The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) today announced $1.7 million in research funding for a Climate Change and Transportation Research Center at the University of California, Davis. The new “Center for Emissions Reduction, Resiliency, and Climate Equity in Transportation” is a cooperative agreement that will support the DOT Climate Change Center as well as other DOT climate and research programs. The announcement came, perhaps not coincidentally but certainly fortuitously after a current Manhattan courtroom occupant, aka Donald Trump, who is being tried for fraud, recently asked the oil and gas industries for $1 billion in political contributions so that he can stop all work on decarbonization and climate change.

“Tackling the climate crisis and making our infrastructure more resilient has never been more urgent,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “The funding and the new research center we’re announcing today will help develop the solutions we need to reduce carbon pollution from transportation and improve the resiliency of our infrastructure—and help turn those findings into national policy. ”