Senator Charles Schumer Sunday called on President Joe Biden to declare climate change a national emergency, and use money from the Defense Department to help fight the crisis.

"America knows that we're in a crisis on climate," Schumer said. "A great answer, an effective answer would be for the president, President Biden, to declare climate an emergency. It would allow the president to to tap additional resources; it would allow him to, for instance, give all kinds of loan guarantees for clean energy that would get things moving far more quickly than they are moving now and help us really address this most serious crisis." 

Senator Schumer made the remarks just days after President Biden laid out his administration's climate change initiatives, including banning oil and gas drilling on public lands.

The directives aim to conserve 30 percent of the country’s lands and waters in the next 10 years, double the nation’s offshore wind energy, and move to an all-electric federal vehicle fleet, among other changes. Biden’s sweeping plan is aimed at staving off the worst of global warming caused by burning fossil fuels.

Biden has set a goal of eliminating pollution from fossil fuel in the power sector by 2035 and from the U.S. economy overall by 2050, speeding what is already a market-driven growth of solar and wind energy and lessening the country’s dependence on oil and gas. The aggressive plan is aimed at slowing human-caused global warming that is magnifying extreme weather events such as deadly wildfires in the West and drenching rains and hurricanes in the East.