Peoples Climate Movement

The People’s Climate Movement is calling for a transition to a New Energy and Economic Future. We are a national network of environmental, labor, economic justice, climate justice, faith, youth, and community organizations working together to build a larger, stronger, and more powerful social movement that can address not just climate change, but racial, environmental, and economic inequity. We believe that the grave problems facing our country stem from a broken economic system and a democracy captured by the 1% and that they cannot be solved in isolation. The People's Climate Movement brings together people and organizations to support and build a powerful grassroots movement rooted in racial and economic justice that can catalyze a New Energy and Economic Future. 

In 2015, the United States joined with the rest of the world in Paris to set forth ambitious goals for climate action. The universal agreement’s main aim is to keep this century’s global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius and to drive efforts to stabilize that rise even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. To meet these goals – scientifically determined to realize a future in which people are protected from climate change – we believe that the requisite transition to clean energy must rebuild, renew, and restore our economy and reorganize the balance between people, the environment, and our economy. 

That balance will only be achieved when we prioritize the well-being of people over profit, protect and strengthen front-line communities, mandate racial and cultural equity for those too often left out or left behind, and invest in institutions that strengthen and enhance the common good of all people while combating the crisis of climate change.  

To achieve a transition to a New Energy and Economic Future, the People’s Climate Movement is calling on our existing partners as well as other progressive, democratic organizations and leaders in government, the private sector, civil society, and academia to pursue the following strategies: 

• Directly and rapidly reduce greenhouse gas and toxic pollution to successfully combat climate change and improve public health • Mandate a transition to an equitable and sustainable New Energy and Economic Future that limits the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels • Provide a Just Transition for communities and workers negatively impacted by the shift to a New Energy and Economic Future that includes targeted economic opportunity and provides stable income, health care, and education • Demand that every job pays a wage of at least $15 an hour, protects workers, and provides a good standard of living, pathways out of poverty, and a right to organize

• Ensure that in the New Energy and Economic Future, investments are targeted to create pathways for low-income people and people of color to access good jobs and improve the lives of communities of color, indigenous peoples, low-income people, small farmers, women, and workers.  • Make bold investments in the resilience of states, cities, tribes, and communities that are threatened by climate change; including massive investments in infrastructure systems from water, transportation, and solid waste to the electrical grid and safe, green building and increasing energy efficiency that will also create millions of jobs in the public and private sector • Reinvest in a domestic industrial base that drives towards an equitable and sustainable New Energy and Economic Future, and fight back against the corporate trade-induced global race to the bottom • Market and policy based mechanisms must protect human rights and critical, native ecosystems and reduce pollution at source 

The People’s Climate Movement is calling on our existing partners and inviting new partners to join us in this call for a New Economic and Energy Future. Key to the success in building a movement towards the goals above is strengthening relationships between existing and new partners. We commit to collaborating in a way that prioritize strengthening relationships with each other. We are creating a representative and democratic movement that reaches nation-wide in order to demand and win the immediate need for a transition to a New Economic and Energy Future that addresses not just climate change but racial, social and economic equity and human rights.