NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release: January 27, 2021
Interfaith Power & Light Applauds Biden Administration Climate and Environmental Justice Executive Actions
Washington, DC– Today President Biden took ambitious executive action to address the climate emergency and made strides towards environmental justice. These executive actions will restore science based policy-making; recommit the US to international climate leadership; preserve public lands and oceans; set ambitious domestic pollution reduction goals; and establish a process to root policies that disadvantage low-income communities and communities of color who bear the brunt of pollution impacts. Today’s actions advance elements of the administration’s Build Back Better Plan which is centered on creating economic opportunity and ending racial injustice while rebuilding the economy in a safe and equitable manner.
People of faith and conscience view the climate crisis as one of the defining moral issues of our time. A recent poll commissioned by Interfaith Power & Light found that more than 8 in 10 faith voters see their responsibility to care for God’s creation as a reason to act on the climate crisis.
President Biden, a devout Catholic, stated in his inaugural address that “a cry for survival comes from the planet itself.” Interfaith Power & Light, our congregations, and our supporters hear that cry, and also the cry of the poor, the vulnerable, and communities of color on the front lines of climate impacts.
Low-income communities and communities of color are hit first and worst by climate change and experience disproportionate air and water pollution. Today’s executive actions help to give a voice to those communities in this administration’s climate agenda.
In response, Interfaith Power & Light’s President Rev. Susan Hendershot released this statement:
“As people of faith, we are tasked with building a more just world—one that is in line with our moral values of justice, peace, and love for our neighbors and all of Creation. Today’s executive actions show a commitment to bold solutions to the climate crisis, and to centering environmental justice in those solutions. The U.S. has a moral opportunity to model the kind of leadership that creates economic, racial, and climate justice for the most vulnerable populations in our communities and our common home. We look forward to seeing a continued faithful commitment to environmental justice and caring for our sacred earth.”
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Interfaith Power & Light is a national nonprofit organization with 40 state affiliates and 22,000 congregations in all 50 states. IPL inspires and mobilizes people of faith and conscience to take bold and just action on climate change.
