| NEWS | mounting federal debt. “I’ve never found out that you can lower costs by spending more,” the third-term senator told Washington, D.C. newspaper The Hill in March. With total Democratic support, the Build Back Better Act would have passed, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie on a 50-50 party-line vote. Now, two months after the bill died, the coalition is begging the senators to take action. “We’re targeting them, not collabo- rating with them,” said Kayla Gaines, a spokesperson for the Green New Deal Network who flew in from Washington and spoke with New Times on the evening before the demonstration. “Build Back Better wasn’t successful because large corporations definitely put money into these elected officials’ pockets,” said Zamora, the leader of the Green New Deal Network’s Arizona chapter. Sinema, a first-term senator, took $750,000 in donations from pharmaceu- tical companies before voting against a bill that would lower prescription drug costs, despite repeatedly vowing on the 2018 campaign trail to fight for affordable drug prices. Sinema did not respond to interview Elias Weiss Green Old Deal Arizona activists warn time is running out of “ground zero” of the climate crisis. BY ELIAS WEISS late last month were engulfed in a sea of signs reading, “Climate can’t wait.” Protesters united behind the fear that, A 16 without investing in an ambitious climate policy by Memorial Day, much of Arizona might soon be uninhabitable. They’re asking for a second chance at the Build Back Better Act, an omnibus spending bill that died in the U.S. Senate early this year. The grassroots, nationwide push starts here in Arizona. Sick of waiting for federal action after President Joe Biden’s euphuistic social spending plan sputtered out in February, green panthers looked to turn heads in Washington toward Phoenix. “Arizona is ground zero for the climate crisis,” said Hazel Chandler, who heads the Phoenix chapter of Washington, D.C.- based environmental advocacy nonprofit s the drought gripping Arizona reached its driest point in more than a millen- nium, hundreds of people at the Arizona Capitol Lawn Moms Clean Air Force. “If we don’t make drastic changes within the next eight years, there’s real doubt about how livable Arizona is going to be,” Chandler told Phoenix New Times. A broad coalition of more than 20 envi- ronmental groups, labor unions, civil rights organizations, and youth activists packed the lawn in front of the Arizona Capitol for the “Fight for Our Future” event, the day after Earth Day. The group pleaded with U.S. Senators Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema to pass bold climate-focused legislation as Congress prepared to return last week from recess. “We’re running out of time,” Angelica Zamora, political manager of Arizona Green New Deal, told New Times. “We have a small window of time to get this done. Democrats are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.” Zamora represents one piece of the Washington, D.C.-based Green New Deal Network, a progressive nonprofit caucus that helped organize the nationwide Earth Day mobilization in 40 American cities, with Washington, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Chicago at the forefront. Under-30s turned out at the polls in record numbers in 2020. Now they’re a driving force behind climate activism in Phoenix and beyond. She and other activists worry that, after Memorial Day, Washington’s focus will shift to the upcoming primaries and midterm elections when Republicans could regain a majority in Congress. “Arizona is at the epicenter of the climate crisis,” Zamora said, because “there is chatter about Arizona becoming uninhabitable in the next 15 years.” Build Back Better … Again The coalition points the finger at Sinema and Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, for being “too moderate” and responsible for sabotaging the Build Back Better Act. The bill was once labeled by the Biden White House as one of “the most transformative” social spending packages in American history. The two Democrats pulled their support of Biden’s sweeping social safety net expansion and voted along with each of the 50 Senate Republicans. At the time, Sinema called it “a promise I can’t deliver,” citing concerns about infla- tion and its dire toll on the American economy — especially in Phoenix, where rates of inflation are higher than in any other city in the country. Manchin said in December he “cannot vote” for the bill because of inflation and requests from New Times. The 2,500-page Build Back Better bill could have called for more than $10 tril- lion in spending over the next decade. That number was whittled down to just $1.7 trillion over 10 years before lawmakers snuffed the bill, including a major slash to the $555 billion earmarked for climate programs. But activists argue that passing the Build Back Better Act could save more than $14 trillion on climate issues alone. A 2018 analysis from the Washington, D.C.-based American Geophysical Union found the annual gross domestic product losses of climate inaction — the difference between the potential and actual values of all a country’s goods and services — would cost the U.S. nearly $700 billion every year. That’s up from an average of $200 billion every year since 2015. According to an October report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2021 was on pace to be one of the costliest years for extreme weather disasters in American history. Every second, extreme weather and natural disasters create $4,700 in damages in the United States. If the Build Back Better Act were to pass, experts at the rally predicted that number would drop to $1,700 per second. “The cost of inaction is not comparable to the cost of action,” said Chandler, the 76-year-old activist who wrote in a 1968 article that fossil fuels would cause a climate problem in her lifetime. “It’s way cheaper to invest in things that are going to mitigate this crisis than it is to >> p 18 MAY 5TH– MAY 11TH, 2022 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com
