Citizen Action Explainer:

THE ISSUE 

There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that we face runaway climate change unless we immediately start a bold transition and achieve dramatic reductions in greenhouse emissions by 2030. While many Wisconsin elected leaders believe in science and are publicly committed to addressing this generational challenge, we lack a plan up to the scale of the challenge. The good news is that we have it well within our means to rapidly transition to a sustainable future that also generates greater opportunity for Wisconsin working families. Embracing a green conversion creates an unparalleled opportunity to address the 40 year decline in the availability of living wage jobs for everyone who wants one, especially those in marginalized urban and rural communities left behind by outsourcing, union busting, and deindustrialization. 

THE SOLUTION

The Climate & Jobs Package, when formally introduced the next legislative session, will be the first comprehensive plan ever introduced in Wisconsin or in the Upper Midwest to actually meet the international climate targets needed to avert catastrophic climate change. The plan also leans into the opportunity to use a clean energy transition to create a fair economy that offers desperately needed good jobs to every Wisconsin community and provides cleaner and more affordable energy to every household.

That’s why Citizen Action of Wisconsin has worked diligently with Representative Supreme Moore Omokunde and Senator Chris Larson to create the most visionary climate and jobs agenda Wisconsin has ever seen. Here’s what will be in the package when it is formally introduced in the next legislative session:

Dramatically Expands Economic Opportunity which Leaves No One Behind

• Creates a large-scale public jobs program (transitional jobs) to assure all Wisconites, especially those who live in marginalized communities left out of real economic opportunity, have a source of income as they receive the training they need to launch careers in the fast growing green economy.
• Invests to scale to guarantee Wisconsin has the large new well trained workforce needed to execute a clean energy transition in time to meet the international climate deadlines.
• Invests in workers currently employed in the fossil fuel sector transition to a green energy job, guaranteeing a just transition that leaves workers behind, with special priority for communities with relatively high unemployment and poverty such as Communities of Color and rural areas.
• Create a Just Transition Council in the Department of Workforce Development to minimize any negative impacts on workers in the transition away from fossil fuels, and a segregated fund to mitigate the impact of facility closures on workers and communities, and to maximize the benefits of clean energy for every community.
  
  Transition to Clean Energy
  
  

• For the first time holds for-profit utilities accountable for doing their part, requiring 70% of Wisconsin electricity to come from renewable sources by 2030, and 100% by 2040. Currently Wisconsin’s largest utility is dragging its feet on the renewable energy transition to maximize windfall profits. Read more here.
• Cut overall greenhouse gas emissions by 48% of 2005 levels by 2030 and 87% by 2050.
• Creates a Climate Action Council to develop the additional policies needed to  meet the international climate targets, and to assure that 35% of resources go to disadvantaged communities.
• Holds lawmakers accountable by providing public data on progress towards the greenhouse gas reduction goals.
• Builds on the $300 billion dollar climate investment made by President Biden in the Inflation Reduction Act to assure that Wisconsin will maximize its benefits.

Call Your Legislator and Ask them to commit to co-sponsoring Rep. Supreme Moore Omokunde and Senator Chris Larson’s Climate and Jobs Package when it is introduced next session.