Southern communities know how to build a fair, just and thriving clean-energy economy

After four years of a president who didn’t believe in climate change — but who did believe the false idea that protecting our nation’s environment is bad for the economy — communities that have been suffering the effects of climate change welcome our government’s new interest in climate action.

From President Biden’s executive actions on environmental justice, to the Green New Deal, to actions at state and local levels, political leaders finally are focusing on policies that tackle the climate crisis while also growing the economy and addressing inequities that hold our society back.

But if these efforts are to be successful, they cannot be built using top-down thinking and wish lists from corporations, lobbyists and others with a lot of money and influence. A successful and just transition to a clean-energy economy requires the active participation of community-based environmental-justice organizations headquartered in places harmed by the climate crisis. People on the front lines know which climate strategies don’t merely sound good in the boardroom, but also work in the real communities they live in.

That’s what the newly released Southern Communities for a Green New Deal (SC4GND) platform is all about: making sure that low-income communities and communities of color on the frontlines of the climate crisis in the South are not left behind, but instead are front and center as we transition to a regenerative economy powered by clean energy and rooted in justice and equity.

More than 100 leaders and activists from across the South worked to develop the platform — from the grassroots up. So far, more than 160 community-based groups from Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia have endorsed the platform, as have groups from California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Washington, D.C.

The SC4GND’s key policy demands include:

- Ending fossil-fuel subsidies, halting new dirty-energy projects and redirecting energy investments to advance community control of clean, renewable energy.

- Investing in equitable water- and sewer-infrastructure upgrades, managing water resources to ensure everyone has access to safe and affordable drinking water and ending privatization of water resources.

- Transitioning away from industrial forestry and agriculture, restoring forests and soils, stopping the expansion of the biomassand wood-pelletenergy industries in environmental-justice communities, protecting land and investing in nature-based, locally-owned businesses.

- Strengthening labor protections, providing displaced workers and environmental justice communities with resources and training, especially community-led training offered locally; advancing solutions that shift governance of natural resources to communities.

- Making it easier for people to participate in democracy and divesting from corporate control of our government — especially corporations that harm our communities.

The American South has been hardest hit by climate change.

Tropical storms are growing wetter and stronger, and floods are more severe and more frequent. Our forests are being destroyed by industrial logging at four times the rate of the South American rainforests. We host five of the top 10 largest greenhouse-gas emitters in the country: Southern Company power plants in Juliette, Georgia; Quinton, Alabama; and Cartersville, Georgia; an NRG Energy plant in Thompsons, Texas; and a CPS plant in San Antonio.

Economists project that if business continues as usual, climate change could increase death rates by more than 20 people per 100,000 and impose the equivalent of a 20 percent tax in many counties. Dwindling harvests, soaring summer energy coasts, rising sea levels, worsening heat waves — all of these will have a devastating effect on the people of the South. And these problems are exacerbated by the fact that our region — especially in its Black, indigenous and Latino communities — has suffered from systemic underinvestment, overextraction, and poor infrastructure.

But we can also call on the South’s unique strengths. These include the astonishing biodiversity of our land and waters, a culture of resiliency in the face of repeated challenges and crises and a history of leading the march toward justice.

Once again, the South is rising to tackle one of our nation’s greatest challenges and achieve transformative economic and social change. Southern Communities for a Green New

Deal is the latest chapter of our age-old effort to form a more-perfect union, not just for people with wealth and power, but for all of the people who call our region — and our nation — home.

We can do this only by implementing a true new normal, using the ingenuity and creativity of people with limited resources to move this country forward, though formerly enslaved, forcefully removed from their indigenous lands or looked down upon as newly arrived immigrants. This is what the Southern Communities for a Green New Deal is all about.

Alex Easdale is the executive director of the Southeast Climate & Energy Network, headquartered in Sunrise, Florida. It is one of the organizations spearheading the Southern Communities for a Green New Deal initiative. The Rev. Leo Woodberry is pastor of Kingdom Living Temple in Florence, South Carolina, and executive director of the New Alpha Community Development Corporation, which is also a leader in the SC4GND campaign.