Sen. Markey: No Climate, No Deal
President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda is a once-in-a-generation investment in our nation’s future that will strengthen our systems of care, rebuild our working class, and create millions of good union jobs to deploy clean energy and combat climate disaster. We cannot reduce the size of our investment nor roll back the impact of our goals. This package must match the scope and scale of the crises we face.
We will not compromise away the future of our young people and the planet they will inherit. We must keep climate action central to the budget reconciliation package. I was proud to stand with young changemakers last week before the steps of the U.S. Capitol to make it clear to those who want to weaken the President’s agenda: No climate, no deal.
New polling from Data for Progress finds that equitable climate investments — the kind that deliver economic and environmental benefits to frontline communities — are overwhelmingly popular among voters. The support grows even stronger among younger voters under the age of forty five: four in five think these kinds of clean energy investments are important, especially in low-income communities, communities of color, and other communities that have borne the worst impacts of our climate crisis.
Voters also support establishing a Civilian Climate Corps included in the Build Back Better plan — a new transformational national service program that would create hundreds of thousands of jobs and help communities across the nation respond to climate change and transition to a clean energy economy. These projects would be led by a diverse group of Civilian Climate Corps workers that will be paid a fair wage, have access to full health care benefits, and receive educational and vocational training opportunities.
Voters — and younger voters in particular — are calling on their leaders to support popular provisions of the Build Back Better plan. The time is now for Congress to deliver on climate action with equity and justice at the center. We must prove to the American people, and to the rest of the world, that we are serious about climate action.
This is the promise we make to the young people demanding such action and to our nation’s workers whom we cannot and must not leave behind. No climate, no deal.
Ed Markey (@EdMarkey) is a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and a co-author of the Green New Deal.