communities — poor communities, communities of color — always seem to be the hardest hit by pollution and health hazards,” said Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.), who participated in a panel recent round with the climate office. on protecting farmworkers from extreme heat. “So that office needs the resources to speak for those who have historically lacked a voice.”
If awarded funding, the climate office has a variety of programs it would like to launch or expand, officials said. Among them are efforts to reduce carbon emissions from hospitals, fund internships in community health departments, and train community health workers to assess people’s vulnerability to heat or smoke from wildfires.
“I am going to be positive and optimistic that we will get funding for fiscal year 2023,” Levine said. “You know, hope springs forth eternally.”
correction
An earlier version of this article said that the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity was launched more than a year ago. In fact, it was released almost a year ago. Also, an earlier version of this article misspelled Jonathan Parfrey’s name. The article has been corrected.