Summer Lee, local officials say federal cuts could hurt efforts to fight climate change

U.S. Rep. Summer Lee gathered with local leaders and environmental experts Wednesday to condemn President Donald Trump’s defunding of climate and infrastructure programs, even as experts say climate change is worsening the impact of severe weather.

“These storms are being made worse by climate change,” Lee told reporters at Boyce Park in Monroeville. The results, she added, can be “catastrophic for families.”

Trump has sought to significantly scale back federal climate research and roll back dozens of environmental regulations, including rules on climate change. The changes include proposed major financial cuts and layoffs for the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Weather Service, among others.

Lee said western Pennsylvania is already experiencing the effects of climate change: A severe thunderstorm in April damaged buildings, felled trees and power lines, left thousands of residents without power for days afterwards, and killed two Allegheny County residents.

Trump’s plan to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency could leave individual states with a greater financial burden for responding to and preparing for disaster. Meanwhile, local governments already struggle to address the aftermath of extreme storms, said Amanda Settelmaier, executive director of the Turtle Creek Valley Council of Government.

“The problem is that many local governments, particularly our smaller communities, lack the staff capacity and resources to adequately respond in extreme situations, and residents do not always have the resources to prepare for disasters or long-term outages,” she said. As a result, they turn to the state and federal governments for help with disaster preparedness and clean up.

Some of those programs no longer exist. In April, the Trump administration canceled a popular grant program used to fund disaster mitigation projects, like elevating flood-prone buildings and restoring wetlands. Bridgeville, about 20 minutes south of Pittsburgh, lost $5.33 million in federal funding for a flood-control project when the grants were terminated.

Emily Zuetell, a PhD researcher at Carnegie Mellon University who studies extreme weather and climate change, said Trump’s policies “threaten our ability to understand how weather is changing and how to adapt to it.”

EPA officials recently moved to repeal a 2009 declaration that human-caused climate change endangers public health and welfare. The finding has long been used as the basis for federal action to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and fight climate change.

Rollbacks on policies meant to address climate change are “reckless,” Zuetell said, and threaten to worsen the climate crisis.

“We need to invest in our communities and help them adapt to the extreme weather that [they] will continue to experience,” she added. “The cost of inaction will only grow.”

Lee said climate change “hits hardest and first in communities that are most vulnerable.” She plans to launch an environmental justice caucus in Congress that will address that concern, and that will lobby for increased federal support for programs to mitigate climate change

“What’s killing our communities isn’t just the storm: It’s the silence that follows. It’s the budget cuts, it’s the intentional neglect,” Lee said. “Our survival should never depend on who is in office.”

The event was part of a tour organized by the national Climate Action Campaign, part of an effort to call attention to life-threatening extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change and the Trump administration’s cuts to agencies that handle disaster preparedness and response.

Climate change is a polarizing issue, but Lee said people across the political spectrum had reasons to address it.

“If we aren’t investing in this on the front end, we are gonna pay on the back end,” Lee said. “So whether you are a fiscal conservative or you’re an environmentalist, it makes sense [to] invest in this right now.”