aAmericans don’t care about the climate crisis, they only care about the economy. That’s the message some geeks have been sending out over the past year as the Trump administration dismantled environmental protections. But a group of influential progressives argue that the shift away from climate change is misguided.
“The climate crisis is a central driver of the cost of living crisis and instability seen across the economy,” says a new policy platform from the left-wing think tank Climate Community Institute (CCI).
The proposal, “Stop Greed, Build Green,” outlines a framework for what the authors call “green economic populism.” The group, which authored federal legislation for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders and pushed for the landmark New York Public Power Act, argues that decarbonization should be understood not as a competing priority with affordability, but as a potential means to achieving decarbonization.
This is a rebuttal to a growing chorus in Washington that claims climate policy is politically harmful.
Climate and Community Institute’s “Stop Build, Build Green” launch event held at the General Electric Building in New York City. Photo: Emma Dessau, Institute for Climate and Communities.
“The strength of this approach is that it directly challenges the perception that cutting emissions makes life harder and more expensive,” says Naomi Klein, a prominent left-wing author and CCI founding advisory board member.
The think tank recently unveiled its “Working Class Climate Agenda” at a launch event in New York City, where speakers included Louise Yang, Zoran Mamdani’s climate chief, representatives from the Democratic Socialists of America, and representatives from Cornell University’s Climate and Jobs Institute. A week later, CCI took that message to Washington, D.C., where it met with members of Congress and held a day-long panel discussion with former White House officials, Congressional staff, academics, advocates, and labor union leaders.
Supporters supported their proposal with new data. A recent survey by CCI and progressive polling firm Data for Progress found that 70% of voters, including 65% of Republicans, believe that climate action will reduce the cost of living. They say this suggests that workers, who have long been targeted by right-wing populists like Donald Trump, may be embracing environmental policies.
Louise Yang attends the Climate Community Institute’s “Stop Build, Build Green” launch event at the General Electric Building in New York City. Photo: Emma Dessau, Institute for Climate and Communities.
“What we need to focus on is the real pain that people are currently feeling in their daily lives as a result of decades of capital and government underinvestment in workers,” Patrick Biggar, CCI’s research director, said at an event in New York.
Other Democrats and progressives are now linking the cost of living crisis to the climate. But the CCI says it aims to go beyond short-term fixes by promoting economic democracy by confronting corporate power and shaping policy in partnership with trade unions and social movements.
“Achieving true affordability requires a fundamental rewiring of the hardware that drives the economy, not the wallets of shareholders and corporate executives,” said Rakeen Mahboud, a senior fellow and political economist at CCI.
From Green New Deal to Green Economic Populism
This approach is based on the Green New Deal, a comprehensive framework popularized by the Sunrise Movement and Ocasio-Cortez in 2018, for which the CCI served as the policy arm. The movement sought to link decarbonization to a broad expansion of social safety nets, promising jobs, housing, and health care along with a rapid energy transition.
CCI, then known as the Climate and Communities Project, helped develop the federal government’s Green New Deal proposals, including the 2019 public housing bill introduced by Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders and the 2021 schools bill introduced by then-Rep. Jamal Bowman and Sen. Ed Markey. This was a “big idea moment,” said CCI founding co-director Daniel Aldana Cohen, whose research was the basis for both efforts.
These federal efforts gained political traction but stalled in Congress. Elements of the Green New Deal were incorporated into more progressive policies, such as Biden’s Inflation Control Act of 2022 (IRA), which delivered large clean energy investments but fell far short of the broad economic reforms envisioned by progressives. After returning to power last January, the Trump administration quickly began unraveling these results.
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attend a rally and press conference in Washington, DC, on November 14, 2019. Photo: Michael Reynolds/EPA
The new platform aims to learn from both the strengths and limitations of that era. Like the Green New Deal, it brings to the fore the everyday material concerns of Americans.
Klein said past “neoliberal climate policies” such as carbon pricing policies paid little attention to the impact on household costs.
“The Green New Deal was our movement’s attempt to right these wrongs by focusing on expensive infrastructure and jobs programs,” she said. “But it was such a big picture that it came to seem unattainable to many people. And it was so far-fetched that detractors could lie about what it was and what it wasn’t.”
Green economy populism aims to make carbon reduction proposals more concrete, focusing on “touchable climate policies” rather than system-wide decarbonization, Aldana Cohen said.
“We need to show people, ‘Hey, these policies are for you,'” he said.
Cohen argued that one of the pitfalls of Biden-era climate change policy is that the benefits are uneven and often invisible. Despite its size, only 35% of voters in the 2024 survey said they had heard about the IRA “a lot” or “somewhat.” The new approach aims to quickly deliver tangible results, including lower bills and expanded access to heat pumps, union-built affordable EVs, and free electric buses.
While the Green New Deal focused on job creation, the new framework focuses on reducing everyday costs. Cohen said that while underemployment remains a concern, the green jobs created under the Biden administration are a “drop in the bucket” compared to the broader labor market. He added that all working people are feeling the cost of living crisis, and stressed that “fossil fuels are driving deadly wars and making living more expensive,” especially with fuel prices soaring due to the Iran war.
“Now we need to address the entire working class,” he said.
Building an organization that goes beyond elections
The CCI says demonstrating that climate change policies can improve people’s lives could help build a broader political coalition that seeks to protect and expand the policies. The organization says such efforts are already underway.
In New York City, Democratic Socialist Mayor Mamdani put affordability at the center of his campaign while integrating climate policy.
Katie Wilson speaks at a rally in support of the Starbucks barista strike on November 13, 2025 in Seattle, Washington. Photo: M Scott Brauer/Zuma via Alamy
“The Mayor has inspired New Yorkers by putting affordability front and center in his administration, and that extends to the way we think about solutions to climate change,” said Yang, Mamdani’s chief climate officer. “We want to make sure we infuse that value into everything we do.”
Seattle’s new socialist mayor, Katie Wilson, ran on a populist platform that integrated climate change, including plans for green public housing, among other things. “I think there’s a lot of alignment between my priorities in this administration and the green economy populist platform,” Wilson said at a recent CCI press conference.
CCI also points to non-electoral organizing, such as the Chicago Teachers Union, which is tying school investments to climate resilience, and Minnesota’s Tenants Campaign, which is paving the way for energy efficiency upgrades, as evidence that this approach is gaining momentum.
The platform calls for policies such as rent and insurance caps to protect residents from disasters and the cost of green upgrades, more free public transport, and taxes on polluters to fund climate programs. CCI also works with labor unions, social movements, and advocates to develop proposals and engages with members of Congress from mainstream progressives to traditional Democrats.
“By meeting with people who are not necessarily on the left side, we can get a better idea of what kind of green economy populist policies might resonate more broadly,” said Lucy Gourevitch, housing director at CCI and former senior policy adviser to Mr. Bowman. “We are trying to become the research arm of the majority coalition.”
raise a question
At the DC convocation, the CCI also sought feedback. Labor advocates have raised questions about the trade-off between job quality and cost containment. Sameera Fazili, who served as deputy director of the National Economic Council in the Biden administration, questioned whether large-scale public spending plans would gain traction in an environment of high debt. Jigar Shah, the Biden administration’s top clean energy finance official, also questioned whether the plan was too focused on price controls and regulations rather than technological solutions and innovation.
Shah said now is the perfect time to discuss and “build consensus” on how best to frame climate change policy.
“This is why I’m so happy that CCI has published this paper…and that they want my opinion,” he said.
Demonstrators gather outside Trump Tower during an Earth Day protest on April 22, 2026 in New York City. Photo: Selcuk Akar/Anadolu via Getty Images
Despite his feedback to the CCI, Fazili said he believes green economy populism can help show Americans that climate change doesn’t have to be a culture war issue. She said that during the Green New Deal era, green advocates were encouraged to put climate first, but green economic populism could help “push climate goals into other policies, the issues that are most salient to people.”
Experts say rapid and innovative emissions cuts are still urgently needed, but achieving them will require lasting political support, Biggar said.
“The really big emissions reduction gains will come from the broad structural changes we need to win over the long term,” he said. “We need buy-in to get there.”
