Beto O'Rourke's $1.5 Trillion Climate Plan Is Serious on Environmental Justice

When former Congressman Beto O’Rourke recently traveled to the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, he participated in a roundtable of people whose lives had been upended by Hurricane Katrina and who were still recovering from the flooding havoc. What he said he heard consistently from them was that the federal government had wasted billions of dollars in the recovery phase on failed projects that could have been avoided had more people directly impacted by Katrina been consulted. Most of those people, especially those living in the Ninth Ward, had been displaced to places as far away as O’Rourke’s home state of Texas.

“Still today in 2019, we have problems because that money was not thoughtfully, was not intelligently spent using the experience and the perspective of the people who actually live in this community,” O’Rourke said one of the participants told him.

He took this as a mistake that he would not be replicating should he become president in 2021. His climate plan calls for a $1.5 trillion investment in infrastructure, research, and technologies to address climate change, including $650 million dedicated to people whose lives are already being disrupted by climate catastrophes—people “to whom we look for our inspiration and leadership,” reads his campaign platform.

“When we’re talking about investing in communities that are on the front lines, those communities will decide where those investments go,” said O’Rourke during an interview with CityLab for the upcoming Weather Channel special “2020: Race to Save the Planet” (airing November 7), in which nine presidential candidates discuss their plans for confronting the climate change crisis. “Who knows better how to address these issues than those who are living through those issues right now?”

Read more: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/10/beto-orourke-interview-climate-change-plan-proposal-race/600562/