Wait, the state senator said. Wait? Wait for what? Wait for Indiana to fall farther behind the climate change curve? Wait for yet more overwhelming scientific evidence and undeniable need?
Wait to seek solutions that would aid farmers, consumers, students, business owners and virtually every other Hoosier?
These persistent questions don’t seem to matter to Sen. Rick Niemeyer, a Republican from Lowell.
Wait, wait, wait, the Senate Environmental Affairs Committee chairman told youth climate activists from the group Confront the Climate Crisis.
Then he adjourned the Monday committee meeting without a vote on Senate Bill 335, essentially killing it.
The young climate activists had worked closely with bill authors Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington; Ron Alting, R-Lafayette; and Jon Ford, R-Terre Haute, to draft a sensible, bipartisan, important and urgently needed proposal.
The bill would have created a task force to study needs triggered by climate change and then by Nov. 1, 2024, forward to the General Assembly and the governor sweeping recommendations for action related to land acquisition for nature preserves, creation of a carbon credit market, funding of energy efficiency measures for schools, expansion of mass transportation and dozens of other concerns.
Sen. Niemeyer merely shook his head. “This is kind of the process sometimes, and there’s senators sitting right up here that took two and three and four years to get a piece of legislation through that they were very passionate about,” Niemeyer ventured, sidestepping any meaningful explanation of his committee’s inaction.
Wait, he said. Wait, wait, wait. The youth of Confront the Climate Crisis had gotten a similar message earlier in the General Assembly session when a kindred proposal in the House didn’t get a committee hearing. And they encountered the same maddening apathy in 2021, when two climate task force bills were buried in committee.
Monday in front of the Senate Environmental Affairs Committee, West Lafayette High School junior Rahul Durai succinctly summarized the threats of climate change.
“In Indiana, climate change is decreasing our crop yields, which harms our agriculture industry; increasing flooding, which endangers our infrastructure and public safety; and dramatically increasing extreme heat, which endangers our public health and worsens the reliability of our electric grid,” he said.
And bill co-author Yoder, a senior lecturer in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, framed the urgent need for action.
“This is a very measured response to that desperation that I know my children feel, that my students feel, and that I know these young leaders feel. We can do this small thing,” she urged the environmental affairs committee.
But Niemeyer didn’t budge. Wait, the state senator said. Wait, wait, wait.
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