Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Game Changers. I'm Matt Goldman. As
Speaker 1: the Earth is facing an increasingly consequential climate crisis, thinkers
Speaker 1: around the world are racing defined solutions. Many of them
Speaker 1: have been able to translate their Eureka moments into action
Speaker 1: at a greater pace and scope than we might have thought.
Speaker 1: In this four part miniseries, we've been meeting the visionary
Speaker 1: minds attempting to sculpt the future of sustainable energy and
Speaker 1: save our global resources. In this fourth and final episode,
Speaker 1: A Green New Deal, because today is the day that
Speaker 1: we truly embark on a comprehensive agenda of economic, social,
Speaker 1: and racial justice in the United States of America. That's
Speaker 1: what this agenda is all about, because climate change, climate
Speaker 1: change in our environmental challenges are one of the biggest
Speaker 1: existential threats to our way of life, and in order
Speaker 1: for us to combat that threat, we must be as
Speaker 1: ambitious and innovative in our solution as possible. Since it
Speaker 1: was announced in February, the Green New Deal has sparked
Speaker 1: intense debate, championed by New York Representative Alexandria Occasio Cortez,
Speaker 1: who you just heard. It contains a plethora of ambitious ideas.
Speaker 1: The Green New Deal maps out a plan for the
Speaker 1: US to step away from its dependence on fossil fuels,
Speaker 1: but also to create high paying jobs in the process.
Speaker 1: Many have praised it. Here is Canadian author Naomi klein Well.
Speaker 1: I think it is the first time that we have
Speaker 1: politicians putting a response to the climate crisis on the
Speaker 1: table that is on the scale of the actual crisis.
Speaker 1: But many have vocally opposed it, like Utah Senator Mike Lee.
Speaker 1: Unlike some of my colleagues, I'm not immediately afraid of
Speaker 1: what carbon emissions on address might due to our environment
Speaker 1: in the near term future or our civilization. Rather, after
Speaker 1: reading the Green New Deal, I'm mostly afraid of not
Speaker 1: being able to get through this speech with a straight face.
Speaker 1: There's no doubt the Green New Deal has accomplished one thing,
Speaker 1: generating attention to the global climate crisis. But much of
Speaker 1: the plan that has attracted so much attention and political
Speaker 1: jockeying was actually drafted by a political newcomer. My name
Speaker 1: is Rihanna Gunnright. I'm the director of Climate policy at
Speaker 1: the Roosevelt Institute UH and I helped develop the Green
Speaker 1: New Deal. Rihanna only had three years of political experience
Speaker 1: when she accepted the task of writing the Green New Deal.
Speaker 1: Hailing from Chicago, Illinois, she originally cut her teeth as
Speaker 1: a policy analyst for the Detroit Health Department, and Detroit
Speaker 1: is a hotbed for environment to injustice. When I was
Speaker 1: working there, there was an incinerator in the middle of
Speaker 1: the city right and around that area. Asthma rates were
Speaker 1: like three times the state average. Residents were complaining that
Speaker 1: they couldn't go outside because it smells so bad, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It just became clear that these things had health effects.
Speaker 1: In the aftermath of the Flint water crisis, Health Department
Speaker 1: Commissioner Abduel el Sayed decided to run for governor. Rihanna
Speaker 1: joined his campaign. L say Ed's race was unsuccessful and
Speaker 1: Rihanna moved on applying for law school. But she needed
Speaker 1: something to do for the rest of the year. So
Speaker 1: I emailed Representive Okazy, the Cortes's campaign manager, because she
Speaker 1: had endorsed a duel, and I just reached out to say, hey, uh,
Speaker 1: do you all need any support on policy? Do you
Speaker 1: think you will want support in Congress? You know, just
Speaker 1: doing what I have to do to try to get
Speaker 1: a job, and they email me back consent. So we
Speaker 1: are developing a Green New Deal, which is a World
Speaker 1: War two style mobilization on climate to restructure the US
Speaker 1: economy and reduce emissions, uh and also create I think
Speaker 1: at the time it was zero waste, zero poverty, zero
Speaker 1: racial wealth gap. And so they were like, oh, so
Speaker 1: you can write this whole thing in like four months, right,
Speaker 1: And I was like, no, but maybe if you give
Speaker 1: me to research assistants which can draw uh. And so
Speaker 1: that's what we did. Zero waste, zero poverty, zero racial
Speaker 1: wealth gap. Therein lies the origin of much of the
Speaker 1: praise and ridicule of the Green New Deal. The fourteen
Speaker 1: page document covers a lot of ground and goes beyond
Speaker 1: just counting parts per million. It not only promises to
Speaker 1: get carbon emissions to zero, but to add thousands of
Speaker 1: green new jobs and makes the argument that climate issues
Speaker 1: like fossil fuel emissions are social justice issues. This is
Speaker 1: why Rihanna was the perfect pick to write the text
Speaker 1: for her. Pollution and social issues go hand in hand.
Speaker 1: I've always been interested in working on systems, so I
Speaker 1: care a lot about specific issues, but ultimately what I'm
Speaker 1: interested in is how do you change conditions? Right, Because
Speaker 1: conditions actually shape what happens. Because if you think about it,
Speaker 1: for most people, when we talk about climate change, and
Speaker 1: I feel like this was one of the biggest innovations
Speaker 1: if there was one for a Green New Deal, is
Speaker 1: that most times people were talking about super scientific stuff
Speaker 1: carbon footprints, parts familiar, how much carbon is in the atmosphere. Right.
Speaker 1: But the fact is that most people experience climate change
Speaker 1: is economic effects and health effects. They experienced it as
Speaker 1: Hurricane Katrina, right. They experienced it as the wildfires in Paradise.
Speaker 1: They experienced it as this heat wave where they don't
Speaker 1: have money to afford air conditioning. For Rihanna, it all
Speaker 1: comes down to racial inequality. People of color are more
Speaker 1: likely to live near power plants and other polluting factories,
Speaker 1: and they suffer higher levels of asthma and greater risk
Speaker 1: of early death from air pollution. For Rihanna, this hits
Speaker 1: close to home. So when I was growing up, I
Speaker 1: had asthma, and I had asthma to the point that
Speaker 1: by the time I think I was in like third
Speaker 1: or fourth grade, I was out for like a week.
Speaker 1: Every spring I would get sick. I would have to
Speaker 1: be put on like a breathing machine, one of those nebulizers. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I would be out of out of school. We
Speaker 1: know today that Rihanna's asthma, like many other children should
Speaker 1: grew up with, was most likely linked to the air
Speaker 1: pollution in her neighborhood. This had enormous consequences. Now, my
Speaker 1: mom was a single mother who had her own nonprofit right,
Speaker 1: so every year she had to take off time to
Speaker 1: take care of me. There was always a limit on
Speaker 1: how much time she could take off because she didn't
Speaker 1: have childcare. My mom, in a lot of ways, was
Speaker 1: sort of protected from the worst of our sort of
Speaker 1: economic system. She had a college degree, right, she ran
Speaker 1: her own business. She could control her own time off.
Speaker 1: But the situation for a lot of other kids was
Speaker 1: that their parents worked hourly jobs. Right, So every time
Speaker 1: your child is out of school, not only are you
Speaker 1: hurting their educational outcomes, you have mothers trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what to do about childcare right, how to take
Speaker 1: care of their babies. They're getting docked at work. The
Speaker 1: fate of the Green New Deal is up in the air,
Speaker 1: but Rihanna is busy putting thought into action via the
Speaker 1: Green New Deal Network. A coalition of movements and activists,
Speaker 1: and there's no shortage of issues to tackle. A stark
Speaker 1: example of the domino effect pollution can bring is the
Speaker 1: story of Lucy Valez. I thought, you know, my cough
Speaker 1: was just a cough. All these uh congestion issues in
Speaker 1: colds were just things that normally, you know, most people experience.
Speaker 1: Like Rihanna, Lucy suffered from persistent medical issues that could
Speaker 1: be traced back to pollution. Some of Lucy's health problems
Speaker 1: were likely linked to the Peace Bridge connecting Buffalo to Canada,
Speaker 1: where cars released emissions into the surrounding neighborhoods. In the
Speaker 1: year I getta house and I thought that that house
Speaker 1: was was good, in good condition. And about the year
Speaker 1: two thousand and sixteen, I started to get a lot
Speaker 1: worse and the I was hospitalized with like a long
Speaker 1: and brown kill infection. And when Lucy returned from the hospital,
Speaker 1: so I went into a room which happened up in
Speaker 1: my office at the time, and uh, as I walked in,
Speaker 1: there was this black, fuzzy mold. That's when a member
Speaker 1: of the organization People United for Sustainable Housing or PUSH,
Speaker 1: knocked on Lucy's door one day by complete chance pushes
Speaker 1: associated with the Green New Deal network, and they were
Speaker 1: able to help Lucy fix her house. This is pushes
Speaker 1: John Washington. It took a while to figure out how
Speaker 1: to find different funding sources to add up to the
Speaker 1: amount of money it was required to fix Lucy's home
Speaker 1: because it was in pretty bad shape. The clost to
Speaker 1: my house was dollars, which is really unheard of because
Speaker 1: that is more than most grants out there. They had
Speaker 1: to look for a second grant to cover the things
Speaker 1: that I needed. So Lucy got her home fixed. She
Speaker 1: got the resources to get her home fixed. But a
Speaker 1: few months later, if she gets a she gets a
Speaker 1: thing from Key Banks saying that they're redoing her mortgage.
Speaker 1: Right because the value of her home has gone up,
Speaker 1: they're redoing her mortgage, and now her mortgage payment was doubled.
Speaker 1: I didn't have the money. I couldn't find the money
Speaker 1: to pay for you know that kind of that kind
Speaker 1: of jump. And ultimately we were not able to win
Speaker 1: that fight. And so she used part of her burial
Speaker 1: fund to pay her taxes so she could keep her house.
Speaker 1: That's exactly the type of systematic domino effect the Green
Speaker 1: New Deal is trying to prevent summer calling Joe Biden's
Speaker 1: one point seven trillion dollar Green Initiative plan his spin
Speaker 1: on the Green New Deal. But Rihanna still knows she
Speaker 1: has a long, hard fight ahead of her to achieve
Speaker 1: her goal, because ultimately changing an entire system means getting
Speaker 1: citizens to realize their own power over that system. You
Speaker 1: ran into a lot of people who would talk about
Speaker 1: how they felt powerless, and so I think that's just
Speaker 1: like really important to remember. We all have the ability
Speaker 1: to emotionally affect another person to make them feel connected, right,
Speaker 1: and that is powerful. There is always an element of
Speaker 1: power that you have that no one can take away.
Speaker 1: This episode of Game Changers was produced by Magnus Henrykson
Speaker 1: and presented by Yours Truly Matt Goldman. It was based
Speaker 1: on reporting by Michael Bihaf. For a visual experience of
Speaker 1: Game Changers, check out our videos at Bloomberg dot com
Speaker 1: slash Green. Francesca Levi is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.