From the water we drink to the air we breathe and the parks we recreate in, preserving and protecting our environment is among our most essential tasks to ensuring a high-quality, healthy life—for ourselves, our children, and future generations. At the same time, climate change remains an existential threat to all of us, and to our ability to maintain our way of life. But it is also a challenge that comes with the opportunity to reimagine what our economy, our energy systems, and our environment can and should look like.
Here in Illinois, I was part of building a coalition of workers to transition our economy to clean energy. We worked to find solutions to questions about how best to invest in clean energy and what strategies to use to achieve zero carbon emissions. The answers to those questions will shape not just our environment, but our economy for generations to come. As we transition to clean, renewable energy like wind and solar instead of fossil fuels, we need to do so in a way that also creates good-paying, union jobs and doesn’t leave people behind—particularly those who live in communities where environmental injustice has exposed people of color to air pollution and PFAs. Let’s make America a leader in clean energy, creating jobs and reducing our dependence on foreign energy from unstable regimes around the world.
Preserving the Environment
- Provide more funding and resources for clean air and clean water in our communities and strengthen federal air and water protections
- Protect public lands from oil drilling and environmental degradation and parks and open spaces from overdevelopment and contamination
Building a Clean Energy Economy
- Invest in solar, onshore and offshore wind, and other forms of renewable energy to quickly transition the country off of fossil fuels
- Train workers to meet future demand for solar and wind and provide new work and career opportunities in high-paying, high-growth jobs, especially in Central and Southern Illinois communities struggling with job loss and low wages
- Create equity and access to economic opportunity for communities of color across Central and Southern Illinois by making sure that communities of color are recruited for high paying union jobs.
In Congress, I will not pass the buck when it comes to tackling the climate crisis and fighting for clean air and clean water for all of our communities, because the stakes are simply too high not to take action.
