Climate and Community Institute Launches Working Class Climate Agenda

New York, NY: As the US faces a cost-of-living crisis and an escalating climate crisis, the need for bold solutions that can take on both in tandem is more urgent than ever. Currently, 60 percent of Americans struggle to afford a ‘minimum’ quality of life. Rising costs across the economy—in housing, energy, transportation, and healthcare—have a complex tangle of causes: supply chain vulnerabilities, corporate concentration, and decades of underinvestment in public infrastructure, and ongoing government failure to act on the accelerating climate crisis.

Today, the Climate and Community Institute (CCI) is launching Stop Greed Build Green, a strategic framework and agenda to confront the affordability crisis and the climate crisis together by putting workers in charge of the economy and the climate transition. It calls for a focus on the “climate-cost nexus,” the point where environmental instability, from extreme weather to resource scarcity to the volatile price of fossil fuels, continues to directly inflate costs for working people.

Stop Greed Build Green connects climate politics to the kitchen-table issues that affect working people, and proposes to grow working class power, a strong public sector, and massive investments to meet a new era of climate and economic urgency. This approach is rooted in CCI’s Green Economic Populism framework, which argues that effective policy interventions should be:

Green: Improve working class lives through tangible climate policy that cuts carbon pollution and increases resilience;
Economic: Grow working class agency by rapidly lowering costs, breaking up the oligarchy, investing in high-quality public goods, and creating good jobs; and
Populist: Build working class power against the elites driving climate and economic crises.

“Workers and communities around the country are staring down a trifecta of intersecting crises: an affordability crisis, a climate crisis, and a public sector capacity crisis—all of which have been deepened by the actions of the Trump administration and congressional allies. Today’s political conditions demand a creative political agenda that reclaims control of the economy from large corporations and the ultrawealthy and puts power back in the hands of working people.”—Dr. Rakeen Mabud, Senior Fellow at CCI.

Nationally, new polling by Data for Progress show that the majority of voters want their elected officials to address the climate and cost of living crises together:

70% of voters think that economic policy can lower costs while directly reducing emissions.

70% of voters say that economic policy can lower costs while directly reducing emissions. 19% of voters say that economic policy cannot lower costs while directly reducing emissions. 10% of voters say they don't know.

55% of voters say they want elected officials to address the climate crisis and rising cost of living through coordinated policies.

55% of voters say that they would prefer elected officials to address the rising cost of living and climate change together through coordinated policies. 35% of voters say that they would prefer elected officials to focus primarily on the cost of living. 6% of voters say that they would prefer elected officials to focus primarily on climate change. 6% of voters say they would prefer none of these or don't know.

“Stop Greed, Build Green” puts forward four key policy criteria for the government to work fast and at scale to address the climate crisis fast and at scale:

Delivering Fast. Working families need to see immediate improvements in their lives. By intervening to quickly lower bills and provide better goods and services, durable support can be built for transformative green investments.
Fighting Greed. The government must rein in bad actors who fuel the climate crisis and make life worse for working people. This means regulating the fossil fuel companies, tech barons, and corporate landlords extracting exorbitant profits.
Building the Public Sector. The economy is organized to extract short-term returns at the expense of working people and our climate. The state needs the mandate, the financing tools, and the planning authority to do what private markets cannot and will not do: improve people’s lives and bring down emissions.
Mobilizing Investment. The federal government allocates funding for destructive wars abroad and ICE terror at home, while starving social goods. By meeting public demand for clean energy, mobility, and industrial systems, lawmakers can create millions of high-wage, unionized jobs, ensuring a transition to an equitable, green economy.

“Climate and economic policy must deliver relief quickly while we build the capacity to transform our economy. That means immediate action on prices paired with bold investments that remake the economy and put us on the path toward a zero-carbon future. Linking the struggles of tenants facing soaring utility bills with the struggles of workers in industries that could be retooled for the clean‑energy transition, ‘Stop Greed Build Green’ creates a pathway to lower costs today and a stronger, more democratic economy tomorrow.” —Dr. Patrick Bigger, Interim Executive Director, CCI