House GQP Members Carve Out Climate Earmarks, But (Strange!) Don't Want To Talk About Them
House Republicans aren't eager to talk about climate change, but they are happy to request earmarks to protect their districts from its impacts. Nearly all of the earmarks in the House's fiscal 2022 Homeland Security spending bill are for guarding against the impacts of the changing climate — with nearly a third of those going to Republican lawmakers.
The maneuvering is the latest example of how Republicans are trying to respond to a climate crisis increasingly hitting their districts without calling for robust federal intervention. Such actions allow them to address local concerns about increasing vulnerabilities without risk of alienating the party's traditional allies in the fossil fuel industry by backing other federal intervention.
The House spending bill, approved by the full committee earlier this week, contains 73 earmarks worth $149.4 million, with the bulk — $127 million — going for Federal Emergency Management Agency pre-disaster mitigation projects and most of the rest for standing up emergency operations centers in local communities. All but one of the 73 projects have a direct or indirect link to extreme weather, rising sea levels, drought conditions, wildfires or other natural disasters that scientific consensus ties to climate change.
Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.), the chair of the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said many of the pre-disaster mitigation earmarks were based on past patterns of national disasters, including hurricanes, as well as forecasts for those emergencies to come, such as a severe wildfire season in the West due to the ongoing drought. Roybal-Allard said the earmarks were not meant specifically to send a message on climate, but she said it is notable that many Republicans are requesting the dollars for pre-disaster mitigation. Republicans "won't attribute any of it to climate change, but if you look at what they're requesting there is a clear indication on their side — call it what you want — that something is happening" with the climate, she said.
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