Statement on today’s Supreme Court decision
Choice and agency are not guaranteed. Our decisions are shaped and governed by the world around us, by rules that are both implicit and explicit. In our electrification work at Rewiring America, our beacon is the shining truth that every American deserves to be able to choose health, prosperity, abundance, and a beautiful future for their families and communities. But our push to expand the range of vision offered to Americans extends well beyond power lines: to the power structures and conditions that need to change to allow for flourishing and freedom for all.
Environmental justice means that every individual in every community is deserving of fairness and freedom. At the community level, this means meaningful involvement in and agency over the decisions that touch our lives — from the quality of the air we breathe to making good on the limitless possibility for our families and our future.
Our work as a nation is to nourish, build, and affirm communities where people can create these beautiful futures together. Decisions like today’s Supreme Court ruling take us in the opposite direction, curbing opportunity, exacerbating inequality, and destroying the very foundational ideas at the root of our national identity.
But this just means we need to reapply ourselves to the work – to be louder and bolder. In climate, we have always known that we must push for the boldest, because anything less means failure of the worst kind. The good thing is that this vision of a better world that compels passionate action is not only viable, but true to who we are. The people who seek to take away our possibility and our future are always the same ones — limited in vision, and motivated by an unfounded and unsustainable scarcity mindset.
The climate-safe, just future we will build is not just one of abundant energy, but also one of unfettered agency, hope, and choice. It is one that gives everyone the freedom to thrive. Together, it is a future we will make certain we achieve.