Our Environment and Climate

Too many politicians—particularly in my own party—will eagerly set ambitious climate goals and targets through legislative resolutions. Goals make for great press releases, applause lines, and campaign promises. Setting goals doesn’t invite messy battles, or bruising political fights with well-financed, powerful opponents. Goals just don’t do a lot to actually save our planet.

The much harder work comes in implementation. It requires fighting difficult battles against the oil and gas industry, wealthy developers, the plastics industry, large corporate gas and electric utility companies, and other powerful interests.^[1] It requires passing policies with direct impacts, and implementing the change we need to move the needle in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

I’ve divided this discussion into two parts: what I’ve done, and what I commit to do. You deserve to know both.

My Record

As Mayor of San José, I led coalitions and initiatives that battled billionaire developers, the gas industry, large corporate utilities, and the plastics industry. Together, we accomplished much:

• Reducing San José’s community-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 36% between 2008 and 2021 (even starting from a Great Recession-induced nadir in emissions).^[2]

• Making San José the largest U.S. city to launch a community choice clean energy utility, which today provides lower-cost 95% greenhouse gas-free electricity to 1 million residents and thousands of businesses.^[3]

• Permanently protecting hillsides and open spaces against development in two heavily contested ballot measures (2018 Measures B & C), overcoming developers who spent millions on deceptive voter ads.

• Permanently preserving Coyote Valley, leading a voter approved measure (2018 Measure T) that would protect open space, hillsides, and clean water for future generations.

• Making San José the largest city in the U.S. to mandate all-electric residential and office construction—that is, banning gas on new construction.^[4]

• Launching the San José Resilience Corps, employing hundreds of young adults from low-income neighborhoods in jobs improving climate resilience.

• Testifying before Congress to advocate for stricter fuel efficiency standards; speaking by invitation to international audiences at COP 27 in Egypt, the Vatican, and other major convenings about San José’s model for climate action.

• Co-leading four ballot measures to generate funding for regional transit projects, such as CalTrain, bus rapid-transit, and BART.

• Championing San José’s rapid expansion of safe cycling infrastructure, adding hundreds of miles of bike lanes and dozens of miles of “protected” lanes, while implementing many miles of “road diets” and eliminating parking minimums for new development.

• Partnering with the private sector to open the nation’s largest dry anaerobic digestion waste-to-energy plant, capturing and using methane before its release to the atmosphere.

• Leading the passage of a general plan for San José’s development that won awards for its “smart growth,” environmentally sustainable focus, halting sprawl and focusing dense development near transit and downtown.^[5]

• As a council member, working with Save the Bay to take on the plastics industry and making San Jose the largest city in the U.S. to ban plastic bags.^[6]

My Priorities

I have six categories of environmental priorities in Congress, but sustainability is embedded in many initiatives throughout this book. So, you’ll find frequent references to those other chapters, which describe the proposals in greater detail:

1. Accelerate the Transition from Fossil Fuels

Climate action is not a spectator sport. Accelerating the transition from fossil fuels will require everyone’s participation. One tool that could help, as I’ve noted earlier, is a Resilience Savings Plan (RSP). That is, Congress could enact federally-backed financing to empower homeowners, apartment owners, and small businesses to invest in battery storage, rooftop solar, heat pumps, and other ways of greening their energy use and reducing their power bills. This plan, derived from a combination of PACE programs and GSE-based financing, is described in greater detail in the “Cost of Living” section of this book.

Congress must do more to free itself, and our country, from the grip of the powerful gas and oil industry. In the near term, we must push against any new offshore drilling and fracking, and impose strict limits and enforce the expiration of leases on existing sites. We can dramatically reduce our deficit and save taxpayer dollars by supporting President Biden’s efforts to eliminate $35 billion in federal subsidies for oil and gas production in his FY2024 budget—which Congress rejected.^[7] To succeed in tackling climate change, we need a Congress independent from the fossil fuel industry. Unlike my opponent, I refuse campaign contributions from Big Oil and Gas.

To drive transformation over the longer haul, we’ll need to push to put a price on carbon. I support implementing a “carbon dividend,” which incentivizes consumers to shift to renewables by directly providing revenue generated from carbon-based fees on major fossil fuel companies to taxpayers. This amounts to the most powerful market-based approach to holding the fossil fuel industry accountable, without imposing new aggregate costs on consumers or taxpayers.^[8]

2. Protect and Preserve Our Precious Coastline, Shoreline, and Hillsides

Protecting our natural resources must begin by embracing what conservationists know as “30×30.”^[9] The national and global campaign to conserve 30% of the Earth’s land, inland waters, and oceans by the year 2030 will be essential for our environmental goals. However, it requires federal partnership with local efforts by organizations like the Peninsula Open Space Trust to preserve our Valley’s hillsides and open spaces, to protect our shoreline and Peninsula hillsides, and to provide incentives for private landowners to conserve their lands permanently.

I will also champion federal funding for wetlands restoration, coastal protection, and natural adaptation to sea level rise, including the South Bay Salt Ponds and the entire Shoreline Plan.

3. Focus on the Grid

Our electric grid is the world’s largest machine, and the most important tool to enable our transition from fossil fuels to renewables. Our current grid isn’t up to the task; it requires massive investment to improve its capacity and reliability. We can mitigate some of that cost by reducing “peak load” burdens on the grid through distributed generation of renewables and distributed battery storage. As described previously, I’ve proposed a federally-backed financing program to empower homeowners, apartment owners, and small businesses to invest in battery storage, rooftop solar, bidirectional EV charging, and other ways of greening their energy use.

We also need permitting reform. Grid reliability and capacity critically depend on our ability to rapidly and cost-effectively expand our interstate transmission lines, which must navigate the permitting processes of several regions and 50 states.^[10] I will support legislation like the BIG WIRES Act, which would require grids in different regions of the country to share power so that we can more efficiently get the energy from where it’s made to where it’s needed.

4. Prepare our Communities for Climate Impacts

It’s already here. Wildfire smoke. Hotter days. Flooding. Sea level rise. While we push to slow climate change, we must also prepare ourselves for our new reality. The federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provides more than $50 billion to projects around the country to protect against floods, heat, droughts, wildfires, and other climate change impacts.^[11] I will push to ensure that our district gets its share of these federal funds. As described in the “Cost of Living” section, I will also push to create a program to provide federally-backed, low-cost financing to homeowners and apartment owners to harden their homes against climate change that would save lives and property, and help residents obtain and retain property insurance coverage.

5. Kicking Our Plastics Addiction

Plastic is overwhelmingly produced from natural gas feedstocks and, to a lesser extent, from oil. We need some plastics, and others appear superfluous, but nearly all plastics are full of toxic chemicals that never biodegrade—“forever chemicals” that are now found in our blood and in practically every living thing on Earth.^[12] We are just beginning to understand the great harm caused to human health and to the environment.

Oil and gas companies that see us transitioning away from using fossil fuels have a destructive Plan B: get us even more hooked on plastic. Just 10% of plastics are recycled, while plans appear underway to massively accelerate petrochemical plastic production over the next decade.^[13] We can do better. I will push to require the petrochemical industry to take responsibility for the post-consumer management of their products, and to ensure the plastics around us remain safe for humans, other creatures, and our environment.

6. Fund the American Climate Corps

As Mayor, I created the San José Resilience Corps to leverage the energy and idealism of our young adults to engage in specific projects—ranging from tree planting to water conservation to wildfire hardening—that protected our environment and improved our climate resilience.^[14] We provided paid jobs to hundreds of young adults living in low-income neighborhoods, and our community saw concrete benefits. The program provided a major “pivot” for many young adults disconnected from school or work, and we could see their energy and passion build as they became more involved in the work. We also provided career pathways for dozens of the participants to employment where the city and other employers had struggled to fill positions with qualified candidates. They now have a “training program” that enables them to see who performs at a high level despite imperfect resumes.

At the urging of young climate activists, President Biden recently created the American Climate Corps with a similar vision. However, it remains largely unfunded by Congress.^[15] I’ve suggested a few ways to do so in my “Crime” chapter, above. We need to make the Climate Corps a reality, echoing an earlier generation’s call for service in a moment of urgency.