A influential left-leaning think tank is mounting a counterattack against the claim that climate policy kills jobs and raises costs. The group's new blueprint, released this week, argues that fighting the climate crisis and tackling the cost-of-living crisis are not competing goals but deeply intertwined ones.
The Climate and Community Institute, which has shaped federal bills for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, unveiled its working-class climate agenda under the banner "Stop Greed, Build Green." The platform reframes decarbonization as an economic strategy for everyday Americans rather than an elite environmental luxury.
"The climate crisis is a core driver of the cost-of-living crisis and instability we see across the economy," the group argues in its proposal for what it calls green economic populism. The framing directly challenges Washington's growing consensus that climate action is politically toxic.
The group bolstered its case with fresh polling data. A survey from the think tank and the progressive firm Data for Progress found that 70 percent of voters, including 65 percent of Republicans, believe climate action can reduce living costs. That finding suggests the pitch could resonate beyond traditional green constituencies.
"The strength of this approach is that it directly challenges the perception that reducing emissions will make your life harder and more expensive," said Naomi Klein, the prominent progressive author and founding advisory board member for the institute.
The proposal marks a deliberate shift from the Green New Deal era, which dominated progressive climate politics in 2018 and the years following. That movement sought to pair rapid decarbonization with massive expansions of social programs, promising jobs, housing, and healthcare alongside an energy transition.
While the Green New Deal energized activists and helped build a political movement, it never passed Congress. Elements of it were absorbed into President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which delivered substantial clean energy investments but fell well short of the systemic economic overhaul progressives sought. The Trump administration has since begun dismantling those gains.
Lessons from that experience inform the new approach. Daniel Aldana Cohen, the institute's founding co-director, said the Green New Deal was "so big picture that it came to seem unfeasible to a lot of people, and it was so far off in the distance that detractors could lie about what it was and wasn't."
The new platform aims to deliver what Aldana Cohen calls "climate policy you can touch." Rather than system-wide transformation, the focus is on concrete, observable wins: lower utility bills, heat pump installation, union-built affordable electric vehicles, and free public transit.
Research shows why this matters. Despite the scale of Biden's climate investments, only 35 percent of voters in 2024 reported hearing a lot or some about the Inflation Reduction Act. The message failed to penetrate.
The institute's platform calls for rent and insurance caps to shield residents from disaster costs, expanded public transportation, and taxes on polluters to fund climate programs. It prioritizes confronting corporate power and working alongside unions and grassroots movements to shape policy.
"True affordability has to fundamentally rewire the hardware that our economy runs on and not the wallets of shareholders and corporate executives," said Rakeen Mabud, a senior fellow at the institute.
The group has already found political allies. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, centered his campaign on affordability while integrating climate solutions. Seattle's new socialist mayor, Katie Wilson, campaigned on a platform linking climate to social housing.
The institute launched the platform at a New York City event featuring speakers from the Democratic Socialists of America and Cornell University's Climate Jobs Institute. A week later, officials took the pitch to Washington, meeting with lawmakers and hosting discussions with White House veterans, congressional staff, and labor leaders.
Not all feedback was uncritical. Labor advocates raised questions about tensions between job quality and cost reduction. Sameera Fazili, who served in the Biden White House, questioned whether large public spending plans could gain traction in a high-debt environment. Jigar Shah, who ran Biden's clean energy loans office, wondered if the platform leaned too heavily on price controls over innovation.
But Fazili said the framework could help depoliticize climate as a culture war issue by "tucking climate aims into other policy, into the issues that are the most salient for people."
The institute argues that building durable political support for climate action requires demonstrating tangible benefits to working families. Without that buy-in, officials say, the emissions reductions science demands will remain out of reach.
Author James Rodriguez: "This is the smart play for a political left that got crushed by Trump on the affordability message, but it only works if these cost-cutting promises materialize and don't become another round of overpromised, underdelivered green-washing."
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