A Cleaner and Greener California

Clean Air and Clean Water

What is the problem?

Los Angeles is notorious for its level of pollution, and the effects are widespread. A recent report shows that Los Angeles has the most polluted air in the nation. Short-term effects of our polluted air can include illnesses such as pneumonia or bronchitis in addition to irritation to the nose, throat, eyes, or skin along with headaches, dizziness, and nausea. Long-term health effects include heart disease, lung cancer, and respiratory diseases and can even cause birth defects.

What is Mia’s Plan?

Mia recognizes that the health of our communities is intricately tied to our response to the climate crisis, so she will support policies such as environmental remediation, cleaning up hazardous sites, and capping abandoned oil wells. She will also support a 2500-foot setback between oil wells and residential neighborhoods, schools, and hospitals. Mia recognizes it’s vital to quickly transition away from a system dependent on fossil fuels which is why she supports expanding clean energy like solar and wind, especially to lower-income communities.

Mia will also pursue a simple yet powerful solution—substantially increasing our investment in planting trees. Increasing tree cover provides a wealth of benefits, including reductions in surface temperatures (by double digits), energy needs for air conditioning, rain runoff (by as much as 60%), and particulate matter levels in the air (by 50%). Increased tree cover is also associated with a surprising mental health benefit—lower rates of depression, even when controlling for a host of socioeconomic factors. Attaining all of these benefits is completely feasible because trees pay for themselves in the long run. In New York City, for example, the city spends about $14 million each year on its tree program, and those trees deliver approximately $122 million in benefits—a massive return on investment. 

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A Just Transition: Climate, Jobs and the Economy

What is the problem?

Too often, environmental action is dichotomized as an “either/or” proposition between a healthy environment and a healthy economy. Enemies of bold climate action will often try to pit the climate against the economy in an attempt to protect their profits. But we don’t need to pick between economic prosperity or saving our planet: a strong response to the climate crisis can also provide a powerful boost to the economy.

What is Mia’s Plan?

A bright and livable future will require that we transition away from fossil fuels. As we do so, Mia will fight to ensure that the transition is one that is just. The nearly 75,000 fossil fuel workers will not be left high and dry. Instead Mia will make sure that there are plentiful jobs in the renewable energy industry that these workers can transition to with paid transition training. As part of a California Green New Deal, we can create tens of thousands of good-paying, union-protected jobs involving the installation of solar panels, building wind farms, retrofitting buildings for optimized energy efficiency, and improving the capacity and efficiency of our stormwater capture systems.

Bold climate policies will ensure not only a healthier planet but also well-paying jobs, a strong economy, and thriving communities. 

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A Green New Deal for Housing

What is the problem?

The harshest effects of the climate crisis are felt by those who are most susceptible to the elements—our unhoused neighbors. Constant exposure to extreme heat and high levels of pollution can be deadly, and this exposure is a substantial reason why five homeless people die in Los Angeles every single day. Due to more extreme cold weather, more of our unhoused neighbors die of hypothermia in Los Angeles than in San Francisco and New York combined.

Families living in dangerous and outdated housing are also living the climate crisis. Older residences can contain asbestos, toxic pipes, lead paint, and more that are dangerous to people living in them. Retrofitting buildings and single-family homes, including equipping them with solar panels, can save lives and secure a livable future.

What is Mia’s Plan?

In the Assembly, Mia will introduce a Green New Deal for Housing. She will take action on the housing crisis through an environmental justice lens. Mia recognizes that the sharp edge of the climate crisis is felt by our unhoused neighbors, so she will fight for increased investments in permanent, affordable housing so we can keep people in their homes and get people off the streets where they are most vulnerable.

Through a Green New Deal for Housing, Mia will fight for millions of dollars to retrofit and electrify existing housing and ensure that all new developments are powered on 100% renewable energy.    

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Climate Justice is Racial Justice

What is the problem?

Climate justice is a racial justice issue because of environmental racism—the reality that BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities have unequal access to basic resources, clean air, and uncontaminated water. This means that BIPOC communities disproportionately feel the worst effects of the climate crisis. 

Some examples of environmental racism include:

• Food Insecurity. Black people experience food insecurity in the U.S. at twice the rate of White people. People experiencing food insecurity lack access to high-quality, nutritious food. This lack of access means that low-cost, processed foods are sometimes the only means of survival. However, a mere 10% increase in ultra-processed food in a diet increases the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by a staggering 15%. This environmental injustice is a big reason why Black people develop Type 2 diabetes at twice the rate of White people. And as climate change continues to disrupt our global food supply chains, food insecurity will only worsen, and the accompanying health consequences will continue to be felt disproportionately by Black people.

• Clean Air. Black people are 75% more likely than white people to live in high-emission “fence-line” communities and 21% more likely to have a coal plant within 30 miles of where they live. Those of us who live in these communities breathe in higher concentrations of pollutants, which can cause asthma & heart problems. Unsurprisingly, asthma rates for Black children (13.4%) are approximately twice as high compared to White children (7.3%). 

• Uncontaminated Water: EPA data from 2016-2019 shows that the number of chronically non-compliant water systems was 40% higher in communities, with the highest percentages of residents being people of color. These non-compliant systems are often rife with metals, arsenic, lead, mercury, and PFAS (aka “forever chemicals”). These pollutants can produce airway inflammation, asthma, obesity, and autoimmune disease.

What is Mia’s Plan?

Racism is too deeply embedded in our societal structure for us to overcome it by merely enacting incremental aesthetic solutions. This is why each of Mia’s policy proposals, especially those that relate to climate change, centers around racial justice. Treating issues like the climate crisis as intersectional with racial justice is the only way to remedy the status quo that continuously plagues communities of color disproportionately.

Mia will take on environmental racism and work to address the negative impacts they have had on Black and brown communities. In the Green New Deal, Mia will advocate for resources to be sent to clean toxic sites, decommission fossil fuel infrastructure, build community health centers, and create good-paying jobs. 

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A Green New Deal for Public Transit

What is the problem?

Public transportation is one of the best ways we can reduce vehicle emissions and get people to their destinations safely. Our government has tested making public transit free during the early stages of the pandemic with substantial success. However, the government resumed fare collection soon after. Getting more people off of the streets and into green public transportation will save lives, both immediately (due to reduced traffic fatalities) and in the long term (by improving air quality and reducing CO2 emissions that cause global warming).

What is Mia’s Plan?

Mia will fight to remove barriers to public transit by making all public transportation free on a permanent basis. Another way we can use transportation policy to further environmental justice is to make our State, and especially our big cities like Los Angeles, more hospitable to bikes and pedestrians. Many of us don’t view biking or walking short distances to be a good way to get around due to the inherent dangers posed by many of our streets that are designed to prioritize travel by car over all other methods of travel. However, we can and should invest in protected bike lanes, more and improved sidewalks, and pedestrian-only zones so we can remove as many barriers to walking and biking as possible. This will further help get cars off the streets, save people money on gas, alleviate traffic, and reduce pollution.

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