President Joe Biden spent Tuesday surveying the wreckage in New York and New Jersey devastated by Hurricane Ida. He called it a warning for America on climate change: "The nation and the world are in peril. And that's not hyperbole. That is a fact."
"Climate change poses an existential threat to our lives, our economy, and the threat is here," he said. "It's not going to get any better. The question is: Can it get worse?"
He also has a solution, or if not a solution, then a way of working toward one: the roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed by the Senate in August coupled with the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill in the works in Congress that includes his Build Back Better plan. In the meantime, however, he sent an "urgent" spending request for $14 billion from Congress in emergency aid for the natural disasters that occurred this year before Ida, as well as $6.4 billion to help resettle Afghan refugees. The administration estimates that it will take an additional $10 billion in relief for Ida alone.