Illinois passed the nation’s first climate migration law. The effort has languished since.

Filed 1h ago · Via Grist · The Buffoon Desk

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Canon in D Major

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: European Parliament · European Parliament · via Wikimedia Commons

Illinois became the first state to pass a Climate Displacement Act, signed by Governor JB Pritzker last fall, creating a task force to study how climate migration could affect the state's infrastructure and resources through 2050. Over a year later, only one of seventeen seats has been filled, and the first report, due in December, appears likely to be missed.

State Senator Graciela Guzman, who wrote the bill and was appointed to the task force just last week, said she has received no clear timeline from the governor's office despite the December deadline looming. The law contains no penalty for missing its own reporting requirements, and the governor's spokesperson said only that the administration 'will continue working' to move the effort forward.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Passing a law and then forgetting to staff it is a special kind of commitment, the kind where you get the ribbon-cutting photo and skip the part where anyone actually shows up to work. A task force with one appointee out of seventeen is not a task force, it's a waiting room. Illinois wanted credit for planning ahead, and it may get exactly the credit it earned, which is none.

Source: Read the original at Grist → Scored: Canon in D Major · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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