Climate Justice

The Climate Crisis Demands Transformative Federal Action

The climate crisis represents the defining challenge of our generation. Scientists warn that we have less than a decade to slash greenhouse gas emissions and prevent catastrophic warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius.¹ Yet fossil fuel corporations continue extracting record profits while pushing humanity toward irreversible climate tipping points. This is not merely an environmental issue—it is a matter of justice. Working-class communities and communities of color bear the brunt of climate impacts they did least to cause, while wealthy corporations and individuals who profited from fossil fuels escape accountability.²

Climate justice means centering those most harmed by climate change in our policy responses. It means treating climate action as inseparable from economic justice, racial justice, and workers’ rights. It means rejecting market-based half-measures that allow polluters to continue business as usual while purchasing carbon offsets. We need transformative federal legislation that rapidly transitions our economy away from fossil fuels while guaranteeing good union jobs, protecting vulnerable communities, and ensuring a livable planet for future generations.

The Green New Deal: A Framework for Climate Justice

The Green New Deal, introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey, provides the comprehensive federal framework necessary to address the climate crisis at the scale and speed science demands.³ Unlike incremental approaches that tinker around the edges while fossil fuel extraction continues, the Green New Deal recognizes that climate change requires economic transformation as profound as the New Deal’s response to the Great Depression or the national mobilization for World War II.

The resolution establishes ambitious goals: achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all workers and communities, creating millions of high-wage union jobs, investing in infrastructure and industry, securing clean air and water for all, and promoting justice and equity by addressing historic oppression of frontline and vulnerable communities.³ This framework explicitly connects climate action to economic justice, understanding that climate policy cannot succeed if it leaves workers behind or concentrates costs on those least able to bear them.

Massachusetts representatives including Representative Ayanna Pressley and Senator Ed Markey have championed the Green New Deal, recognizing both the Commonwealth’s vulnerability to climate impacts and its capacity for leadership on climate policy.⁴ Massachusetts has experienced accelerating sea-level rise, intensifying storms, and warming temperatures that threaten coastal communities, agricultural systems, and public health. Federal climate investment would protect Massachusetts communities while creating thousands of jobs in renewable energy, energy efficiency, public transit, and green infrastructure.

Massachusetts Climate Vulnerability and Federal Responsibility

Massachusetts faces existential threats from climate change. The Commonwealth’s extensive coastline puts Boston and numerous other communities at severe risk from sea-level rise and intensifying storms. Climate scientists project that without rapid emissions reductions, large portions of coastal Massachusetts could face regular flooding by mid-century, displacing hundreds of thousands of residents and causing hundreds of billions in property damage.⁵

Beyond coastal flooding, Massachusetts confronts intensifying heat waves that disproportionately impact low-income communities lacking air conditioning, communities of color facing higher pollution burdens, and elderly residents with heat-vulnerable health conditions. The Commonwealth’s agricultural sector faces disruption from changing precipitation patterns, invasive pests, and temperature shifts. Our forests face increased wildfire risk during drought periods and damage from invasive species expanding northward as temperatures warm.

Massachusetts has enacted ambitious state-level climate legislation, including the 2021 Next-Generation Roadmap for Massachusetts Climate Policy establishing binding emissions limits.⁶ However, state action alone proves insufficient. Climate change is a global problem demanding federal coordination and investment. Massachusetts cannot decarbonize its economy while federal policy subsidizes fossil fuels, fails to regulate interstate emissions, and allows other states to undermine national climate goals. We need the Green New Deal’s federal framework to support and amplify Massachusetts’ climate leadership.

Climate Justice and AI Data Centers

The explosive growth of AI data centers threatens to undermine climate progress, illustrating how technological decisions carry profound climate consequences. As detailed in our Regulating AI Data Centers policy, data center electricity consumption is projected to double or triple by 2028, with approximately 60% of increased demand met through fossil fuel generation.⁷ This surge arrives precisely when climate science demands rapid decarbonization.

Goldman Sachs Research estimates that AI data center growth will generate approximately 220 million tons of additional global carbon emissions—the equivalent of driving a gas-powered vehicle 5,000 miles for each ton of CO2.⁷ These emissions directly contradict Massachusetts’ climate commitments and federal decarbonization goals. The International Energy Agency warns that climate pollution from power plants running data centers could more than double by 2035.⁷

Federal climate legislation must address AI’s energy footprint alongside traditional emissions sources. The Clean Cloud Act, introduced by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Senator John Fetterman, establishes emissions performance standards for data centers and cryptocurrency mining facilities, creating economic incentives for clean energy adoption.⁸ This represents crucial climate policy, ensuring that the AI revolution does not become a climate disaster. Climate justice demands that technology corporations bear responsibility for the emissions their infrastructure generates rather than externalizing those costs onto the public through fossil fuel generation and rising electricity bills.

Justice-Centered Climate Policy: Who Pays, Who Benefits

Climate justice requires confronting distributional questions that market-based climate policies systematically ignore. The wealthiest 10% of Americans generate approximately half of all U.S. transportation emissions, while low-income communities contribute minimal emissions yet face the worst climate impacts.² Globally, the richest 1% produce twice the emissions of the poorest 50% of humanity.² Any climate policy that fails to address this inequality perpetuates injustice.

Carbon pricing mechanisms, beloved by economists and moderate politicians, often function as regressive taxes that harm working families while barely affecting wealthy polluters. When gasoline or heating oil prices rise due to carbon taxes, low-income families struggling to afford transportation and heat face genuine hardship, while wealthy individuals barely notice the difference. Meanwhile, carbon offsets allow corporations to claim climate progress while continuing to pollute, purchasing cheap credits rather than actually reducing emissions.

The Green New Deal rejects this approach, instead combining direct public investment with strong regulations and justice-centered program design. Rather than pricing carbon and hoping market forces solve the problem, the Green New Deal would directly fund renewable energy deployment, public transit expansion, building efficiency upgrades, and clean manufacturing. Rather than imposing costs on working families, it would create millions of good union jobs in the clean energy economy. Rather than allowing the market to determine which communities receive investment, it would prioritize frontline and vulnerable communities that have borne disproportionate environmental burdens.

Federal Investment in Clean Energy and Green Jobs

The Green New Deal would mobilize federal investment comparable to the New Deal or World War II mobilization, deploying trillions of dollars to build the clean energy economy. This investment would include:

Renewable Energy Infrastructure: Massive federal funding for wind, solar, and energy storage deployment, transforming the electricity grid to run on 100% clean power. Massachusetts offshore wind potential could generate thousands of megawatts while creating union construction and maintenance jobs.

Public Transit and Rail: Federal investment in high-speed rail, urban transit systems, and electric bus fleets, reducing transportation emissions while improving mobility for communities underserved by current infrastructure. Massachusetts would benefit from expanded commuter rail, electrified bus systems, and high-speed rail connecting Boston to other Northeast cities.

Building Efficiency: Federal programs to weatherize buildings, upgrade heating and cooling systems, and retrofit structures for energy efficiency. This would reduce emissions while lowering energy bills and creating construction jobs across Massachusetts.

Clean Manufacturing: Federal support for American manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and electric vehicles, ensuring that the clean energy transition creates domestic jobs rather than offshoring production to other countries.

Just Transition for Workers: Federal guarantees for fossil fuel workers losing jobs in the energy transition, including wage protection, retraining, pension security, and healthcare coverage. No worker should be abandoned as we transition away from fossil fuels.

These investments would create an estimated 10 million jobs over a decade, with wages, benefits, and labor protections guaranteed through federal contracting standards requiring union labor and prevailing wage payments.⁹ Unlike fossil fuel jobs increasingly automated and consolidated, clean energy jobs would be distributed across communities nationwide, with significant employment in construction, manufacturing, and infrastructure maintenance that cannot be offshored.

Massachusetts Leadership and Federal Partnership

Massachusetts has demonstrated climate leadership through state legislation, renewable energy standards, and investments in offshore wind and energy efficiency. However, the Commonwealth faces structural constraints without federal support. Massachusetts has limited space for utility-scale solar and onshore wind, requiring offshore wind and interstate clean energy transmission that demand federal coordination. The state lacks authority to regulate interstate emissions or compel neighboring states to adopt compatible climate policies. Massachusetts cannot achieve its climate goals alone.

Federal Green New Deal investment would amplify Massachusetts climate leadership. Offshore wind development off the Massachusetts coast could generate thousands of megawatts of clean power while creating jobs in New Bedford and other coastal communities. Federal high-speed rail investment could connect Boston to New York, Providence, and Portland, reducing transportation emissions while improving regional connectivity. Federal building efficiency programs could upgrade Massachusetts’ aging housing stock, reducing heating emissions and energy costs while creating construction jobs.

Massachusetts congressional representatives must champion the Green New Deal, securing federal resources for Commonwealth climate action while building national coalitions for transformative climate legislation. We cannot wait for other states or other countries to act first. Climate science allows no more delay. We must lead.

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