Intense heat waves and flooding are battering electricity and water systems, as America’s aging infrastructure sags under the pressure of climate change

  The 1960s and 1970s were a golden age of infrastructure development in the U.S., with the expansion of the interstate system and widespread construction of new water treatment, wastewater, and flood control systems reflecting national priorities in public health and national defense. But infrastructure requires maintenance, and, eventually, it has to be replaced.

  That hasn’t been happening in many parts of the country. Increasingly, extreme heat and storms are putting roads, bridges, water systems, and other infrastructure under stress.

Congress passes $1T infrastructure bill – but how does the government go about spending that much money?

  The U.S. Congress passed an infrastructure bill that funds more than a trillion dollars in nationwide federal spending on Nov. 5.

  The bill puts about US$240 billion toward building or rebuilding roads, bridges, public transit, airports, and railways. More than $150 billion is slated for projects that address climate change, like building electric vehicle charging stations, upgrading energy grids, and production to work better with renewables, and making public transit more environmentally sustainable.

  There’s funding for cybersecurity, clean water, and waste treatment systems, broadband internet connections, and more.

Climate change is an infrastructure problem – map of electric vehicle chargers shows one reason why

  Most of America’s 107,000 gas stations can fill several cars every five or 10 minutes at multiple pumps. Not so for electric vehicle chargers – at least not yet. Today the U.S. has around 43,000 public EV charging stations, with about 106,000 outlets. Each outlet can charge only one vehicle at a time, and even fast-charging outlets take an hour to provide 180-240 miles’ worth of charge; most take much longer.

  The existing network is acceptable for many purposes. But chargers are very unevenly distributed; almost a third of all outlets are in California. This makes EVs problematic for long trips, like the 550 miles of sparsely populated desert highway between Reno and Salt Lake City. “Range anxiety” about longer trips is one reason electric vehicles still make up fewer than 1% of U.S. passenger cars and trucks.

Women-dominated child and home care work is critical infrastructure that has long been devalued

  A fiery debate has erupted over the definition of “infrastructure.”

  Does it mean roads, broadband, and other physical structures included in the traditional meaning of infrastructure? Or should it have a broader definition that includes other important parts of the economy, such as workers who care for children, older adults, and people with disabilities?

  President Joe Biden prefers the latter meaning and wants to use nearly one-fifth of the US$2.25 trillion of spending in his jobs and infrastructure plan to expand and strengthen child care and home-based long-term care.

Don’t ignore serious nonmilitary threats to U.S. national security

  Almost two decades after thousands died in the attacks of 9/11, there remain many active efforts underway to protect America from international terrorism.

  Since 9/11, American domestic and international security policy has been focused on individual terrorists, terrorist groups, and rogue countries as the primary threats. The country’s defensive response has been focused on the military and law enforcement capabilities. That’s natural because the military knows how to shoot, drop, and launch things at threats like that. And those dangers still exist.

  However, as someone who routinely analyzes threats, vulnerabilities, and risks, I see the U.S. again falling prey to a decades-old problem, which the 9/11 Commission termed a “failure of imagination.” That’s when leaders miss important, relevant connections or alternatives to what they’re focused on.

Flint still doesn’t have clean water, and it’s not alone

  April 25th of this year marked the fifth anniversary of when the state-controlled government of Flint, Michigan negligently chose to prioritize short-sighted cost-savings over its residents’ health and access to clean, safe water. The toll of this state-sanctioned poisoning affected more than 9,000 Flint children under the age of six, a portion of whom are set to start kindergarten this year.

  The children of Flint and another 3,000 communities across the U.S. with dangerously elevated lead levels in their blood face an uphill, lifelong road littered with lead-induced developmental challenges, caused and exacerbated by long-neglected infrastructure ill-equipped to meet their needs, and a national public seemingly reluctant (if not apathetic) to do anything meaningful about it. Infrastructure might not be the “hottest” policy issue to pursue, but the consequences of ignoring it are all too clearly costly and deadly.

Improving infrastructure to benefit communities—without harming the environment

  Improving and upgrading U.S. roads, bridges, and transportation networks; energy production and transmission systems; and other elements of human-made infrastructure is long overdue. As the new Congress begins its bipartisan, bicameral effort to pass an infrastructure bill, it’s important that it not come at a cost to the natural resources that benefit society. Instead, policymakers should view the infrastructure package as an opportunity to protect bedrock conservation laws and reinvest in America’s natural resource infrastructure.

  Parks, forests, and public lands are not only an essential part of the American landscape—they are also foundational to its economy and well-being. They clean our water and air, and they buffer against the effects of climate change by sequestering carbon and mitigating natural disasters. For these reasons, any infrastructure proposals must be managed with natural resources’ short- and long-term benefits in mind.

Five ways the Trump shutdown is harming struggling workers, families, and communities

  For an in-depth overview of the individuals, families, and grants affected by the shutdown, see Table 1.

  President Donald Trump recently claimed that he can relate to the strain experienced by federal workers living paycheck-to-paycheck. However, his efforts to prolong the current government shutdown—already the longest in U.S. history—suggest otherwise. In addition to furloughed federal workers, this cruel, manufactured crisis has added immeasurable uncertainty to already stressed low-wage workers and families, disproportionately harming low-income families with children, people with disabilities, and seniors.

  Here are just five of the myriad ways that Trump’s shutdown is irresponsibly harming and holding low-income communities hostage.

The Crushing cost of climate change: Why we must rethink America’s infrastructure investments

  The mega-drought squeezing Californians’ water supply and the state’s $45 billion-per-year agriculture industry is just the latest example of how climate change is threatening to drain state and local government budgets and hurt consumers’ pocketbooks and businesses’ bottom lines. Lasr week, President Barack Obama’s State, Local and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience met in Los Angeles to tackle a big question: How can the federal government help communities upgrade the United States’ infrastructure to withstand more frequent and severe heat waves, storms, floods, and other climate-change-driven events? On Capital Hill, lawmakers were seeking answers to similar questions last week at the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s hearing on "Extreme Weather: the Costs of Not Being Prepared."