Climate and Community Institute

@cplusc.bsky.social

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Climate and Community Institute is a progressive climate and economy think tank. We work with movements and progressive policy makers to pass new policy, improve implementation, shift narratives, and deepen coalitions. 🌱 http://www.climateandcommunity.org

The HRA model combines comprehensive risk mitigation with public disaster insurance provision, while also facilitating collaboration with other state entities to ensure coordinated policy that increases affordability, availability, and resilience of housing and related infrastructure.
Demand and unit costs for different types of transformers have greatly increased since 2019. Demand for generation step-up transformers increased 274% from 2019–2025 while unit costs increased 45%. Demand for power transformers increased 116% from 2019–2025 while unit costs increased 77%. Demand for distribution transformers increased 35–69% from 2019–2025 while unit costs increased 78–95%.
Organizing beyond elections Demonstrating that climate policy can improve people’s lives, CCI says, can help build a broader political coalition willing to defend and expand it. The group says those efforts are already underway. In New York City, Mamdani, a democratic socialist mayor, centered his campaign on affordability while integrating climate policy. “The mayor inspired New Yorkers by putting affordability at the front and center of his administration, and that extends to how we think about climate solutions,” Yeung, Mamdani’s chief climate officer said. “I really want to make sure we are imbuing all our work with that value.”
Past “neoliberal climate policies” such as carbon pricing, said Klein, paid little attention to impacts on household costs. “The Green New Deal was our movement’s attempt to correct those errors, by focusing on big-ticket infrastructure and jobs programs,” she said. “But it was so big picture that it came to seem unfeasible to a lot of people, and it was so far off in the distance that detractors could lie about what it was and wasn’t.” Green economic populism aims to make carbon-cutting proposals more tangible, focusing not on system-wide decarbonization but “climate policy you can touch”, said Aldana Cohen. “We need to show people: ‘Hey, these policies are for you,’” he said.
Americans do not care about the climate crisis, only economic issues: that’s the message some wonks have put forth in the past year, as the Trump administration has dismantled environmental protections. But the shift away from climate is misguided, an influential group of progressives is arguing. “The climate crisis is a core driver of the cost-of-living crisis and instability we see across the economy,” says a new policy platform from left-leaning thinktank Climate and Community Institute (CCI). The proposal, “Stop Greed, Build Green,” outlines a framework for what its authors call “green economic populism”. Decarbonization should be understood not as a competing priority to affordability, but as a potential tool for achieving it, says the group, which has written federal bills for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a representative, and Bernie Sanders, a senator, and was behind a groundbreaking New York public power law.
Much of New York City's housing stock is old and tends to retain heat, meaning that the temperature indoors can be higher than it is outdoors, and many customers struggle to pay for air-conditioning, according to PULP. A recent city report on heat-related deaths said that a growing number of people were dying when the temperature exceeded 82 degrees. PULP and other environmental justice nonprofits had called on the state to prohibit power cutoffs when the temperature reached 85 degrees.
New York Keeps Getting Hotter. Utilities Can Still Cut Off the Power. A new statewide policy detailing when utilities can stop service for unpaid bills during heat waves has resulted in weaker rules for New York City.
Amid the United States’ illegal, costly, and broadly unpopular war in Iran, the Trump administration recently asked Congress to approve a record-breaking $1.5 trillion military budget — the largest military spending proposal in US history. The administration claims that record war spending will pay for a “once-in-a-century revival of American industry,” while hawks in Congress argue that the spending spree will “revitalize” the military industrial base by investing in a “skilled, patriotic defense workforce.” But new research from Transition Security Project suggests that military spending increases are unlikely to translate into broad gains for American workers. While Pentagon budgets have steadily increased over recent decades, the arms industry has become more consolidated, more automated, and less labor-intensive — upending the idea that the warfare state is an effective economic development strategy for working people, and strengthening the case for a state-led shift toward a civilian industrial base focused on green manufacturing.
Screenshot of the Grist story, titled "The Green New Deal has evolved. Now it’s all about ‘affordability.’"
70% of voters think that economic policy can lower costs while directly reducing emissions.
Delivering Fast: Working families need to see immediate improvements in their lives. By intervening on the supply and demand side to quickly lower bills and provide better goods and services, we can build durable majority support for transformative green investments.
Green Economic Populism argues that effective policy interventions should be: Green: Improve working class lives through tangible climate policy that cuts carbon pollution and increases resilience Economic: Grow working class agency by rapidly lowering costs, breaking up the oligarchy, investing in high-quality public goods, and creating good jobs Populist: Build working class power against the elites driving climate and economic crises
70% of voters think that economic policy can lower costs while directly reducing emissions.
Flyer for Healthy School Finance webinar, rescheduled for 11/20, 4:30-6pm Eastern Time. Speakers are Josh McWhirter of the Climate and Community Institute, Pavlyn Jankov of Chicago Teachers Union, Claire Cahen of Occidental College, and Jason Wozniak of Debt Collective. Register for the webinar at bit.ly/HSFwebinar