“WE’RE NOT
INTERESTED
IN TURNING
OIL BARONS
INTO SOLAR
BARONS.
WE’RE HERE
TO MAKE SURE
WORKERS ARE
CENTERED IN
OUR ECONOMY.”
CLIMATE CRISIS
72 / ROLLING STONE / APRIL 2020
A lot of people have an “Oh, shit” moment
with climate change — something that wakes
them up to the scale and severity of the crisis.
What was your moment?
I think it happened in two phases. The first
moment happened at Standing Rock. I was
there with native communities and leaders. It
was their land, secured via treaty with the Unit-
ed States, that we decided to violate because a
fossil-fuel company had essentially purchased
our politics. Just standing there, [seeing] peo-
ple organized against these massive tanks, these
armed guards. [But] it wasn’t the U.S. military
that people were standing up against; it was a
militarized corporation — a fossil-fuel corpora-
tion. That, to me, was the “Oh, shit” moment
in terms of what it’s actually going to take — be-
cause it’s not just about the science, it’s about
the systems that protect all of the power that
goes into defying the science.
But in terms of the cost and the scale, the sec-
ond “Oh, shit” moment happened with Hurri-
cane Maria the following year. I lost my grandfa-
ther in the aftermath of Maria.
I didn’t know that. What happened?
He was in a hospital in the storm, on the West-
ern half of the island. And these are the kinds of
casualties that are not counted. Power went out
across the entire island, and roads and bridges,
infrastructure was so compromised. Medicines
couldn’t be transported. And my grandfather
passed away while he was in the hospital. And
the thing is, I can’t say, “Oh, the hurricane killed
my grandfather.” Right? But we don’t know. Did
he not get medicine in time? There was little to
no power, or communication to my family. This
was also a time when the government was saying
that only 64 people died. We know that the num-
ber is actually in the thousands.
The Green New Deal was a top priority for
you when you came to Congress. There was
an idea that the resolution was worded vague-
ly to bring in the broadest possible coalition.
How confident are you about getting a broad
coalition signed onto specific details?
The Green New Deal [was] worded very deliber-
ately, because what was very important for us is
that we had to put out a comprehensive vision
with underlying principles. No matter what kind
of policy we’re talking about, it had to be bound
by three things. The first is a drawdown of car-
bon emissions on a 10-year timeline. The second
is the creation of jobs — having this be industrial
policy to create millions of jobs and provide an
economic stimulus for working people, not for
Wall Street. And the third was to center front-
line communities, to make sure that this policy
was not just prosperous and scientifically sound
but that it was just.
Bringing that broad coalition into agreement
on those three core principles is extraordinari-
ly important because it cuts down on a lot of our
fights in the future. The traditional divide in cli-
mate fights has been an artificial conflict created
between labor and environmental organizations,
and this resolution rejects that fight outright.
And by adhering to these principles, we have
environmental organizations saying, “Listen, we
have committed to economic prosperity for ev-
eryday people.” And we’ve got labor groups say-
ing, “We have committed to carbon drawdown
and centering the most disparately impacted.”
How did you go about getting the first draft
of the resolution together?
Well, it was an extremely complicated process
because we were committed to drafting legisla-
tion that was truly bottom-up. The extra chal-
lenge was that even among nonprofits, there’s
still something of a hierarchy, right? A lot of D.C.
groups can be heavily white or heavily affluent.
We took a lot of input from groups in D.C., but
we did a lot of work to reach out to experts in
front-line communities. We were able to work
with organizations like the Climate Justice Alli-
ance, which brings together indigenous perspec-
tives, black perspectives, Appalachian perspec-
tives. So a lot of it had to do with making sure we
were partnering the science and the economics
with the realities on the ground.
So much work went into the reso-
lution, then you have this big rollout
and the narrative is hijacked by the
GOP over the fact sheet [released
by your office with language about
“farting cows” and supporting peo-
ple “unwilling to work”]. What was
that like?
Well, on one hand, we did know that
there was going to be a huge backlash.
I was already six-months deep into a
nonstop assault by Murdoch and Fox
News. On the other hand, it was in-
tensely frustrating. I had not seen
the fact sheet that had gone out — it
was an internal document, it had not
been approved. I focus a lot on hav-
ing strong internal systems and dis-
cipline on our team, and that was a
lapse on something that was critical-
ly important. So I’d be lying by saying
it wasn’t intensely frustrating. But all the argu-
ments that they ended up with were arguments
we knew they were going to run with no matter
what. Tired arguments — “Preserving our planet
is going to kill our economy” — because the GOP
is Chicken Little. Their job is to say the world is
ending if we allow any sort of progressive idea
to succeed.
I’m curious what you think it would take
to have a genuine debate with Republicans
about the climate crisis?Well, it takes [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch Mc-
Connell being out of office. It takes a new presi-
dent. It’s going to take a post-Trump world, my
belief. But I do think that because they have put
so many eggs in this Trump basket, even they are
concerned with how deeply leveraged they are
with their commitment to the president.
I was on a flight back from Iowa this weekend,
and I ran into a Republican congressman and he
said, “How’s it going on the ground?” And I told
him, “The energy is really great. There’s a lot of
grassroots organizing going on, there’s a lot of
turnout and a lot of enthusiasm.”
And he said, “Yeah, yeah — Trump is coming
next week. So that’s going to bring a lot of ener-
gy too.” And I thought that comment was so in-
teresting, because that is where all the energy is:
on this one person. The president has the mo-
nopoly on energy, which is why the party has
so much fealty to him. But when it is so pegged
to one individual, that poses a very real prob-
lem for them. So while I can see that there’s very
little that will be done in a McConnell-Trump
world, this legislation was not written for a Mc-
Connell-Trump world. The whole goal was to
write legislation for 2021.
You’ve spoken about how entrenched the
fossil-fuel lobby is, how the Koch brothers
essentially purchased the Republican Party.
How have you seen that manifest
since you’ve been here?
Republicans will pretend that they are
unique individuals committed to cer-
tain values, but ultimately it’s a perfor-
mance because they all vote exactly the
same. Most Republicans vote the same
way [Iowa Rep.] Steve King votes. Steve
King is a white supremacist, and most
Republicans — as much as they try to
distance themselves from him in rhet-
oric and appearance — they all vote the
same way. So the way that I see it man-
ifest is that they’ll call me “young lady”
and they’ll hold the elevator door for
me, but they will still vote in ways that
will gut our communities and families.
That being said, I do think they’re
getting scared. I have seen, in the last
year since we introduced the Green
New Deal, increasing discomfort with
their climate-denial position. At the be-
ginning of last year we were hearing “Climate
change is a hoax, the science is not clear,” et cet-
era. At the beginning of this year — one year later
— we’re hearing “We all care about the climate.
It’s important to draw down carbon emissions.
Let’s focus on a business-based approach.” And
that shift for the Republican Party is pretty mas-
sive. I think it shows how uncomfortable they are
getting because they know this is the issue for
the future, and they know that they’re increas-
ingly losing the future. And ever since the flood-Staff writer TESSA STUART profiled Stacey
Abrams in the March issue.