Local Opinion: Extreme heat demands climate action

“It’s a dry heat.” If I had a dime for every time someone said this to me, I’d be rich. I’ve said it plenty of times myself in an effort to downplay the discomfort of triple-digit temperatures to out-of-town visitors.

But there’s no downplaying the dangers of the extreme heat we’re enduring now. Not to our health or our pocketbooks from soaring utility bills, and especially not to our most precious — and scarce — natural resource, water. And there’s no downplaying the root cause of these extreme temperatures: climate change, which scientists agree is playing an “overwhelming” role in this summer’s heat waves. Yet astonishingly, that is what Republicans in Congress are doing right now in seeking to gut key climate programs in the Inflation Reduction Act. This bald-faced effort to line the pockets of oil company executives who brought home record profits while we paid double at the pump last year comes at the expense of our children and grandchildren, who are already paying the price of the climate crisis.

Extreme heat means less water. Already a third of Arizona’s Colorado River allocation, or 900,000 acre-feet a year, is lost from the basin to evaporation. Whether each basin state should bear its fair share of these losses is already a point of contention, and this makes things worse. Extreme heat dries out soils so precipitation fails to recharge rivers and aquifers. It increases demand for water to irrigate crops and cool equipment, homes and offices. It operates as a tax upon our efforts to safeguard and increase our water resources, from conserving and reusing water, importing wastewater, investing in drip irrigation and revisiting our groundwater management rules.

Let’s face it: We can’t truly solve the water crisis without also solving the climate crisis. And we can’t grow without water.

The good news is Congress’s two landmark pieces of legislation — the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act — pack a wallop to climate change, and Arizona stands to benefit from both of them. Our plentiful sunshine, wind resources, trained workforce and growing technology sector make us the ideal location for the job-creating and family-sustaining new clean energy businesses that Congress is incentivizing through these laws. Few are left out, as they benefit urban and rural dwellers alike. In quadrupling the funding for the Rural Energy for America Program, the IRA saves Arizona farmers and rural small business owners money on utility bills by helping them pay for renewable and efficient energy technologies. All Arizona consumers can benefit from IRA incentives for home energy upgrades, discounts on solar panel installation and electric vehicle rebates.

But here’s the bad news: In budget bills now being pushed through Congress, the House Republican majority renewed its efforts to repeal the IRA and boost oil company profits. Sadly, our Congressional District 6 representative, Juan Ciscomani, is using his privileged position on the House Appropriations Committee to help this effort. By voting to repeal IRA climate programs, Ciscomani is once again voting with the far-right of his caucus and against the interests of his constituents.

For instance, Ciscomani voted to cut:

$7.8 billion dedicated to mobilizing private investment in clean energy and targeting underserved communities bearing the brunt of climate change;

$1 billion from for rural electric investments in clean energy, slashing funding for rural electric co-ops that serve over 180,000 people in CD6;

$4.5 billion from the High-Efficiency Electric Home Rebate Program.

These votes make no sense. These programs address the “code red” climate emergency responsible for these extreme and dangerous temperatures while at the same time creating local jobs and bringing down skyrocketing utility bills. We need representatives in Congress who are looking out for us and our children and not oil-industry profits.