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Bonus: Game Changers, Part 4 · Bloomberg Intelligence

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Game Changers. I'm Matt Goldman. As
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: the Earth is facing an increasingly consequential climate crisis, thinkers
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: around the world are racing defined solutions. Many of them
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: have been able to translate their Eureka moments into action
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: at a greater pace and scope than we might have thought.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: In this four part miniseries, we've been meeting the visionary
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: minds attempting to sculpt the future of sustainable energy and
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: save our global resources. In this fourth and final episode,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: A Green New Deal, because today is the day that
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: we truly embark on a comprehensive agenda of economic, social,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: and racial justice in the United States of America. That's
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: what this agenda is all about, because climate change, climate
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: change in our environmental challenges are one of the biggest
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: existential threats to our way of life, and in order
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: for us to combat that threat, we must be as
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: ambitious and innovative in our solution as possible. Since it
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: was announced in February, the Green New Deal has sparked
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: intense debate, championed by New York Representative Alexandria Occasio Cortez,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: who you just heard. It contains a plethora of ambitious ideas.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: The Green New Deal maps out a plan for the
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: US to step away from its dependence on fossil fuels,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: but also to create high paying jobs in the process.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Many have praised it. Here is Canadian author Naomi klein Well.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I think it is the first time that we have
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: politicians putting a response to the climate crisis on the
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: table that is on the scale of the actual crisis.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: But many have vocally opposed it, like Utah Senator Mike Lee.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Unlike some of my colleagues, I'm not immediately afraid of
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: what carbon emissions on address might due to our environment
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: in the near term future or our civilization. Rather, after
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: reading the Green New Deal, I'm mostly afraid of not
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: being able to get through this speech with a straight face.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: There's no doubt the Green New Deal has accomplished one thing,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: generating attention to the global climate crisis. But much of
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: the plan that has attracted so much attention and political
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: jockeying was actually drafted by a political newcomer. My name
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: is Rihanna Gunnright. I'm the director of Climate policy at
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the Roosevelt Institute UH and I helped develop the Green
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: New Deal. Rihanna only had three years of political experience
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: when she accepted the task of writing the Green New Deal.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Hailing from Chicago, Illinois, she originally cut her teeth as
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: a policy analyst for the Detroit Health Department, and Detroit
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: is a hotbed for environment to injustice. When I was
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: working there, there was an incinerator in the middle of
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: the city right and around that area. Asthma rates were
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: like three times the state average. Residents were complaining that
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: they couldn't go outside because it smells so bad, etcetera.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: It just became clear that these things had health effects.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: In the aftermath of the Flint water crisis, Health Department
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Commissioner Abduel el Sayed decided to run for governor. Rihanna
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: joined his campaign. L say Ed's race was unsuccessful and
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Rihanna moved on applying for law school. But she needed
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: something to do for the rest of the year. So
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I emailed Representive Okazy, the Cortes's campaign manager, because she
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: had endorsed a duel, and I just reached out to say, hey, uh,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: do you all need any support on policy? Do you
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: think you will want support in Congress? You know, just
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: doing what I have to do to try to get
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: a job, and they email me back consent. So we
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: are developing a Green New Deal, which is a World
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: War two style mobilization on climate to restructure the US
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: economy and reduce emissions, uh and also create I think
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: at the time it was zero waste, zero poverty, zero
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: racial wealth gap. And so they were like, oh, so
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: you can write this whole thing in like four months, right,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: And I was like, no, but maybe if you give
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: me to research assistants which can draw uh. And so
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: that's what we did. Zero waste, zero poverty, zero racial
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: wealth gap. Therein lies the origin of much of the
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: praise and ridicule of the Green New Deal. The fourteen
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: page document covers a lot of ground and goes beyond
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: just counting parts per million. It not only promises to
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: get carbon emissions to zero, but to add thousands of
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: green new jobs and makes the argument that climate issues
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: like fossil fuel emissions are social justice issues. This is
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: why Rihanna was the perfect pick to write the text
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: for her. Pollution and social issues go hand in hand.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: I've always been interested in working on systems, so I
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: care a lot about specific issues, but ultimately what I'm
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: interested in is how do you change conditions? Right, Because
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: conditions actually shape what happens. Because if you think about it,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: for most people, when we talk about climate change, and
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: I feel like this was one of the biggest innovations
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: if there was one for a Green New Deal, is
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: that most times people were talking about super scientific stuff
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: carbon footprints, parts familiar, how much carbon is in the atmosphere. Right.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: But the fact is that most people experience climate change
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: is economic effects and health effects. They experienced it as
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Hurricane Katrina, right. They experienced it as the wildfires in Paradise.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: They experienced it as this heat wave where they don't
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: have money to afford air conditioning. For Rihanna, it all
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: comes down to racial inequality. People of color are more
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: likely to live near power plants and other polluting factories,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: and they suffer higher levels of asthma and greater risk
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: of early death from air pollution. For Rihanna, this hits
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: close to home. So when I was growing up, I
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: had asthma, and I had asthma to the point that
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: by the time I think I was in like third
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: or fourth grade, I was out for like a week.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Every spring I would get sick. I would have to
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: be put on like a breathing machine, one of those nebulizers. Uh,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: and I would be out of out of school. We
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: know today that Rihanna's asthma, like many other children should
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: grew up with, was most likely linked to the air
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: pollution in her neighborhood. This had enormous consequences. Now, my
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: mom was a single mother who had her own nonprofit right,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: so every year she had to take off time to
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: take care of me. There was always a limit on
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: how much time she could take off because she didn't
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: have childcare. My mom, in a lot of ways, was
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: sort of protected from the worst of our sort of
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: economic system. She had a college degree, right, she ran
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: her own business. She could control her own time off.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: But the situation for a lot of other kids was
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: that their parents worked hourly jobs. Right, So every time
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: your child is out of school, not only are you
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: hurting their educational outcomes, you have mothers trying to figure
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: out what to do about childcare right, how to take
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: care of their babies. They're getting docked at work. The
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: fate of the Green New Deal is up in the air,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: but Rihanna is busy putting thought into action via the
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Green New Deal Network. A coalition of movements and activists,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: and there's no shortage of issues to tackle. A stark
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: example of the domino effect pollution can bring is the
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: story of Lucy Valez. I thought, you know, my cough
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: was just a cough. All these uh congestion issues in
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: colds were just things that normally, you know, most people experience.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Like Rihanna, Lucy suffered from persistent medical issues that could
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: be traced back to pollution. Some of Lucy's health problems
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: were likely linked to the Peace Bridge connecting Buffalo to Canada,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: where cars released emissions into the surrounding neighborhoods. In the
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: year I getta house and I thought that that house
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: was was good, in good condition. And about the year
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: two thousand and sixteen, I started to get a lot
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: worse and the I was hospitalized with like a long
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: and brown kill infection. And when Lucy returned from the hospital,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: so I went into a room which happened up in
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: my office at the time, and uh, as I walked in,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: there was this black, fuzzy mold. That's when a member
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: of the organization People United for Sustainable Housing or PUSH,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: knocked on Lucy's door one day by complete chance pushes
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: associated with the Green New Deal network, and they were
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: able to help Lucy fix her house. This is pushes
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: John Washington. It took a while to figure out how
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: to find different funding sources to add up to the
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: amount of money it was required to fix Lucy's home
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: because it was in pretty bad shape. The clost to
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: my house was dollars, which is really unheard of because
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: that is more than most grants out there. They had
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: to look for a second grant to cover the things
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: that I needed. So Lucy got her home fixed. She
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: got the resources to get her home fixed. But a
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: few months later, if she gets a she gets a
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: thing from Key Banks saying that they're redoing her mortgage.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Right because the value of her home has gone up,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: they're redoing her mortgage, and now her mortgage payment was doubled.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: I didn't have the money. I couldn't find the money
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: to pay for you know that kind of that kind
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: of jump. And ultimately we were not able to win
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: that fight. And so she used part of her burial
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: fund to pay her taxes so she could keep her house.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: That's exactly the type of systematic domino effect the Green
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: New Deal is trying to prevent summer calling Joe Biden's
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: one point seven trillion dollar Green Initiative plan his spin
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: on the Green New Deal. But Rihanna still knows she
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: has a long, hard fight ahead of her to achieve
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: her goal, because ultimately changing an entire system means getting
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: citizens to realize their own power over that system. You
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: ran into a lot of people who would talk about
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: how they felt powerless, and so I think that's just
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: like really important to remember. We all have the ability
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: to emotionally affect another person to make them feel connected, right,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: and that is powerful. There is always an element of
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: power that you have that no one can take away.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: This episode of Game Changers was produced by Magnus Henrykson
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: and presented by Yours Truly Matt Goldman. It was based
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: on reporting by Michael Bihaf. For a visual experience of
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Game Changers, check out our videos at Bloomberg dot com
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: slash Green. Francesca Levi is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.