Strengthening front-line community-labor-environmental coalitions is essential to building a broader, more powerful movement. Effective climate solutions require the integration of environmental justice and economic justice values at the forefront of climate and energy plan development and implementation. Healthy Communities is the intersection of the Environmental Justice and Labor and Economic Justice Programs, in which we support communities in their efforts to achieve racial, environmental, economic, and social justice.
Sustained community engagement and grassroots leadership are essential to creating a clean energy economy that reflects the core interests and values of economic and environmental justice communities. An equitable clean energy economy is one that ensures frontline communities receive the health, environmental and economic benefits of clean energy. This includes climate solutions that protect front-line communities from becoming “sacrifice zones” of carbon trading, provide economic recovery for coal-dependent working families and communities, and substantially reduce carbon pollution. These solutions must also include good union jobs, family-sustaining wages, and increased access and diversity within the clean energy workforce.