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WASHINGTON — The $1 trillion infrastructure bill, now sent to President Biden’s desk, includes the largest money the United States has ever spent preparing the country to withstand the devastating effects of climate change.

The $47 billion bill for “climate resilience” aims to help communities prepare for the new era of extreme fires. flood, Storms and droughts are exacerbated by human-induced climate change, scientists say.

Money is the clearest signal from the federal government that the economic damage of a warming planet is already coming. Approved by Congress with bilateral support, the tacit acceptance of this fact by at least some Republicans, Many of the party leaders still question or deny the established science of human-induced climate change.

“This is a big deal and we will increase our resilience for the next storm, drought, wildfires and hurricanes that show a flashing code for America and the world,” Mr. Biden said in a speech in late October.

But there’s a second, much bigger spending bill still in limbo on Capitol Hill. $555 trillion It is aimed to try to mitigate climate change by reducing carbon dioxide pollution. trapping heat and increasing global temperatures.

House Democrat leaders came to the cusp of bringing this bill to the floor for a vote on Friday, but were eventually forced to shelve the plans because they didn’t have enough support in their own legislatures to pass it. They hope to attempt a vote before Thanksgiving.

“There’s a lot of good stuff on the infrastructure bill to help us prepare for climate change, but this package has little impact on emissions and therefore doesn’t curb climate change,” said Rhode Island Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. One of the foremost advocates of climate action in Congress.

“It is important that we can take significant bilateral action recognizing that climate change is real and we need to protect our infrastructure against its effects,” said Mr Whitehouse. “But just doing repair work is not enough. We need to prevent worse scenarios.”

Spending lags far behind levels of government action that scientific reports have concluded are necessary to prevent or prepare for the worst effects of climate change.

While the infrastructure bill will spend $47 billion preparing the country for worsening floods, fires and storms, in 2018 the federal government’s National Climate Assessment He estimates that adapting to climate change may ultimately cost “tens to hundreds of billions of dollars a year.”

Yet experts and lawmakers call the level of spending on “climate resilience” on the infrastructure bill historic, especially after four years when former President Donald J. Trump rejected established climate change science, destroyed environmental regulations, and pulled the United States back. . Paris climate agreement.

“This far exceeds anything we were able to achieve under the Obama administration,” said Alice Hill, who oversaw climate risk planning for the National Security Council when Mr. Obama was president. “We’ve made tremendous progress”

Climate resilience spending on the infrastructure bill is notable for something rarely achieved in congressional debates on climate policy: bipartisan support.

The handful of Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill have been heavily involved in drafting climate resilience provisions, recognizing that global warming is already damaging its components.

Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who helped write climate resilience provisions, will see new money flow into his state once the bill passes. In September, Hurricane Ida killed at least 82 people and left millions without electricity in Louisiana after a storm that scientists say provides a clear picture of the kinds of destruction climate change will continue to wreak.

Mr Cassidy described the bill as “the largest investment in infrastructure and coastal resilience in Louisiana history”.

“For example, there are people living in Lexington Parish who were flooded in 2016 and had everything in their lives ruined,” he said. “Pictures of their children, their wedding dress, the house they live in, the house they’ve never flooded before – it gives me an incredible sense of satisfaction that we’re helping our American brothers avoid it.”

Billions of dollars in federal funding will begin to flow to other communities across the country that have been or are expected to be affected by extreme weather events, which scientists say are becoming more frequent and more devastating due to climate change.

These climate effects are already being felt in every corner of the United States.

had 22 climate disasters costing at least $1 billion each According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it broke the previous record of 16 events that occurred in 2017 and 2011 in the United States in 2020.

This record is on track to be broken again this year. This summer, the hottest Record-breaking wildfires devastated much of California, and a deadly heatwave scorched the Pacific Northwest. Floods that occur every 200 years in New York and New Jersey have killed dozens of people.

“It’s rare that you have the financial resources — any financial resources — for resilience,” said Al Leonard, city planner for Fair Bluff, a small town in eastern North Carolina struggling to recover from repeated flooding. “When there’s some federal or state money available, it’s truly manna from heaven.”

The measure will provide an injection of money for existing programs designed to help address the effects of climate change.

For example, the Army Corps of Engineers will receive an additional $11.6 billion in construction funding for projects such as flood control and river dredging. That’s more than four times what Congress gave the Corps for construction last year.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has its own program to reduce damage from flooding by purchasing or upgrading homes at risk of flooding. This program, along with new funding for similar programs, will more than triple its annual budget to $700 million.

One community that might be particularly eligible for this type of flood prevention fund is Three Forks, Montana, which is located at the confluence of the Jefferson, Gallatin, and Madison Rivers and is at significant risk of flooding, according to new FEMA floodplain maps.

Earlier this year, city staff and the mayor devised a plan to prevent such floods by diverting floodwaters into a dry river channel. Patricia Hernandez, director of Headwaters Economics, an impartial Montana-based research organization that studies the financial impacts of climate change, said the town applied for federal funds but did not receive them.

“Now, with this bill, they’re probably going to get that money,” said Ms. Hernandez. “And their flood risk reduction project will also help the area’s housing affordability and economy.”

The Bureau of Reclamation, which manages water resources in the West, receives $20 million a year from Congress for desalination projects that remove minerals and salts from seawater to create fresh water, and another $65 million for water recycling. Those numbers will skyrocket as legislation passes: The bill includes $250 million for desalination and $1 billion for water recycling and reuse over five years, the process of treating wastewater to make it usable for new uses like irrigation.

Other funding is for new approaches. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will receive $492 million to map and predict inland and coastal flooding, including “next generation water modeling activities.” NOAA would also receive $50 million to predict, model and predict wildfires.

The Department of Agriculture is on track to receive $500 million for what it calls “bushfire defense grants to communities at risk” — money that could help people make changes to their homes or land to make them less vulnerable to fires, for example.

The bill also provides $216 million to the Bureau of Indian Affairs for climate change resilience and adaptation to tribal nations. disproportionately hurt with climate change. More than half of that money, $130 million, goes towards “community relocation,” which removes Native American groups from vulnerable areas.

Also under the plan, the Department of Transportation will send money to states to remove highways from flood-prone areas, and the Environmental Protection Agency will pay for communities to relocate drinking water infrastructure at risk of flooding or other extreme weather.

Climate experts point out that all these expenditures should be seen only as an upfront payment; Without billions of dollars in additional money and aggressive action to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the costs of adapting to the new realities of global warming will only increase in the coming years.

“Fifty billion dollars for resilience is both transformational and utterly inadequate,” said Shalini Vajjhala, executive director of the San Diego Center for Regional Policy and Innovation, a nonprofit associated with the Brookings Institution.

“If you compare the total to some of the largest resilient infrastructure projects planned in the US, that’s very small,” said Ms. Vajjhala. “This is progress, not perfection.”

Emily Cochrane contributing reporting.