Inslee’s “Community Climate Justice” plan puts environmental justice at the center of America’s climate and economic policy for the first time, with bold investments supporting community-driven efforts to confront climate inequality and a comprehensive strategy to lift up communities most impacted by climate change and pollution. Inslee’s plan was built on the input and ideas from the many communities he has visited throughout this campaign. This plan includes 3 key strategies:
I. Putting Justice at the Center of America’s Climate Mission – Building a just and inclusive clean energy economy with federal action to respond to America’s legacy of environmental racism, economic injustice and structural inequality by:
- Implementing an ‘Equity Screen’ on all major federal climate, energy, and environmental spending and policy-making, using a new federal ‘Equity Impact Mapping’ initiative to track pollution hotspots, economic inequality, and climate change impacts. These policies will scale successful state programs from California, New York and Washington state.
- Transforming the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) into a new Council on Environmental Justice (CEJ) to ensure front-line voices have a seat at the table to inform federal policy, and to put justice and equity at the center of a national climate mobilization.
- Holding corporate polluters accountable by establishing a new Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ) within the U.S. Department of Justice. OEJ will direct federal law enforcement in a new mission against environmental destruction and discrimination that has harmed health and cost lives.
- Ensuring pollution-free communities through a major new Clean Water for All initiative, following Washington state’s lead with nationwide bans on PFAS chemicals, and aggressive agenda for clean air attainment, Superfund cleanup, and community safety.
II. Building Wealth from the Bottom-Up in Front-Line Communities – Prioritizing climate funding into the communities hit first and worst by climate change, pollution, and disinvestment; levelling the playing field for home-ownership and affordable housing; and ensuring greater economic opportunity for all. Including:
- Guaranteeing 40% or more of federal investments building a clean energy economy will go to front-line communities facing greater burdens of pollution, income inequality and climate impacts. This will result in at least $1.2 trillion in federal investment over the next decade into these communities, under Inslee’s Evergreen Economy Plan.
- Launching major new investments in efficient buildings, sustainable infrastructure, and clean energy assets in ways that build energy democracy and local wealth creation, support small businesses, and ensure community voices lead in solutions.
- Confronting America’s housing crisis by expanding the Housing Trust Fund and supporting structural solutions for home ownership, affordable rental housing, and investment without displacement.
- Expanding federal tools for investment in marginalized communities and broadening access to capital investment and markets for women- and minority-owned small businesses.
III. Supporting Working Families & Empowering Local Leadership for a Just Transition – Protecting workers and communities on the front lines of the energy transition, and empowering local leadership to accelerate the arrival of America’s clean energy future. This includes:
- Eliminating energy insecurity by creating a Universal Clean Energy Service Fund to reduce working families’ monthly energy costs.
- Passing a “GI Bill for Energy Workers” to ensure that workers their families have financial, health and retirement security in a just transition to the new energy future.
- Empowering local voices and community leadership, and Tribal sovereignty and treaty rights, in accelerating pollution reductions and protecting people, land, and clean air and water.
Governor Inslee’s plan is built off the principle that environmental justice must be central to America’s efforts to confront climate change and build a just and inclusive clean energy future. And that local voices and community leadership are integral in this national mobilization. This month, the first-ever Equitable & Just National Climate Platform was issued by dozens of national organizations, stating that “all people and all communities have the right to breathe clean air, live free of dangerous levels of toxic pollution, have access to healthy food, and share the benefits of a prosperous and vibrant clean economy.” The Community Climate Justice plan is built on concrete policies aimed to help achieve these goals.
Gov. Inslee’s Community Climate Justice plan is the fifth part of his Climate Mission agenda, a comprehensive plan to defeat climate change and to build an inclusive clean energy economy. This agenda will create 8 million good-paying and union jobs, and transition the U.S. to a 100% clean energy economy - cutting U.S. climate pollution by 50% by 2030, achieving net-zero emissions by 2045, and using American leadership to compel ambitious global action to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, following the latest recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The previously-released plans are:
- “100% Clean Energy for America Plan” to set strong standards that rapidly shift the economy to clean energy, with specific 100% clean targets for electricity, buildings, and transportation, while ending coal power by 2030;
- “Evergreen Economy Plan” that outlines a transformative agenda to leverage $9 trillion to build the clean energy economy, spur innovation and grow 8 million good-paying union jobs;
- “Global Climate Mobilization Plan” which uses ambitious American leadership to catalyze transformative climate action around the globe; and
- “Freedom from Fossil Fuels Plan” to end fossil fuel subsidies and giveaways, hold corporate polluters accountable, and close the door on America’s fossil fuel era.
In the coming weeks, Inslee will continue to outline additional components of his Climate Mission – the most ambitious and detailed climate action agenda ever put forward by an American presidential candidate. This will include a focus on supporting thriving and sustainable American agriculture and rural communities, improving resilience and recovery in the face of climate disasters, and more.