The Green New Deal is going to keep carbon pollution emissions low enough to stave off the worst impacts of climate change that we know are coming. However, scientists tell us that it is already too late to prevent all climate change impacts, as we have already begun to experience. That means that we must prepare for climate impacts like sea level rise, more frequent and severe weather, wildfires, spreading disease, heatwaves, floods, and droughts. We know that children, people with disabilities, the elderly, low-income families, and communities of color are most affected by these impacts and are also the least capable of preparing for, and recovering from, impacts like these. We must ensure that the most vulnerable communities are provided with the resources they need to adequately prepare. This means everything from ensuring emergency preparation and warnings are provided in multiple languages to providing extra resources to vulnerable communities to ensure full and rapid recovery after a disaster.
As president, Bernie will:
Create a Climate Justice Resiliency Fund. The CJRF will ensure our infrastructure and communities are protected from the unavoidable impacts of climate change.
Once the CJRF is established and funded at $40 billion, the EPA, together with a number of other agencies, will conduct a nationwide survey to identify areas with high climate impact vulnerabilities and other socioeconomic factors, public health challenges, and environmental hazards. Each community will then be eligible for funding in order of most vulnerable to least vulnerable.
The interagency council will issue block grants to states, territories, tribes, municipalities, counties, localities, and nonprofit community organizations. The funds will be able to be used for climate resiliency projects, building emergency community centers and shelters with reliable backup power, wetland restoration, abandoned fossil fuel infrastructure and other environmental hazard reclamation; seawalls; community relocation; community evacuation plans and resources for safe and complete evacuation.
Within the CJRF, we will establish an Office of Climate Resiliency for People with Disabilities. The office will be led by people with disabilities to ensure that nationwide, the needs of people with disabilities are consistently addressed during adaptation planning and that those efforts are coordinated throughout the federal government.
Rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure. In order to remain resilient to the climate impacts we know are coming, we must repair our crumbling infrastructure. Our outdated and dangerous national infrastructure is not ready to withstand impacts like floods, hurricanes, or wildfires. Bernie has introduced legislation to rebuild America’s aging drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.
Repair the nation’s water systems. Flint, Michigan, still does not have clean drinking water. Communities all over the country from Denmark, South Carolina, to rural Iowa are faced with similar dangerous contamination, such as lead, diseases, or other toxic pollution like PFAS. Bernie introduced the WATER Act, which would provide up to $34.85 billion for:

1. The Clean Water State Revolving Fund program
2. The Drinking Water State Revolving Fund program
3. A new grant program to address lead in school drinking water improvements
4. A new grant program for residential septic systems
5. Funding for nonpoint source management programs
6. Pollution control programs
7. Household water well systems
8. Technical assistance to rural, small and tribal systems for drinking water systems
9. Technical assistance to rural, small and tribal systems for wastewater systems
10. A report on affordability, discrimination and civil rights violations, public participation in regionalization, and data collection
11. A study on water affordability and discriminatory practices or violations of civil rights and equal access to water and sewer services
12. Technical assistance to rural and small municipalities and tribal governments. The bill would also double the amount of federal funding to Tribes for water infrastructure grants
13. A new grant program to help households install, repair, replace and upgrade septic tanks and drainage fields
14. Requiring states to use no less than half of federal funds to provide additional subsidization to disadvantaged communities and to support the rebuilding of municipal resources where disrepair impacts community health
15. Limiting federal funding to publicly owned, operated and managed drinking water utilities and small private water systems and requiring additional subsidization to disadvantaged communities
16. Allowing state Drinking Water SRF funds to provide grants to private property owners to replace lead service lines
17. Expanding federal funding to decontaminate our drinking water from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)
18. Requiring funds made available to use iron and steel products produced in the United States
19. Requiring prevailing wages for all projects funded by the federal government for water infrastructure and requires recipients to use project labor agreements to the maximum extent practicable

Build resilient, affordable, publicly owned broadband infrastructure. Internet access and communications are key in the wake of a disaster. In order to ensure that communities get the help they need, we will provide $150 billion in infrastructure grants and technical assistance for municipalities and states to build publicly owned and democratically controlled, co-operative, or open access broadband networks. This communications infrastructure will ensure first responders and communities are ready to deal with the worst climate emergencies.
Increase funding for roads. Our national roads and highway system is crumbling. That’s why Bernie’s Rebuild America Act provides $75 billion for the National Highway Trust Fund to improve roads, bridges, and other transportation infrastructure in the United States and another $2 billion for other surface transportation needs.
Repair freight and passenger transportation networks. This plan ensures that our freight transportation is fully renewable by 2030 at latest, but to ensure the safety of those transportation networks, the Rebuild America Act provides $5 billion for TIGER grant projects that build or repair critical pieces of our freight and passenger transportation networks that are located in rural areas.
Build the 7.4 million affordable housing units to close the affordable housing gap across the country and guarantee safe, decent, accessible affordable housing. We will greatly expand the National Housing Trust Fund to build the units necessary to guarantee housing as a right to all Americans.
Repair and modernize public housing including making all public housing accessible, conducting deep energy retrofits of all public housing, and providing access to high-speed broadband. We will also ensure that public housing has quality, shared community spaces to ensure every public housing complex has the capacity to serve as a community resiliency center.
Retrofit our public infrastructure to withstand climate impacts. Beyond repairing our existing crumbling infrastructure, we must ensure that our public highways, bridges and water systems are ready for climate impacts we know are coming. We will invest $636.1 billion in our roads, bridges, and water infrastructure to ensure it is resilient to climate impacts, and another $300 billion to ensure that all new infrastructure built over the next 10 years is also resilient.
Adapt to sea level rise. Forty percent of the US — over 126 million Americans — live on the coast. Because such a high percentage of the American people live on the coast, coastal resiliency deserves special attention. We will provide coastal communities with $162 billion in funding to adapt to sea level rise.
Increase funding for firefighting to deal with more frequent and severe wildfires.
In order to be able to quickly and effectively respond to wildfires, we will expand the wildfire restoration and disaster preparedness workforce. We will increase funding for firefighting by $18 billion for federal firefighters to deal with the increased severity and frequency of wildfires.
Because we have already seen deaths related to the increased severity and intensity of wildfires, we must facilitate community evacuation plans that include people experiencing homelessness, and increase social cohesion for rapid and resilient recovery from climate impacts to avoid the use of martial law and increased policing in disaster response.
Protect community cohesion. After Hurricane Katrina, 24 percent of New Orleans residents — many of them low-income families and people of color — evacuated the city and were never able to return. The same thing is still happening in Puerto Rico today as almost 130,000 people have been forced to leave the island because the federal government has failed to distribute all the disaster aid approved by Congress. Our disaster response should ensure that to the extent possible, families are able to return to their home communities. We will amend the Stafford Act to ensure that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is empowered to address this problem specifically to ensure that recovery and rebuilding efforts make affected communities stronger than they were before the disaster so they are more resilient to the next disaster.
Increase investments in the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. The FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funds projects that help mitigate damage from future disasters. The program saves $4 for every $1 invested up front by decreasing the impact of future disasters. We will invest $2 billion to ensure communities that are rebuilt after disasters strike have necessary resources to build back stronger than before the disaster.

Source: Sanders

The Green New Deal – Bernie Sanders