As wildfires rage, infrastructure bill aims to mitigate their impact
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The Senate passed the $1 trillion infrastructure package Tuesday with bipartisan support. It now goes to the House of Representatives. As it stands, the bill directs billions of dollars to address climate change, including wildfire prevention and resilience.
That’s not surprising, perhaps, given that last year was a record-setting year for fires in the United States. And as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report confirmed Monday, we are headed toward an even hotter future.
Almost every year, it seems, wildfires are setting records; on Sunday, the Dixie fire became the second-largest in California history.
“And the cost of it’s going to just go up over time. We’re talking about billions of dollars of lost property and economic activity,” said Amy Myers Jaffe with the Climate Policy Lab at Tufts University.