Local Leadership for Climate Justice with Hessann Farooqi

Transcript of Local Leadership for Climate Justice with Hessann Farooqi

0:00:08.4 Tom Llewellyn: Welcome to another episode of Cities@Tufts lectures, where we explore the impact of urban planning on our communities and the opportunities designed for greater equity and justice. This season is brought to you by Shareable and the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University, with support from the Barr Foundation. In addition to this podcast, the video, transcript, and graphic recordings are available on our website, shareable.net. Just click the link in the show notes. And now, here’s the host of Cities@Tufts, Professor Julian Agyeman.

0:00:40.3 Julian Agyeman: Welcome to Cities@Tufts, our virtual colloquium. I’m Professor Julian Agyeman, and together with my research assistants, Amelia Morton and Grant Perry, and our partners, Shareable and the Barr Foundation, we organize Cities@Tufts as a cross-disciplinary academic initiative, which recognizes Tufts University as a leader in urban studies, urban planning, and sustainability issues. We’d like to acknowledge that Tufts University’s Medford campus is located on colonized Wampanoag and Massachusetts traditional territory. Today we’re delighted to host Hessann Farooqi. Hessann is the executive director of the Boston Climate Action Network.

0:01:21.6 Julian Agyeman: He’s the youngest person and the first person of color to lead BCAN. He studied economics at Boston University, worked in the United States Senate under Senator Ed Markey, and served on various federal, state, and local political campaigns. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu appointed him to oversee the implementation of Boston’s key climate law on Building Emission Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance, BIRDO, so he’s on the review board of that. He’s coordinator of the Boston Green New Deal Coalition and serves as an Environmental Justice Advisor to the Metropolitan Area Planning Council on developing their Greater Boston Climate Action Plan. Hessann previously served as an advisor to the White House and Department of Energy’s Opportunity Project. Hessann’s talk today is Local Leadership for Climate Change. Hessann, a zoom-tastic welcome to Cities@Tufts.

0:02:18.7 Hessann Farooqi: Excellent, Thank you so much, Professor Agyeman and to everyone at Shareable and the Bar Foundation, and as well to our friend Curt Newton from MIT who connected us and who made this possible. Really great to be here because I’m usually just watching these things as a fan so now I’m on the other side and and this whole talk really started in response to a talk last year which I recommend everyone watch as well as a part of this series on the where the Green New Deal for Boston was brought up. And so I’m really excited to respond to some of the things that were said there and to share a little bit about what we do. So we here at the Boston climate action network, we’re a community based organization. We’ve been here for about 25 years. And we organize residents across the city around mostly city level climate action, increasingly also state level stuff. And so I have the immense privilege of being the executive director of this team. And I want to start before we talk about our work as an organization and some of the things that every city can learn from what we’re doing here in Boston, a little bit about how we see the issue of climate and climate justice. And I always come back to two neighborhoods in our city, Back Bay and Roxbury. Back Bay is a predominantly white neighborhood, Roxbury a predominantly black neighborhood. Back Bay and Roxbury are two miles apart.

0:03:46.3 Hessann Farooqi: It’s two stops on the Orange Line. And if you go down the Orange Line two stops, your median income drops by about $100,000 a year. That two stops on the Orange Line means your likelihood of having even a college degree is cut in half. That two stops on the Orange Line means that your access to healthy fresh foods or to small business opportunities, your access to prescription drugs drops precipitously. Even in the last year, we’ve seen lots of pharmacies closing their doors in Roxbury. Two stops in the Orange Line means your access to green space gets worse. Two stops in the Orange Line means air pollution gets worse. And so it shouldn’t be a surprise then. But it often still is that two stops on the Orange Line means that your life expectancy means that your life expectancy drops by almost a quarter century. And so Back Bay and Roxbury, they’re two miles apart and yet a world apart. And the fact is that examples like this aren’t just unique to Boston. We see this in cities and towns across the world that in such a short distance, we can see such drastically different outcomes. And so much of this comes back to our cities, and how we build our cities and who we build our cities for. And that has always been at the heart of who we are as an organization. We started in the early 2000s when there was a time when federal government was not doing as much as they should have around climate change or global warming.

0:05:50.7 Hessann Farooqi: I’m sure no one can think of a parallel moment like that these days, right? But what we recognized was if the federal government isn’t going to step up, our cities and states need to as well. And folks asked us back then as so many ask us now. Look, this is a global issue. This is a, it’s literally was called back then global warming. Why on earth should the smallest least powerful level of government, which is a city or a town have anything to do with this. Folks said it’s nice to raise awareness, but like, come on. But I bring it back to this. First, when we look at where our greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change actually come from, it’s basically two things, buildings and transportation. And who gets to regulate buildings? Well, when we think about what gets built, where it gets built, and how it gets built, those are planning and zoning decisions. Those are zoning commissions, planning boards. Those are city and town decisions. When we think about how we design our streets, Those are also city decisions. And when we think about things like public transit, those are most commonly managed by state agencies like the MBTA here in Massachusetts.

0:07:17.8 Hessann Farooqi: So it turns out actually your city councillors, your state senators, your mayors have in some cases more power to address climate than your federal government. And it’s not to say by any means that federal leadership does not matter. It absolutely does. We see the absence of that today. But it means that when you consider that most people live in a small handful relatively of metropolitan areas. In fact, eight and 10 live in an urban area versus a rural area here in America. Then actually if you just get most or all of these major cities to do the right thing. You can make a significant dent in national greenhouse gas emissions. That helps us take global leadership. And by the way, you don’t have to wait till 2050 to see the effects of this. It improves people’s lives in tangible, meaningful ways today. And that’s what we have proven over the last 25 years. We’ve convened rallies and held educational events that didn’t just talk about the broader issue of climate but tied it back to the things that people were feeling. Some of our energy fairs in the early 2000s were focused on energy efficiency. That’s where the pedal hits the metal between the larger issue of energy use to the local issues that people really do think about, which are their very old homes, not staying warm in the winter, or their electricity and gas bills being way too high.

0:09:00.1 Hessann Farooqi: And so we brought in residents from every part of our city, residents of every race and class and background, and we’ve been continuing to do that ever since. And it was that education that then translated into the start of real change at the city government level. The city convened residents, this was a big thing, residents from every neighborhood, to create the first climate action plan, which was a big deal back then. And that was not something every city was doing. And that plan that became a blueprint for a lot of tangible policy advocacy that we’ve done in the years and decades since. What’s unique about BCAN is that we’ve always been working not just with other climate groups, but with other groups that are very much not climate groups. We were one of the founding members of the Green Justice Coalition, which is based here in the greater Boston area, and brings together community partners working on climate and housing and immigration with labor unions through the Greater Boston Labor Council, who can all work together to improve the lives of residents.

0:10:16.3 Hessann Farooqi: The Green Justice Coalition or GJC has been involved with simple projects like creating pre-apprenticeship pathways for local high school students to then paint and repaint the school buildings that made a meaningful difference for the residents, but also that helped prepare those students for good paying jobs. But we’ve also been able to take on some of the biggest fights in our city’s history. One of those is one of my favorite programs, community choice electricity. This is one of the best things the city can do to support climate action. In this program, the city buys electricity on behalf of residents. And so they can buy it at the wholesale rate, just like at Costco, and they can sell it back to residents at a lower price. And by the way, the city can make investments in renewable energy. So not only can they save all of us money on energy bills that alone is a huge selling point. But we can also use the market power of New England’s largest city to support the construction of new regionally based renewable energy power.

0:11:30.1 Hessann Farooqi: And that is game changing. But we can bring everyone along because we don’t have to think about the benefits as being abstract or intangible or happening somewhere else. They are clear and immediate and we see them every month when we save money on energy. But recognizing that 70% of our city’s greenhouse gas emissions came from buildings and large buildings in particular, which were 4% of buildings and about 40 to 50% of total emissions. We helped pass my favorite law, the Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance, or BIRDO, which says simply, but all those large buildings have to progressively reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to reach net zero emissions by 2050. And that law, which I now get to be one of the regulators of, is not just a good idea here in Boston. In the time since Boston and New York passed similar laws, we’ve seen cities and towns across the country, as nearby as Cambridge and Newton, and as far away as Denver and Seattle, who passed their own versions of this law. And that is truly how we make this work. Because even if Boston gets everything perfect, we get to zero emissions, we do it perfectly, if every other city in town does not get on board, it doesn’t matter in the global context. So we need to create great policy ideas that are scalable and replicable. And that’s what we’ve done here with BIRDO.

0:13:07.9 Hessann Farooqi: But we’ve also thought about climate action more broadly than just greenhouse gas emissions and energy. One of our members went to work for then city councilor Michelle Wu to write the most expansive vision yet for what climate action can look like at the city level, a green new deal for Boston. This was not just about good ideas from people in government, but importantly engaged community residents and community groups from every part of our city to really define what we want our city to look like, how we think our city can lead, and not just in climate, but also, and this was in the midst of a pandemic, on actually recovering our city from all of the ways our residents were hit so hard by COVID-19. So this vision then became a core part of the now mayor’s platform and led to us forming the Boston Green New Deal Coalition, which I now get to be one of the co-coordinators of. And this was the most expansive coalition yet because we brought together not just climate and energy groups, but groups working on housing and health and transportation into the work of climate action.

0:14:26.2 Hessann Farooqi: And so not only does this give us a bigger organizing base, but it also helps us address these issues in a way that actually recognizes how these issues actually are, which is that they’re all connected. You can’t talk about good housing without talking about energy, without talking about how you get around the city. And we can address all these things together, because we not just have good ideas on policy papers, but have the real relationships between these various community groups to make that kind of idea a reality. And in a short time since this happened, this was 2021, we’ve been able to make tangible policy change, like making sure that every new city building is fossil fuel free. But today, in Boston, just Like everywhere in our world, we see a series of challenges that only seem to get worse. It seems like every week we have a new headline of how the cost of housing gets higher and higher in our city. Not only does that mean that home ownership is out of reach for so many of our residents, but it means that too many of our residents are being displaced, not able to afford rent, in some cases actually evicted. And it is the leading reason that folks leave Boston, leave Massachusetts. But it’s not just rising rents, it’s also rising sea levels. As a coastal city we’ve got 47 miles of coastline, all of which are threatened by sea level rise that we already see happening.

0:16:08.3 Hessann Farooqi: This was last fall in the Wharf district downtown, and this is sunny day flooding. Imagine how this gets worse when you have a major hurricane. And we know that climate change makes extreme heat more intense and more frequent. And like all climate issues, This does not affect every neighborhood equally. And so this really underpins how we see a green new deal, which is first recognizing, look, climate change, all these environmental issues, they affect everyone. But not everyone is starting in the same place. The people who are hit first and worst by the effects of sea level rise or extreme heat are also the folks who have the least social, political, and economic power, just as we saw between Back Bay and Roxbury. And when we think about a Green New Deal, first let’s remember where this even came from, was the original New Deal. Back in the 30s and 40s, we saw a nation that was besieged by compounding crises. A world at war, the threat of fascism growing and approaching our doorsteps, but also a nation in economic depression, where at its peak, a quarter of our workforce was out of work.

0:17:45.0 Hessann Farooqi: Folks who were struggling to just make ends meet. And we recognize, look, we have to step up and be bold as a country and we’ve got to take some risks. But because people all across this country organized, we made the New Deal a reality for decades. We passed important popular programs that are still with us, like Social Security, to put a floor under our seniors. We created lots of new infrastructure, including by the way electrification of places that hadn’t previously had it through programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority. And as a result of that, we created great paying jobs. We also know the New Deal didn’t reach everyone and in particular our black and brown Americans because you have policies like the GI Bill that were at their face race neutral but where we know too many of our Black veterans returning from combat were denied opportunities to build their wealth. And it wasn’t just New Deal programs, right? We know that for decades, the US Government subsidized the purchase of homes for white families, but not for black families, a practice known as redlining.

0:19:09.1 Hessann Farooqi: And even in a city like Boston, you continue to see that today, not just in neighborhoods that are segregated, but in disparities of income and especially disparities of wealth. And all of those issues, though those policies have been changed decades ago, the effects are still here. Because in the same way that saving a dollar grows over time, stealing a dollar hurts a family over time. And so we could talk about every other issue in society from access to higher education, to access to childcare, to retirement, to health insurance, all of which come back to these central challenges. And today, we face a whole set of new challenges. As a city, we see all the things I just mentioned. Housing that continues to be less affordable. Transportation that isn’t reliable, where we see a public transit system that quite literally crumbles in front of our eyes in some cases. But also some of the worst traffic in the world and a city where we see the effects of climate change quite literally bear down upon us. And so we have the opportunity to solve all of these problems and these aren’t separate issues, these are the same issue And we can solve them all together.

0:20:36.7 Hessann Farooqi: And that’s what the Green New Deal for Boston is about. That’s why in the Green New Deal Coalition, we bring together so many different groups, So many different types of folks, so many different neighborhoods, because we know We’re never gonna win this if all we talk about our energy and emissions. We know that the same moneyed interests that are responsible for us not being paid well are the same ones that pollute our air and pollute our water are the same ones that want to stop investing in public transit so they can keep selling us cars and the gas we put in them. And they’re the same ones that buy up our homes to speculate on them that drives up our rent. And so if we want to build a meaningful coalition, and not just pass policies today, but build real lasting political consensus to keep those programs in place and to expand them over time. We have to be clear about what’s going on, how all of our problems are connected and how we can meaningfully take on the interests that have created them. These aren’t random accidents of nature. These are intentional decisions made by the biggest corporations and the governments that fail to check them. And I know we can do it differently. And that’s what we do every day.

0:22:10.7 Hessann Farooqi: And so we’ve seen a little bit of how in the last 20 minutes or so, cities and towns can step up and lead on climate. Great ideas that aren’t just being done here in Boston, but that can be done in every city, in every town. I talked to my peers in other major cities, but also in smaller towns here in the Commonwealth, who are putting in place some of the exact same ideas, whether it be buying electricity on behalf of residents, taking on building emissions, but also making good meaningful investments in public transportation, making it easier to take a bus. Here in Boston, for example, for the last several years, we’ve had three bus lines that have been fare free. And that’s meant that it’s easier for riders to take the bus without having to fumble with their wallets. And because they’re not all having to tap a card or take out their change the buses run faster. People can board at all doors. Ridership is up, rider satisfaction is up, driver satisfaction is up because drivers aren’t having to argue with passengers who aren’t paying the fare. And we’ve been able to get more people onto the buses, which means fewer people who have to take cars and that means less traffic, which I think everyone can get behind. So even if you’re still driving, you have an easier time doing so than you would before. Those are things every city can do. But all of it starts with residents, all of it starts with organizing.

0:23:45.1 Hessann Farooqi: It’s not like one day the city just woke up and decided to pass all these big laws. No, there was decades of work that you’ve seen a little bit of here today. And that’s really what I want to talk about here for the second piece of this. How can cities and towns and how can all of us as individual residents actually make this kind of political consensus a reality? For many of us, we’re thinking, well, we may not have an official position or some organization that we get to be in charge of. We may not be elected officials or government decision makers, what can we do? Well, glad you asked. I think so much of this comes back to talking about climate change, not as some abstract idea of global greenhouse gas emissions and global average temperature increase and thinking about it in these far off milestones of what happens by 2050, nor by talking about the effects of climate change as being distant things that affect melting ice caps in the Arctic or polar bears or some species of frog in the Amazon that you’ve never heard of, but really coming back to the things that we as residents feel. Because if all we talk about are polar bears, then we’re going to think the public is going to think, well, this is a movement for polar bears, or this is a movement for trees. It’s not.

0:25:07.6 Hessann Farooqi: It is a movement for us, for our families. And by the way, when we take aggressive action on climate, the polar bears and trees benefit as well. So we have to bring this back to what every family cares about, which are two things, their health and their wealth. And I think every climate issue should be talked about in those terms. What we have talked about for the last 25 years, what we continue to talk about are the three-legged stool of, in my mind, what climate action is about. Housing, transit, and jobs. When we talk about housing, it means people should be able to stay in their neighborhoods. They shouldn’t be displaced because of rising rents or rising sea levels, but that also we should have homes that are actually warm in the winter. Energy bills that are affordable. This is a key issue. We have some of the highest energy bills in the country here in Massachusetts. And we have got to make better investments. By the way, that’s not just an affordability issue, it’s a climate issue. Because part of the reason that we have such high energy bills is because most of our electricity is generated by natural gas, all of which we import from other states. So that import cost gets passed on to all of us. When we talk about transit, it means being able to get around our neighborhoods without necessarily having to rely on a car, but even if you drive, you should have an easier time doing so.

0:26:32.4 Hessann Farooqi: It’s about transit that everyone can afford, transit that’s reliable and safe, and that meets our needs, whether that be transit that runs later at night for our workers who work overnight, or bike lanes that allow us to ride a bike safely in every one of our neighborhoods. And when we’re talking about jobs, look, we know that by making all these investments, we’re going to create lots of jobs. When we invest in offshore wind or in solar, when we invest in public transit or building new homes, that will create jobs. But we’ve got another big question. Are these going to be low wage, temporary jobs that people are going to have that won’t really meet their needs? Or can we do it differently? Can we invest in great paying, family sustaining careers? Can we train people not just to be solar panel installers, but to be electricians so that their skills and their expertise is used not just in the next several years, but in the next several decades. And when we see so many workers, working families who are reliant on the gas system for their livelihoods, steel workers, gas workers, pipe fitters, in other places folks who work on fracking rings. Those aren’t bad people.

0:28:09.1 Hessann Farooqi: Those aren’t folks that we need to leave out in the cold just because we need to transition to clean heat. We have to make sure that we protect every single one of their livelihoods and make sure that if they would like, they have a job waiting for them on the other end, guaranteed, that protects their paychecks, protects their pensions, and makes sure that they can continue supporting their families. And it’s those kinds of things that very often in environmental advocacy get lost. I don’t hear enough folks in the environmental movement talking about the importance of creating good paying jobs. And too often I see job programs that are not going to set people up for long term success. So we have to be advocates, not just for clean air, not just for clean water, not just for low energy, but for good paying jobs that go back to our residents, so that our residents can build wealth, our residents can improve their family’s lives, our residents can buy homes and retire with dignity. That’s what this is all about. And by the way, from a political standpoint, it’s a way better sell if people know they’re actually going to benefit personally from all the things that we’re talking about, even if they’ve never thought about climate change a day in their lives, which let’s face it, most people have not.

0:29:38.1 Hessann Farooqi: Most people aren’t thinking about climate change every single day because if you’re struggling to pay your electricity bill, you’re not thinking about where that electricity comes from, whether that be gas or solar, we have to always bring this back to the things that people think about and care about. We have to be normal people that talk about normal things that other normal people can gravitate towards. And that seems like silly advice, but you’d be shocked or maybe you wouldn’t be at how often that’s not happening and how often we’re making this too technical or thinking about these issues in ways that just don’t speak to what regular people think about every day. And particularly in a moment like this one. Let’s face it. Things are scary. There’s a lot of change happening very quickly at the federal level here in America. And for those of you joining from other countries, you obviously know this affects you too. We’re not buying goods and services from Canada. Our neighbors to the north suffer economically too. So it’s all the more important that we do not back down from these fights because look, the issues our residents face continue. The energy bills that are so high today were high last year too.

0:31:02.5 Hessann Farooqi: The air pollution that continues to suffocate our residents in East Boston who are in the backyard of an airport. That didn’t change with the presidential election. Our issues are as urgent as ever and of course we have a whole set of new issues where too many of our residents are afraid of being deported for exercising their free speech requirements or for going to work. And of course, we see that in too many cases, the community-based organizations and the new startup businesses that were relying on our government to have their backs now don’t know if that can be the case. But I think that really reminds us of two things. One is that we have to be out there talking about these issues every day and building a broader and bigger movement than we’ve ever had before, which recognizes, look, all of our issues are connected. So all of the solutions to our issues need to be connected too. And that means the movements in support of these issues need to be connected as well. That’s how we build lasting consensus. And that’s how we did it the last time too.

0:32:22.0 Hessann Farooqi: A program like Social Security passed in the New Deal era was passed mostly by Democrats. But in the decades since then, we’ve had presidents and Congress of both parties who have come together on protecting and sometimes even expanding Social Security. Wasn’t because they all started believing in the philosophy of universal basic income, which is what Social Security is. No, it was because they recognized this was making their constituents lives better, and it was a universal program. So people in red states and blue states were both benefiting. Voters of both political parties were benefiting from Social Security. And it was happening not in some abstract way, but it was happening in a clear way that people could understand. They got a check in the mail. They saw the benefit. That’s what we can do with climate action. And we know this because some of the fastest growing states when it comes to clean energy jobs are red states like Texas and West Virginia, states that are run almost exclusively by Republicans but who also recognize how creating jobs for their residents can help grow their economies, help them compete. And it’s those kinds of things that can move votes in Congress, that can move our residents who may not be climate activists as most people are not.

0:33:55.6 Hessann Farooqi: And in closing, the absence of federal leadership is all the more reason that our cities, our towns, our counties, our states need to step up and lead. It’s all the more reason that we need to have our residents’ backs. Because when cities work for working families, we can make sure that everyone has an affordable and healthy place to live. When cities work for working families, we can create opportunities for people to start small businesses. We can open great restaurants that have good food walking distance from our homes. When cities work for working families, we can make sure that everyone can get around to work or to school or to their medical appointments without having to have headaches or be stuck in traffic or having to break the bank. When cities work for working families, we create the best opportunities for our young people. We have parks and green space in every one of our neighborhoods so that everyone, the young and the young at heart, have a place to play. And when cities work for working families, we can make sure that we have fewer asthma attacks, less lung cancer, fewer people struggling with heat stroke. And we know that in Boston, we can lead the nation.

0:35:35.8 Hessann Farooqi: The city home to the first public school, the first subway tunnel, first public park in North America. Today, you go to cities and towns across the country and you find public parks and public schools, not because they’re all suddenly progressives or democrats, but because they recognize these are good common sense ideas that improve the lives of their residents and we can do the same on climate action. We’re already starting to with laws like BIRDO that cities everywhere recognize aren’t ideological or philosophical stands, but are just good ideas. And that’s what we have to think about climate change as. Climate action done right is an opportunity for us not only to solve the issue of greenhouse gas emissions, but to solve so many of the day-to-day challenges that hold our residents back. And if we can build a meaningful political coalition, and that means all of us, that means regular people talking about these issues in dinner tables and in neighborhoods, then we can build a lasting political coalition that brings everyone along. From our gas workers to our residents struggling with asthma attacks in the process of building better cities and ultimately building a better world. Thank you so much, everybody.

0:37:01.7 S4: Thank you, Hessann.

0:37:06.8 Julian Agyeman: So Hessann, the first comment, and it’s a comment on the question, is Hessann for President 2036. When I sat listening to you, I felt like I was listening to Barack Obama in 2004. Hessann, you’re a politician. Do you have aspirations?

0:37:25.8 Hessann Farooqi: I really enjoy my current job and I look forward to any future opportunities. And I think, and I look, I don’t just mean that facetiously, I think, and I really do enjoy this because what I have learned, I think especially from, as you mentioned, President Obama, is that it’s not enough to just elect really great people to office. You also have to have a movement of people on the ground who can keep pushing for change, who can keep working with elected officials, keep making sure that we have legislators who are supporting what executives want to do. And so it’s just a real honor to be part of this work, but I appreciate the kind words here.

0:38:03.3 Julian Agyeman: Right. Look, can we, if I ask you to speak, then you can speak, but it’s not a free for all, thank you. That was said though, Hessann, very much like a politician that you will neither confirm nor deny, but I’m gonna watch you Hessann because I have high hopes. We’ve got some great questions, lots of them, not going to get to them all. And I’m going to leave the current state of federal government to the end because it’s depressing. So how do the immediate needs of unhoused people fit into Boston’s Green New Deal plans?

0:38:40.9 Hessann Farooqi: Yeah, that’s a great question. Yeah, this is a key issue. First and foremost, of course, we know there are many issues that lead to people not being able to have housing, right? It’s speculative real estate that drives up rents, but it’s too often also we’re not supporting people who are returning from being incarcerated. And those are some of the most likely folks to end up being homeless. So the city is taking an all the above approach. There are so many different aspects of their housing plan that we could have a whole separate webinar probably about. But in terms of how it fits into what I would define as the Green New deal, I would say, look, first of all, we know housing is a human right. And so we cannot have any kind of government that doesn’t further our rights as human beings. But we also know that in the context of climate, this is especially urgent. I mentioned displacement from climate issues and especially true with coastal flooding, If you are unhoused, as are some of the people who unfortunately have to spend their nights in what are flood prone areas, then this especially hurts you, right? It’s bad enough if you’re in a home that’s getting flooded.

0:39:49.1 Hessann Farooqi: Now imagine you’re on the sidewalk that’s getting flooded. So the issue of climate only exacerbates the urgency that we put a roof over the head of every single one of our residents. And the other issue is on all the work that we’re doing on buildings. One of the things that I hear most of all when we were talking about BIRDO and we go to all the neighborhoods is renters especially are worried that, yes, we require all these energy efficiency improvements and make the homes better, but does that mean that the landlords are gonna start raising rents and start pushing out the residents who live there? And it’s a real risk. And there are things that we can do to combat that. But the unfortunate reality and the frustrating one for so many of us who are focused on city policy is that in Massachusetts, too many cities and towns just do not have the legal authority to regulate the landlords who operate in our own city. Rent stabilization is probably one of the biggest pieces of this. If you’re a landlord, you can jack up your rent literally however much you want. There’s nothing that stops you from doing that. Of course, that’s a big part of why we see all the issues that we see. But too often we think about rent control or rent stabilization as being a housing issue. And it is, but then we say, okay, well, the housing people will take care of it.

0:41:15.1 Hessann Farooqi: And yes, there are some great leaders in our city who are taking this on, but we as climate people also need to be out there talking about rent stabilization, not just because we care about housing, but because we know that our work on climate and energy policy is inextricably linked to residents being able to stay in their homes. And we cannot have a city where, yes, we have lots of green buildings and then all the residents who lived in them before are gone. That’s unacceptable. We know the people who are hit first and worst by climate change, also need affordable housing the most, we can do these things together. And that’s why we need citi es to be able to have the power to take these issues on.

0:41:57.2 Julian Agyeman: Great, thanks Hessann. Jamon asks, I know that your focus is on Boston and US cities, but how might lessons learned from Boston be applied to cities in the global South?

0:42:08.8 Hessann Farooqi: Well, I would actually flip that on its head and say, actually some of the things that we’re doing were learned from what cities in the global South are doing. And even something like bus rapid transit. Cities in South and Central America have figured this out way better and earlier than we did. Which is to say, if you’re not familiar with the concept, that we have buses that can actually run quickly and on time and reliably, that have dedicated infrastructure that supports residents and using them. So I think that I certainly don’t think that we in Boston are going to have all the solutions and that the global South should play catch up. No, people are leading actually all over the world. And in some cases, because they’ve already had to do that because they don’t have some of the benefits that we have in Boston. You look at some of the cities in India, for example, who have had to deal with extreme air pollution in ways that we just haven’t here in Boston in most days. So they’ve already come up with innovative community led solutions. Sometimes those are happening in government and in many cases they’re not happening in government.

0:43:09.3 Hessann Farooqi: And as a result, residents are able to take on more power and actually define more of what their neighborhoods look like. One great example, microbrids, right? These are district energy systems, as nerds like me call it, but what it is, they generate power and you can link buildings together in a smaller distance. So if the main grid were to shut down, then you can still have power for your small group of buildings. Cities everywhere, including in the global south, have been doing this really successfully for a long time. And so we’re only starting to scratch the surface of community owned microbrids here in Boston and in Chelsea, which is next door. And so I appreciate the question, but I would say my question will be how my lessons learned in the global South be applied to Boston?

0:43:54.4 Julian Agyeman: Great, great answer. Thanks for that. Liz Sharp asks, you’ve talked, or you said we have to talk about health and wealth. She said you’ve talked a lot about the wealth stuff, jobs, but less about the health side. Can you say a little bit more about that?

0:44:11.6 Hessann Farooqi: Yes, I would. I studied economics in college, so you can tell my mind is always focused on the dollar signs. But I think one of the things that we did as an organization was on the Green New Deal for public schools. And this was absolutely a health issue because we had members of our organization who are parents of school students, public school students who said, look, our kids are getting sick because the air inside of these school buildings is not being ventilated well or being filtered. And especially during the pandemic, all of these students were at a way bigger risk. A lot of these school buildings are super, super old. And so they said, look, we’ve got to do something about this. And we knew that was right because lots of things make us sick. Sometimes it’s breathing in COVID-19, but it’s also breathing in the emissions from your gas furnaces that are in all of these school buildings. And so we worked with parents, with students, and with teachers to build a campaign that addressed climate as a health issue.

0:45:17.5 Hessann Farooqi: Because we said, look, this is about air quality, indoor and outdoor air quality, and we’ve got to make sure the air is clean for whatever reason the air might be dirty. In East Boston, as I mentioned, we have an airport, Boston Logan International Airport, and it is literally right in the backyards of residents and including the schools. And it was exceptionally poignant for students, particularly our youngest students, because their lungs are physically smaller. So breathing in the same amount of air pollution for them is way more devastating than it is for an adult. And I would say it is really on the air pollution side that we have had the greatest intersection and the greatest collaboration with public health practitioners, with physicians, and with parents and students who are just concerned about their health. And it’s that kind of thing that I think is way more tangible and immediate than talking about greenhouse gas emissions as some kind of larger, slower and longer term issue.

0:46:15.1 Julian Agyeman: Great, thanks. Belinda asks, is there a Cities For Climate Protection network of any kind that shares resources? And I understand there’s a ton of them.

0:46:25.8 Hessann Farooqi: There are a ton of them. So I’m sure I will not even mention some and I’m sure others here know the other ones. So put them in, But there’s a group called C40 Cities, and they bring together cities across the country, maybe even broader, to work together on climate. And Boston is one of the members of this. And there are also really great groups that bring together the community organizations, the advocacy organizations.

0:46:51.4 Hessann Farooqi: We’re part of a group called the Green New Deal Network, which is a national network. And they have on their website, fantastic ideas from Boston and many other cities about what city and state leadership on climate can look like. And through that network, I’ve been able to connect with my peers who run Green New Deal coalitions in other cities, because as I mentioned, the advocacy is critical in making this happen. And then there are even more specific groups like the Building Performance Standards Coalition, which is connecting cities specifically on these building emissions laws like BIRDO. Lots of cities have done it now, lots of states even. And So coalitions like that are really great networks or sharing grounds, but we could probably name a dozen other ones to the point. Yeah.

0:47:37.9 Julian Agyeman: And in fact, I think Cities for Climate Protection which was formed by the International Council for local environmental initiatives was like in the late 80s. So yeah, the cities have been active on this for nearly 30 years or so. Lauren asks, can you provide a few concrete actions a typical individual in a typical city can do right now to combat climate change?

0:48:02.1 Hessann Farooqi: Yes. Well, I think if you live in a typical city, you’re already doing something right because in cities, our per person greenhouse gas emissions or carbon footprint is lower because in many cases we have smaller buildings or smaller living spaces, but also we can not drive more easily. So you’re already on the right track. But I think that other things that you can do, I think first in your own individual life, thinking about the energy efficiency of your own building is critical. And even as much as we can pass these kind of city level or state level policies, the implementation, which is to say the actual retrofits and renovations have to be done by building owners and by individual tenants. And so if you’re a renter, you should be talking to your landlord. And even if your landlord doesn’t want to do anything, think about the ways that you can improve the energy efficiency of your own building, of your own unit maybe. And some of that is just about lighting and water consumption. Water consumption is actually a surprising one for me, but it actually does make a difference because a lot of our hot water heaters are gas. So if we use less water, that’s less water that has to be heated by the heater.

0:49:09.2 Hessann Farooqi: And as a result, fewer emissions. But especially if you are building owner or a landlord, you are the perfect person to be taking on some of these things. And the great thing is that today, more than ever, we have really great support programs from governments and utilities to make some of those quite expensive retrofits and renovations a lot more accessible. They’re not perfect, and that’s a big source of our work is making them better but even just through some of the tax credits available through the Inflation Reduction Act, which by the way are still available and there’s nothing that the president can do to undo those things short of legislation, those are really powerful ways that you can make a big difference. And I mentioned, look, 70% of emissions come from buildings. That’s true in Boston and similar statistics are true in other cities. So I would say it’s really in the buildings that you should focus. And of course, if you can take a bus or a train as opposed to driving, fantastic.

0:50:07.0 Julian Agyeman: Great, thanks. Ali wants us to think about the meta crisis and the degrowth idea. You didn’t mention, you mentioned the crisis, but can you respond to this idea about degrowth, about less, scaling down, about the energy transition? You’ve said that, but just say a few words about how you relate to the degrowth concept.

0:50:31.2 Hessann Farooqi: Yeah, I think it absolutely needs to be said. Look, if you just think about the issue of climate, we would not be here if it weren’t for profit seeking corporations in the oil and gas sector and beyond, who were prioritizing their own profits above the health and safety of all of us. And I say were, it’s still happening. The fact is that it is through local community solutions that we can actually get away from some of that stuff, right? Community supported agriculture is a great example of this. Part of what drives so much of the energy and emissions in our country is agriculture. And we do this in an increasingly consolidated factory farm model, where it’s a small group of big corporations that call the shots. This hurts small farmers, but it also hurts all of us. When we have community agriculture and that can happen even in a city. We have urban farms here in Boston, and we buy groceries that are grown closer to where we live, but that are also grown by community members, by local residents, then we can actually help to transition away from some of these increasingly growth-focused corporate models. And that’s what they’re always gonna be.

0:51:45.5 Hessann Farooqi: Look, the goal of those corporations is to make a profit and they always want to increase their profit over time. That is, that’s what they’re doing. So we have to find different models of doing things. And the good news is, again, a lot of those models are already here in different places and supporting them is important. And then I’d say my last point on degrowth is particularly on managed to retreat away from the coastline. It just doesn’t make sense in some cases to be putting buildings right on the coastline. Even if we recognize, yeah, we wanna have more property development that can sometimes have other good effects. If the buildings are flooding a year or two after they open, as is the case here in Boston, it’s just not a smart idea and so we should be moving away from that stuff.

0:52:29.4 Julian Agyeman: Hessann, for the last thought, just contextualize what you’re doing now in the light of the plethora of things coming out of federal government. What’s your dominant theme? How are you protecting yourselves?

0:52:47.9 Hessann Farooqi: Yeah, this is the ultimate question that we grapple with every day. How are we dealing with it? I think at some level, I would say we just have to keep doing our work because it’s all the more important that cities are leading. Even in a place like Boston, in a place like Massachusetts, we are insulated from some of the things that are happening in other places of this country, but we shouldn’t think of ourselves as being in a completely exempt bubble from federal consequences. We see that certainly with the challenges of immigration. I hear stories of students in our own city who are not going to school because they’re afraid that they or their parents might be deported if their parents come to pick them up. And so we know that what happens in Washington affects us. And it is all the more reason for me, the way that I’ve approached it is we need to be working with an even bigger group of people and talking even more explicitly about the specific issue that is at stake here, which is, again, the influence of money in our government. That is the reason that we have climate change, but it’s also the reason that we have a broken immigration system, because those same corporate interests love to pay immigrants less. And that’s why we keep people in these very fractious situations.

0:54:05.5 Hessann Farooqi: And so the way that I’ve approached it is we need to be even more bold. We cannot back down, we can’t obey in advance as Timothy Snyder told us to do. We need to be clear about what is at stake. And I always come back to this. The people in Washington, and by this, the federal administration specifically, not the many career civil servants who’ve been working in these agencies for many years, but the leadership of the Republican Party wants nothing more than for us to throw up our hands and put our heads in the sand and say, it’s too hard. We can’t do anything about it. We should just quit while we’re ahead. They want nothing more than to see us get burnt out or to give up. And I am not going to give them the satisfaction personally. I want to make sure that we are doing even more than we ever have because it’s not just about protecting our residents from what’s happening in Washington. It’s about growing our work so that one day we can scale this because we know that what cities and states do become national policy. We’ve done it here in Boston and Massachusetts and we can continue doing the same thing in the next several decades in ways that will continue benefiting our residents and will certainly outlast the current individual in the White House.

0:55:20.5 Julian Agyeman: Hessann, can we give you a warm Cities@Tufts thank you and keep doing the great work.

0:55:27.2 Hessann Farooqi: Thank you.

0:55:30.1 Julian Agyeman: Our next colloquium will be on April the 2nd when Ingrid Waldron will talk about a history of violence, the legacy of environmental racism in Canada. Thanks everybody. And again, Hessann, thank you so much.

0:55:44.2 Hessann Farooqi: Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate everyone coming out.

0:55:48.8 Tom Llewellyn: We hope you enjoyed this week’s presentation. Click the link in the show notes to access the video, transcript, and graphic recording, or to register for an upcoming lecture. Cities@Tufts is produced by the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University and Shareable, with support from the Barr Foundation, Shareable donors, and listeners like you. Lectures are moderated by Professor Julian Agyeman and organized in partnership with research assistants Amelia Morton and Grant Perry. Light Without Dark by Cultivate Beats is our theme song and the graphic recording was created by Jess Milner. Paige Kelly is our co-producer, audio editor, and communications manager. Additional operations, funding, marketing, and outreach support are provided by Allison Huff, Bobby Jones, and Candice Spivey. And the series is co-produced and presented by me, Tom Llewellyn. Please hit subscribe, leave a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts, and share it with others so this knowledge will reach people outside of our collective bubbles. That’s it for this week’s show.