The Climate Emergency Is a Defining Crisis. Our Response Can Make Massachusetts More Equitable.
I’m writing today to tell you about my approach to addressing the climate crisis. Brookline’s climate policy has been in the news quite a bit recently. Once again, our Town Meeting’s groundbreaking measure to ban fossil fuel infrastructure in new construction and gut renovations was blocked by state law. Though I’m frustrated by this outcome, I’m proud to have been a co-petitioner on the initial policy in 2019, and I’m heartened that Town Meeting voted for fossil fuel bans by overwhelming margins in both 2019 and 2021. Once again, our town proved that when we come together, we can take meaningful action to take on our biggest crises, but once again — just as we have seen with transformative housing and voting access measures — we ran into a brick wall of state legislation that blocks local initiatives from taking effect.
The climate crisis will be one of my top priorities as your Representative, and my lived and professional experiences would make me a unique voice in a legislature. My focus will be on giving cities and towns the tools that they need to respond to this crisis, embedding environmental justice in every aspect of our climate response, and promoting a greener transportation system through investment in public transportation.
Local Action
Brookline’s experience seeking to ban fossil fuel infrastructure in new construction shows the limits of local action without state support. The legislature took a step in the right direction with changes to the Stretch Energy Code and the new specialized stretch energy code for a net zero municipal opt-in, but municipalities still lack the tools to prepare for a fossil-fuel free future. The Green Communities grant program is a powerful tool, and in the legislature, I will work to expand technical assistance and grants to cover fossil fuel bans and to pass enabling legislation at the state level. We need a state government that looks for ways to support local climate action, not one that overturns local action.
Environmental Justice
Too often, our conversations on climate change fail to center the communities that are most directly impacted by it. That’s why I will also fight to expand state grants for local environmental justice work. I approach every aspect of the climate crisis through an environmental justice lens, which means that I prioritize fighting for the equitable distribution of the benefits of our energy transition. Rep. Liz Miranda’s recent amendment to monitor racial and economic equity as we expand our offshore wind industry is an example of this approach in action, and I’m eager to join a growing contingent of legislators who prioritize environmental justice, but too often, environmental justice has been missing from our response to the climate crisis, both in Brookline and statewide.
Environmental justice also means fighting the disproportionate burden of air and water pollution on people of color in Massachusetts, including when those burdens stem from environmental cleanups elsewhere in the state. This is personal for me — growing up in the Bronx, I saw asbestos dumped in Black and Brown communities after it was removed from buildings in white communities in New York. On the Select Board, I successfully secured an environmental justice seat on the town’s Zero Emissions Advisory Board, and I’ll take the same approach at the State House, fighting to embed environmental justice in climate action with environmental justice seats on every climate board. We’ve seen what happens when the state silos environmental justice away from the rest of its climate work; sometimes, the state government doesn’t even appoint the environmental justice board! Every climate board we create going forward should have dedicated voices on environmental justice to make sure that climate progress isn’t built on extraction from the same communities who have been disproportionately harmed by environmental racism.
Green Transportation
Nowhere is the intersection between racial and economic justice and the climate crisis clearer to me than in our transportation system. Transportation accounts for 42% of our carbon emissions, and must be at the core of our climate response. In the face of our climate crisis, the future of our transportation system must be safe, walkable, and bikeable neighborhoods that are well-served by public transit. More of the state should look like our district, where per-person carbon emissions are lower than average because residents live in walkable neighborhoods.
On transportation and on every climate issue, we need a system-wide vision for just transformation. This year, we’ve seen Boston’s fare-free bus lines increase ridership and cut the amount of time buses spend idling at stops — free buses are a major win for climate and for economic justice, and are cost-effective at achieving both goals. But most cities and towns can’t take the same action without state support because most bus lines connect multiple communities — I’ve seen it on the Select Board, where I’m working closely with partners in Cambridge and Boston to make the 66 bus free. Local action in a dense and interconnected region requires state-level coordination, and my local experience on fare-free bus planning is ideal preparation for taking this fight to the state level.
We Need a Comprehensive Vision for Environmental Justice
Nearly everyone in town agrees that we need to act far more urgently to combat the climate crisis. But we won’t get there with a State House that refuses to allow towns like ours to push the status quo, and we won’t get there if we’re not intentional about embedding equity into our climate response. This means investing in local environmental justice projects and making public transportation free, and it means prioritizing the Black and Brown communities that already carry the burden of environmental degradation. I’m ready to fight the culture of inertia on Beacon Hill and actually deliver on local tools for cities and towns to employ in combating the climate crisis, and I’ll be centering environmental justice as I do it.
My next policy conversation on climate change and environmental justice will be held on Wednesday, March 16th at 7pm via Zoom webinar with Sarah Mautner-Mazlen and Deborah Brown. I hope you’ll join us — let’s get to work.
