highlighted infrastructure investments and natural disaster response. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2023] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy visit ncicap.org] >> excellent. i am a counselor with the center for american progress and really excited to moderate this discussion on the climate crisis and our response to it. the past year has really shown that we are in the thick of it. and to sort of ground us on it. i wanted to read a quick paragraph that struck me in a recent "new york times" magazine piece sort of describing the impact of wildfires in the northwest. here's a quick description. the sun turned blood red, or all

but blooded out, disappearing along with the city skyline. the sky turned gray or eerily tangerine and ash floated down like snow. sometimes there were weeks you were told not to open your windows or exercise outside. sometimes there were long stretches you weren't supposed to breathe the outside air at all. so we are in the thick of this crisis. but we are in the thick of a response to it. we mentioned several times today, last year congress passed the largest investment in addressing the climate crisis that any government anywhere in the world had ever taken. applause for that. and it took an unprecedented coalition of labor leaders and environmental justice activists and organizations of political

leadership to actually get that done. and that's why i'm so excited about today's panel is that same coalition that got government at the federal level to finally act at this scale is also going to be on the forefront of not only responding to the crisis but actually meet the challenge. the panel today with me here is the president of the united painters and ally trades, jimy williams. the honorable harold mitchell, the national director of the regenesis institute of south carolina. and jane gilbert, the chief heat officer for miami-dade county. you can tell the conversation is really going to capture one thing that i hope everyone is left with today, which is in order to meet this moment, it really requires all of us. and you're going to hear how

both the challenges and opportunities touch different communities in different ways. jane, we'll start with you to ground us in sort of the experience of wildfires in the northwest, obviously different impacts but still incredibly severe in your part of the country in south florida and miami. jane: great to be here and such great work this organization does. this whole country is experiencing climate impacts but in south florida we've been the tip of the spear for experiencing it for quite some time. we've always had hurricane risks but they're getting more intense and more frequent and we've been responding. so we have some of the -- we have the strongest hurricane wind codes in the country and we have topnotch emergency preparedness and response teams.

we've benefited from bric dollars coming down. the next wave of impact, sea level rise, worsening those storm surge risk. we activated -- i was the chief officer for the city of miami and started working on sea level rise and flood risk issues then. three years ago, a coalition of community based organizations did surveys and focus groups throughout miami-dade county and interestingly sea level rise was not the top concern related to climate change and nor was hurricanes but extreme heat. that's what they were experiencing every day. it was whether some of our 300,000 outdoor workers, or they can no longer afford their electricity bill or their a.c. runs out in july and can't

afford to repair it and it's 105 heat index out there and it gets hotter in their rental apartment or they have to walk and wait at the bus stop too long. i've had emergency doctors who had patients come in who were 911 calls from the bus stop. extreme heat is really something we're feeling here today and we certainly -- this was an unprecedentedly hot summer through much of this country. navin: harold, you've been in this fight from environmental justice, sort of looking at the community in south carolina we're dealing with, more traditional pollutants and air pollution that tends to get worse in the largest communities. speak to sort of the impact of climate crisis worsening in terms of the communities you work with and represent. harold: most of the communities i represent grew up with myself with the legacy impact of

polluting sites. we saw during the pandemic that most of these communities are in and around places where access to health care and we saw during the pandemic those were the folks that tested positive the fastest and died the quickest because they had these particular illnesses that were untreated. so the exacerbating effect of the pandemic and those impacts of those legacy polluting site is one that we're still feeling the effects of in the post covid impacts now. navin: we should maybe keep it 1/3 up and 2/3 optimistic and i'll pivot here, jimmy, the response, i mentioned earlier not only the inflation reduction act and an infrastructure bill

creating huge opportunities to actually respond to the climate crisis and a push to make sure it results in good good paying union jobs. how have these investments impacted your 140,000 members and what is the role you see them playing in sort of meeting this moment? >> it's good to be the positive one, we do live in a world of doom and gloom. but first off, it's a pleasure to be here. any time i get to follow mary kay henry, you have the seal team here of labor leaders. we don't often give ourselves enough credit when we are winning. and to pass the inflation reduction act, we told our membership, this is a constructive bill. our membership will have the opportunity to work for the next 10 years on massive projects that are being funded by the

federal government, and for the first time in my lifetime, the federal government got it right by tying labor standards to the investments. we have an opportunity for real true -- truly changing the way generations can work in this country for the future. and unions are cool again among young people, too, which is a great thing. and you know, we have the opportunity to provide jobs for people that in the past didn't have access to good paying middle class jobs. the crisis of climate adversely affects people of color. and it adversely affects people at the lowest income levels. the labor movement is a solution to income inequality as well. and putting these projects together for the long term are going to be life changing opportunities for folks to go to work in an industry with high

paying jobs, good health care, good wages and a retirement system that works. that is huge for the american working class. and it's about being solutions oriented, not just continuing to raise the issues and continuing to fight rhetorically. there's actually things that are happening that are starting to come online. you see wind projects off the shores of the east coast and there's more to come. you see the amount of investment in new energy solutions, fixing some of our building supply. those are construction jobs and we're excited. navin: president biden said when he thinks of a climate crisis he think of one word, jobs. you're excited the policy is right. but do you remember seeing it that way? are people actually doing the work of building it?

are they seeing the opportunity that exists in addressing a climate crisis or what work has to be done on that front? jimmy: a lot of work. this is a subject among our membership that can be touchy. they're used to working in the energy sector and they have fear of the unknown. having conversations with our workers to prepare them from a transition away from where they currently are working to what the future holds, it means everything to them. when you've worked your whole career on an oil refinery or worked your whole career producing energy from coal plants and things like that, when the conversation is around shutting them down and creating new energy sources, there's natural fear in our membership. so educating the membership on what actually took place this past year with the federal

legislation is one of our key priorities to explain to them investments are tied to labor standards and you will have opportunities to work in a new economy. and it's not easy. these are difficult conversations we have to have with our membership. navin: harold, with the real push that held the coalition together for real labor standards and there is real commitment to investing in communities that have been overserved and underlooked and justice 40 makes sure 40% of those resources are targeted and something you've been deeply involved with. speak to what that opportunity means in the communities you represent and how you're going about making sure people know these opportunities exist. harold: i will say from the onset that the old phrase put your money where your mouth is is something i will say is real now because we saw president biden putting the money to the

commitment other than environmental and climate justice in the agenda. what i've been seeing working with the platform, the equitial and just climate platform is made up of environmental justice leaders and national environmental organizations like cap, including cap which is a major leader there, was instrumental in driving a lot of decisions in the inflation reduction act. some of the things we saw was the lessons learned from the obama administration which is kind of like right now challenging members in statehouses across the country that can't make decisions that won't invest those resources in the right places, we saw number one, being able to allow local governments and communities to get these investments. that's the big thing we're seeing in many places, you talk

about the lead pipe program, being able to replace, especially in the southeast, 100-year-old lead pipes, those are real jobs you can replace the infrastructure and the legacy sites we've seen that local governments didn't have the resources to redress or clean up. with the $66 billion in the inflation reduction act and infrastructure package, that's something now local governments can apply directly with communities to remove these sites and put protective green energy back in play. one of the things we're seeing is when we did a cleanup on one of the sites, the brownfield site and the company came to us and were looking for a brown field site because of the clean reduction act helped us come in the community. it's a win-win in the industrial

level but key positions will take place. navin: let me follow up on that as i did with jimmy, a lot of cynicism exists about the role of government and a lot of the burden communities face paw either it is government funded projects or government turning a blind eye, historically. how are you going about to educate the members of those groups that there's a new approach here where governors are actually engaging in the vitriol long-standing problem? >> looking at it, we created the justice 40 oversight committee which is going out to work with local governments and communities matching the covered programs to the projects within the community. and after for the first time, like i say, with our giving the local governments to apply directly meant all the difference. this is one of those things

connecting the dots of the 470 programs is huge. but which you have resources not like an unfunded mandate. this is the goal but there's no money behind it. there's real resources right now. the thing is being able to show examples. the thing we need to do is there are a lot of projects out there people need to see the successes. if there's a tree in the forest, who falls so you know who is here or there and they need the story to show how investments are working on front line communities. navin: let me come to you, jane, how the infrastructure bill, miami dedicated a tech house on resilience which is another investment in trying to invest. how are you leveraging them to address this challenge and start to turn the ship?

jane: what's been so exciting about this is the biden administration really got how to integrate across all the amendments. we talk about rejillence with all things. they got that from not only labor or environmental justice which is critical but making sure it is the department of transportation, d.o.e., h.u.d. or the commerce department that they're climate forward. so we benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars of investments in our transit system and will have the largest electric fleet in the country. we're reelectrify our port, which is the largest cruise capital certainly in the country, if not the world. year also cleaning our freight in between.

there's investments in -- we have 32,000 affordable housing units coming online. all of them have to be built to high efficient lead silver standards with solar ready, e.v. ready. we're investing in the housing piece. and finally in my world we're doubling down on our green infrastructure projects, namely tree canopy with the highest related illnesses. we have zip codes in miami-dade county with four or five-times heat related illnesses. and the correlating differences are land temperatures and urban heat islands. it's allowed us to take funding we actually started taking for weatherization back with aarpa funds and now with this $10

million we'll accelerate it that much further. these are all local jobs. there's also work force development in each of these. we just got partnered -- this is where the biden administration also got it right, also encouraging if not prioritizing grants where we're partnering with the community. where we're engaging and using it part of the solution. we have a partnership with a nonprofit coercion and americorps grant to build jobs in our urban tree canopy efforts but also in our housing, retrofits and efficiency, energy corps and a green corps. we call it we're moving towards that future ready economy. and with that climate tech hub you mentioned from the u.s. department of commerce that was just announced on monday, it's also driving that private sector

investment and working with the private sector to give it a leg up in the direction we need to go with the community. navin: harold, maybe i'll come to you on a bit more political question, which is historically, when you hinted at this, jimmy, the priorities of the environmental community have been at odds with the labor community and the priorities of the community of environmental groups which have been at odds with environmental priorities. both of you have been real advocates for trying to overcome those barriers. maybe share some thoughts what it's taken to overcome those differences and challenges and maybe where you see the fragility of how this doesn't hold together moving forward. jimmy: i'll go first. it's about progress. as leaders of our organizations, we can't be closed minded to work in a coalition. and i think it will always be messy when you deal with real

life facts. i explained about our membership being fearful of the future. when you're trying to move and grow and go towards something different, it can be messy. i think the coalitions that pushed the inflation reduction act across the finish line is a recipe and, you know, it's a model for us to be able to continue working into the future at the local level. it was nice to come together here federally but there's so much work to do to connect at the local level with where the dollars are being spent and jobs are being created. i think that's the model we have to take into the future, continuing to work together and continuing to challenge one another, continue to think outside of the box because that's what will create progress. jimmy: i will say, too, you've got the money, it's on the table, it's implementation time and the coalition that worked to get us there, to get the

historic resources, now we've got to deploy and it's all hands on deck now for implementation at the lower level. harold: this is where both foundations and everybody's got to get involved at this point because this is where building that capacity at that lower level, this is something that people have never done before. and because of the legislation and the language, it's forcing, you know, local governments to work with communities. it's a trust factor that people have never seen before. and the capacity, especially at the nonprofit level, they don't have the capacity to do what some of the national organizations have been able to do but with the resources connecting the dots and providing these opportunities, i will say there are people coming in to, especially the south, looking for these old legacy sites, the brownfield sites, to do the cleanups and bring new industry in but it's all in

those same impacted front line communities. so who gets the benefit out of this? we did the cleanup on a textile mill, about 700,000. now there's a $88 million development on it and there are opportunities like this in so many places that is unreal. it's kind of that old phrase the sky's the limit but we have to stay vigilant and keep each other honest as we move in this historic time. navin: maybe it's a good follow-up, we had a historic victory, thanks for helping us remember not to lose sight of that. but we all recognize the scale of the challenge and how much more it will take and that winning is contagious, that the more people see these things. from each of your perspectives, what's the most important thing to keep building the public, political support for wanting to do more because we know we need

to do more? harold: we need the tangible examples. if you see some real tangible examples of you're talking about $4 trillion changing and impacting front line communities they have to see it. or it will become a false solution that they don't believe. threw are some best practices people don't know and hadn't heard and hadn't seen and if they only see how these investments are really reversing the impacts in these communities, creating real jobs and changing the faces of the communities, with the communities really driving as major stakeholders in the process. this is what people need to see. help you can create that movement to hopefully, we can't do anything about the votes where folks look to find out if they have a speaker or not but in 2024, i hope people are pissed off enough we can change in that 2024 cycle, especially for this administration and

others to make sure we don't have to keep going through the crap we're seeing now on the hill. navin: anything in your perspective, jane, in building momentum? jane: kid only build on what harold said. we're trying to accelerate as fast as we can to though demonstrable results in terms of jobs, business opportunities, quality of life changes for real and health benefits for families out there. but it's getting the real change happening and telling the story and connecting the dot back to what this inflation reduction act really is doing so that it's not just here, look at these great things going on in our community. well, it's because of this investment that happened at the federal level. navin: i'll give you a few seconds and i started on a gloomy note and it's an

incredibly weighty issue and we're running out of time here. what is something about the last year in terms of our response that's actually giving you a bit of hope? jimmy: i'll jump in there. i have a ton of hope for the future and a ton of hope for nut generations to solve this crisis. we took the first step with so much more to do but i hope that into the future we'll see people make a living in this industry that is going to be life changing. for people in the past that did not have opportunities, and we're seeing it within our organization and seeing growth like we've never seen before. and telling that story is our job the next year. we can't go backwards but have to continue to go forward. navin: anything you want to add in terms of hope? jane: the solution of the climate crisis is really about building future communities we

wanted anyway, an economy that we want anyway. so if we can show that, i think it's a win, win, win for everybody. navin: i'll close, i was reminded in preparing for this panel by a quote by einstein in the midst of every crisis lies a great opportunity and that hopefully this conversation and this issue captures that we are in the midst of an ongoing crisis that is going to continue to rear its head, you know, and communities are facing this every single day. it also presents, i think, an unprecedented opportunity as jimmy and jane hit on it at the end, if there's nothing to sort of uplift the spirit of what we can do when we do solve problems together, there's probably no greater challenge or opportunity in meeting this moment. so thank you all for your leadership in getting us to this moment and for everything you're going to do moving forward. and i really appreciate this