IPL President Rev. Susan Hendershot and AL IPL Executive Director Rev. Michael Malcom at the 100 Faith Leader for 100% Clean Energy Event Last week (photo: CCAN Action Fund)

By Tiffany Hartung, Field Director

This week IPL and our partners delivered a letter to Congress from more than 3,400 other faith leaders across the United States calling on Congress to support President Biden’s American Jobs Plan.

In the letter, faith leaders wrote “It is the moral responsibility of our nation, and our sacred task as people of faith, to care for our neighbors, our common home, and protect our children’s future. We must work for environmental justice and public health, and address the climate crisis.” 

They emphasized that leaders from many diverse faith traditions are united in their call for a bold economic recovery and an infrastructure package that creates family- and community-sustaining jobs while caring for this sacred earth.

From historic wildfires to record-breaking extreme weather, climate change is devastating our health and destroying our environment. Links between climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic have put low-wealth communities and communities of color at far greater health risks than others. COVID-19 has also exposed long-standing health care disparities, environmental injustices, and economic inequities in the United States. 

The American public is calling for bold action to reduce the carbon pollution that contributes to climate change and to accelerate the transition to pollution-free renewable energy, and so are faith leaders.

The American Jobs Plan would transform American infrastructure, rebuild the economy, create good-paying jobs, jumpstart clean energy development, and fight climate change in the process. It also commits 40% of the benefits of these investments to communities which have historically borne the brunt of pollution and environmental injustices.

But right now, a bipartisan group of Senators is attempting to negotiate a deal on an infrastructure package with the White House. It’s critical that the Senate hears the message that we need a bold and comprehensive infrastructure package and that people of faith and conscience are standing behind the American Jobs Plan.

Help us amplify the multi-faith call on Congress. Make a phone call to your Senators today. You can find a sample script and the phone number to call here.

We need Congress to deliver economic recovery and infrastructure legislation that includes historic levels of investment to safeguard Creation and to address the harms of climate change and pollution caused by fossil fuel extraction and related industries. The legislation must include climate to fulfill our moral obligation to leave a thriving world for our children and future generations.

 

 

By Tiffany Hartung, Field Director

It is the moral responsibility of our nation, and our sacred task as people of faith, to care for our neighbors, our common home, and protect our children’s future. We must work for environmental justice and public health while addressing the climate crisis.

From historic wildfires to record-breaking extreme weather, climate change is devastating our health and destroying our environment. Links between pollution and the pandemic have put low wealth communities and communities of color at far greater health risks than other communities. COVID-19 has also exposed hidden health care disparities, environmental injustices, and economic inequities in the United States. 

These competing crises have ignited an urgent call to action to address climate change and environmental injustice together. We need Congress to pass recovery and infrastructure legislation that includes critical investments in environmental justice communities as we seek to rebuild the economy in a resilient, sustainable, and equitable way.

Congress is putting together economic recovery and infrastructure legislation this spring and summer that gives us a historic opportunity to invest in safeguarding Creation; to address the harms of climate change and pollution caused by fossil fuel extraction and related industries; and to fulfill our moral obligation to leave a thriving world for future generations.

Rebuilding America will take a transformational investment plan that delivers jobs, justice, and clean energy to communities across the country and curbs the carbon pollution that is driving the climate crisis. We need Congress to approve these investments to create new jobs and a just, equitable, and sustainable economy.

If you haven’t already, urge your members of Congress to support a plan that truly tackles climate change.

If you are a faith leader or leader of a religious community, please add your name to this faith leaders’ letter to Congress.

IPL President Rev. Susan Hendershot wrote in a recent op-ed to Sojourners, “In many places, it is not possible to support a family with the jobs that are available. This is a spiritual issue; one that the American Jobs Plan has the opportunity to address by creating new jobs that will renew people’s hope as well as the life of our planet. What we need today is a visionary investment in new, sustainable, and equitable infrastructure that prioritizes clean energy jobs and renewable energy.”

This is an extraordinary, historic opportunity to invest in the future with a safer climate, a fairer, more inclusive economy, and modern clean energy infrastructure that improves our daily lives.

 

 

 

 

Greetings from DC! Locally, the District is gearing up for two annual traditions: cherry blossom season, and Congressional hearings full of new and surprising reasons why the District shouldn’t be a state. 

While it’s true DC doesn’t have any landfills (apparently an important part of the statehood process to some), it does have over 700,000 Americans with no voting rights in Congress. More than half of those 700,000 Americans are Black or Latinx, and the vast majority don’t work in the federal government. So if your friends or family (or elected officials) start questioning the case for DC statehood, share some knowledge! With a new Congress and President, this could just be the year that the seat of our democracy becomes fully democratic.

In other congressional news…

Covid relief

The American Rescue Plan Act, President Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief act, passed Congress and was signed into law. This much-needed funding will support everything from food assistance to jobless benefits to rental assistance and more. Specifically, Interfaith Power & Light was happy to see the inclusion of these priorities that we had been sharing with congressional offices:

• $4.5 billion for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and $500 million for clean water and sewer programs.
• $30 billion for public transit systems across the country.
• $100 million for pollution monitoring and mitigation in environmental justice communities. As the pandemic rages on, we’ve gotten more and more data showing that Covid-19 is deadliest in the communities with the most pollution. The fact that Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC)  have been forced to bear an unfair burden of pollution for decades contributes to the virus’s devastating impact in BIPOC communities.

Infrastructure package

With the filibuster still firmly in place, the best chance we have for climate action is through another budget reconciliation bill. Budget reconciliation, unlike normal bills, can be passed by the Senate with a simple majority vote.

This bill, yet to be introduced, will focus on rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure, and we want to make sure that it includes our priorities. We must ensure that investments in infrastructure are safeguarding Creation, addressing the impacts of climate change on our most vulnerable neighbors, and fulfilling our moral obligation to leave a habitable world for future generations. Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities, as well as low-income communities, have been hit the hardest by the triple health, economic, and environmental crises we face, and the needs of these communities must be at the center of any infrastructure plan.

Click here to see a detailed one-pager on our priorities for an infrastructure bill. Congress is working to introduce legislation by Memorial Day, so now is the perfect time to be meeting with your legislators and sharing these priorities.

For the People Act (H.R. 1 / S. 1)

Next up on the congressional agenda is the For the People Act. This important legislation would protect and expand voting rights, take steps to remove fossil fuel dark money from political campaigns, and limit partisan gerrymandering. It has already passed the House, and now you can join us in sending the message that the Senate should pass it with a simple majority vote.

Valuing all voices, not just the most powerful, is a basic tenet of both our faith traditions and any functioning democracy. Furthermore, racist voter suppression laws have been introduced across the country, with some specifically targeting Black churches ability to turn out their congregants. 

The Senate is considering changing filibuster rules to allow the passage of civil rights legislation with a simple majority vote, and you can join us in sending a message of support for this legislation by clicking here.

RECLAIM Act (H.R. 1733)

This is legislation IPL has worked on for several years, recently reintroduced for the new session. It would authorized $1 billion for clean up work and economic development in communities with abandoned mines. You can see here how much funding your state would be in line for under this bill. It’s a good candidate for being included in an infrastructure bill, with more on that above.

Environmental Justice for All Act (H.R. to come)

This is also legislation IPL has worked on in the past, recently reintroduced by Rep. Donald McEachin (VA). In addition to providing more funding for pollution monitoring and mitigation in environmental justice communities (as was included in the Covid relief package), this bill would ensure that the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act consider the cumulative impact of multiple polluters on a community. 

This would go a long way towards stopping the creation of environmental sacrifice zones—areas where regulators have allowed multiple large polluters to gather in the same community. Although each polluter is individually under legal pollution limits, their collective impact is often far above safe levels. The bill has many more important provisions, and you can learn more about the legislation here.