Climate Crisis

Climate change is a global emergency. We have no time to waste in taking action to protect Americans’ lives and futures. The last four years have seen record-breaking storms, devastating wildfires, and historic floods. Urban and rural communities alike have suffered tens of billions of dollars in economic losses. Dams have failed catastrophically in Michigan. Farmers’ crops have been drowned in their fields across the Midwest. Coastal communities from Florida to New Jersey are facing an existential crisis as a result of sea level rise and stronger storms. Thousands of Americans have died. And President Trump still callously and willfully denies the science that explains why so many are suffering.

Like so many crises facing the United States, the impacts of climate change are not evenly distributed in our society or our economy. Communities of color, low-income families, and Indigenous communities have long suffered disproportionate and cumulative harm from air pollution, water pollution, and toxic sites. From Flint, Michigan, to the Navajo Nation, to Lowndes County, Alabama, millions of Americans have been denied access to clean, safe drinking water and even the most basic wastewater infrastructure. Pacific Islanders in Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands are losing their traditional way of life as sea level rise submerges their homelands. Although the youngest generations of Americans have contributed the least to this calamity, they stand to lose the most as they suffer from the impacts of runaway carbon pollution for decades to come.

The Democrats have a plan to address climate change and its impacts, emphasizing the urgency of action and the need for equitable solutions. It highlights the disproportionate effects of climate change on marginalized communities and pledges to prioritize environmental justice. The plan includes measures to transition to a clean energy economy, create millions of jobs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, invest in sustainable infrastructure, and protect natural resources. Key points include rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, transitioning to clean energy, supporting workers and communities affected by the transition, and conserving public lands and wildlife habitats.

Democrats will also mobilize a diverse new generation of young workers through a corps and cohort challenged to conserve our public lands; deliver new clean energy, including to low-income communities and communities of color; and address the changing climate, including through pre-apprenticeship opportunities, joint labor-management registered apprenticeships for training, and direct-hire programs that put good-paying and union jobs within reach for more Americans.

Democrats believe that any clean energy infrastructure project financed with federal support, including through the tax code, should come with robust wage and labor requirements. We will build a modern electric grid by investing in interstate transmission projects and advanced, 21st-century grid technologies to power communities with clean electricity, including federal support to build sustainable and resilient energy grids in rural America and in Tribal areas lacking energy infrastructure. We will reduce methane pollution through strong federal standards and targeted support for repairing and replacing aging distribution systems, which will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, including for the same pipefitters, insulators, and other workers who built the systems in the first place and who know best how to protect our communities from methane pollution.

Democrats will lower families’ energy bills by making energy-saving upgrades to up to two million low-income households and affordable and public housing units within five years, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and promoting safe, healthy, and efficient homes. We will ensure investments in affordable housing and public housing support both energy efficiency retrofits and construction of new units, to greatly increase the number of energy-efficient homes available to low-income families. We will address barriers and increase funding for programs that enable energy efficiency improvements for low-income families in urban and rural areas, including through the Weatherization Assistance Program and the Rural Utilities Service, and incentivize landlords to make energy efficiency and clean energy upgrades that will reduce their tenants’ energy costs.

Democrats believe we can build the clean energy infrastructure of the future using American-made materials. We will support measures to build a clean, equitable, and globally competitive manufacturing sector, including national Buy Clean and Buy America standards to incentivize the production of low-carbon building and construction materials, like steel, cement, and timber, here in the United States. We will apply a carbon adjustment fee at the border to products from countries that fail to live up to their commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement because we won’t let polluters undermine American competitiveness.

Democrats oppose the Trump Administration’s reckless and scientifically unsound decision to reverse a proposed ban on chlorpyrifos, a potent neurotoxin proven harmful to children and farmworkers. We will invest to help farmers reduce pesticide and chemical fertilizer use. We will set science-based drinking water standards for emerging contaminants like PFOA and PFAS chemicals and establish aggressive plans for remediating this dangerous pollution. Energy companies should be held responsible for meeting strong standards to protect worker safety, public health, and the environment. Democrats are committed to ensuring tough safeguards in place, including Safe Drinking Water Act provisions, to protect local water supplies. We believe states should not be able to preempt local government decisions about energy production.

America’s national parks and monuments, public lands, and marine protected areas are treasures that should be held in trust for future generations. We will protect these precious places and preserve America’s unspoiled wildernesses for hunting, fishing, hiking, and camping by codifying the roadless rule, and grow America’s outdoor recreation economy, which supports millions of jobs in rural areas. Democrats will immediately reverse the Trump Administration’s harmful rollbacks of protections for national monuments like the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. We support banning new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters, modifying royalties to account for climate costs, and establishing targeted programs to enhance reforestation and develop renewables on federal lands and waters. We will take action to protect wildernesses and waters and require full, rigorous, and transparent scientific and environmental reviews of any proposed mining projects near national treasures.