Bob Massie on Environment

Green Bank: capitalize on what nature provides us

• Stop sending billions of our dollars out of state to pay for polluting fossil fuel
• Remove regulatory barriers that choke off smart changes in utility regulation, like net metering caps, opening the way for more solar installations
• Provide income tax adjustments and job retraining to ease the transition, and drive the majority of renewables jobs to our gateway cities
• Create an Energy Innovation Roundtable to bring our best ideas quickly to the forefront and implement funding innovations like a Green Bank

Climate injustice is another form of social injustice

A: [Climate] is often seen as a white, middle-class issue, and not directly connected to social-justice questions. That is a mistake. First of all, the people who are being harmed, and will be harmed, by climate change are overwhelmingly poor people and people of color, around the world and in the United States. All of the problems that poor communities are already facing are going to become dramatically worse. And yet, it will be the relatively privileged groups that will go to the legislature and say, bail us out first. So this tension is between people who say, rescue us from climate, and those who are under the severe impact of disenfranchisement and low income, who say, this is a social-justice issue that is just going to get worse, unless we address it now.

Integrate thinking: environment, transportation, & housing

A: One is, you can invest in local neighborhoods and make them more energy efficient, and plant more trees, and make them more resistant to flood damage-- and that also increases their social resilience because you're making safer communities, you're making more beautiful communities. The 21st century must entirely be about integrated thinking, the relationship between all of these pieces--employment, education, job creation, wages, environment, climate change, transportation, housing, all of these pieces, they all fit together--and as long as you keep them in different boxes and pursue policies that are unaware of each other, you are going to lose the thread and start doing things that are even counterproductive.