Thread by @aldatweets

Mass unemployment, covid, climate change: our crises are colliding. We need a #GreenStimulus to rebuild.

Massive green investments would lift up workers + frontline communities—and tackle the crises' root causes.

My latest in the @guardian w @dan_kammen

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

In the past month, over 22 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits, compounding the fear that unemployment could breach 32% absent massive public action. This is an unmitigated human disaster, recalling the horrors of the Great Depression.

theguardian.com/business/2020/…

And it gets worse. We’re also facing the climate emergency. Immediate relief is necessary—but not sufficient. To tackle all these crises at once, we need a Green Stimulus that creates jobs and lifts up communities in ways that also slash carbon pollution and increase resiliency

Climate change is about to supercharge the coronavirus emergency. We're about to enter wildfire season in California. A third of the country is at risk from inland flooding. Forecasters predict an unusually active hurricane season

washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/0…

We're seeing this elsewhere. In Ecuador, a muted government response to flooding in indigenous communities, for fear of spreading the virus; in Fiji, devastated by Cyclone Harold this week, 19 confirmed coronavirus cases cat doubt on how to rebuild

earther.gizmodo.com/this-is-what-c…

Meanwhile the era of dirty energy is ending. From cable news stock analysts to massive investment firms, everyone gets that the only way forward is green stimulus. The EU, South Korea, and Germany are among the political bodies moving to green stimulus

news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-an…

We need new careers. Here in US, $1m invested in the oil and gas in the United States creates just five jobs, compared to 17 jobs per million dollars invested in energy-saving building retrofits, 22 jobs for mass transit, 13 for wind, and 14 for solar.

siteresources.worldbank.org/INTOGMC/Resour…

And by directly investing in frontline communities, following best practices in California, we can bring technologies like solar and battery storage to neighborhoods that have been scandalously left out of the clean energy boom so far.

caclimateinvestments.ca.gov/annual-report/

.@DataProgress polls show majority support for massive green spending overall. More interesting is the greater support—including majority Republican approval—for specific public green investments: electric buses, low-income housing retrofits, renewables

dataforprogress.org/memos/green-in…

Fundamentally, #GreenStimulus is about mobilizing massive public funds—$2tn to start—in specific green investments to create high-quality jobs and improve the quality of life, esp in low-income communities, communities of color, and indigenous communities

medium.com/@green_stimulu…

It's counterintuitive, but the timing for Green Stimulus is perfect. Bridge-loans and advance payments on purchases of solar panels + electric vehicles would stabilize firms’ + workers’ finances. Online work will make projects shovel-ready the minute it's healthy to break ground

Each of us has lived through climate-fueled disasters—Hurricane Sandy, wildfires in California. We agree with the EJ advocates who argued then that disaster recovery shouldn’t be about trying to bounce back to how things were before the disaster

yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/04/advoca…

We're not going back to communities savaged by racism, a carbon-drenched economy that risks our survival, a job market where more than half the country lives paycheck to paycheck.

Through a Green Stimulus that centers workers and communities, we can bounce forward together.

PS: it was such a pleasure to work w the brilliant @dan_kammen. We only met a few weeks ago, and clicked on the need for truly bold and ambitious climate action that put social, racial, and economic justice first. I've learned tons from working w him. Onward towards winning this!