Close to Home: Combating climate change while creating good, sustaining jobs

Later this year, nearly $1 billion in funds raised through the state’s clean energy and climate law (AB 32) will reach working families across California. These funds will support smarter growth, incentives for more electric vehicles and increased public transit - efforts that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help our communities and families.

The amount of AB 32 funds likely will double to $2.2 billion next year and increase in future years. Here in the North Bay, our Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit system has received an $11 million grant to add three rail cars to its fleet, allowing capacity for weekends, peak periods and other times with high demand.

SMART itself is a perfect example of a successful alliance between labor union members and environmentalists that illustrates how we can help address climate change in ways that also create good jobs. When complete, SMART will help combat gridlock, greenhouse gases and other air pollution by providing meaningful alternatives to driving - through rail, bike and walking. SMART is also good for jobs. It has already created more than 1,000 middle-class construction jobs in the North Bay, putting hundreds of local union members to work.

Experts predict that in the coming years Marin and Sonoma counties will face the growing hazards of climate change - more extreme heat days, increased variability in storms and rain and steady sea level rise. While our representatives from Marin and Sonoma counties have begun to grapple with climate change, we need continued leadership across California that supports extending California’s clean energy and climate change laws beyond 2020. We need leaders who combat climate change but do so in ways that create and maintain family-sustaining jobs.

Passed in 2006, AB 32 set a goal for California to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The state is on target to meet that, and it’s delivering - the state’s GHG emissions are declining, our air quality is improving and we’re creating and maintaining quality jobs. California has created more than 15,000 new family-sustaining union jobs alone over the past five years in the utility-scale solar sector alone. But we need to make more progress. Both Marin and Sonoma counties anticipate longer and more frequent heat waves that will reduce air quality, increase heat-related illnesses and cost us more as we turn up our air conditioning. Variable precipitation means at times we may have too much water, which, when combined with rising sea levels, will cause flooding that can damage property, harm the quality of our drinking water and create economic loss. At other times, we may have too little water, causing droughts and increasing risk for wildfires. These changes will also alter the growing seasons of our crops - affecting quality and yield.

The governor and several members of the state Legislature agree that California must extend our clean energy and climate law into the future and further reduce California’s greenhouse gas emissions. To do so, California must increase our renewable energy sources, improve our energy efficiency and reduce our need for petroleum-based transportation fuels - through projects like SMART. If we do this right, Marin and Sonoma counties and California as a whole can continue to clean our environment while spurring good jobs.

Lisa Maldonado is executive director of the North Bay Labor Council, representing 30,000 members and their families in Marin, Mendocino, Lake and Sonoma counties. Denny Rosatti is executive director of Sonoma County Conservation Action.