Stacey Abrams helped Georgia go blue. Now she wants it to go green.

[marmar]

(Grist) Though best known for her voting rights work, Stacey Abrams is a fierce climate advocate. The former Georgia state representative and gubernatorial candidate has worked on environmental issues since her college days in the ’90s, when she interned with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and wrote her senior thesis on environmental justice. Before attending graduate school, she even worked for the then–brand new Office of Environmental Justice in the Clinton administration’s EPA.

At the time, Abrams told Grist, there was a sense in the national dialogue that tackling climate change was important, but not urgent. “I think we have now hit this inflection point where people recognize that climate action is both urgent and important,” she said.

When Abrams entered politics in 2006, she fought for policies that treated issues like income inequality, transportation, and environmental justice as interconnected. One of her biggest achievements as minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives was working with Republicans to pass the 2015 Transportation Funding Act, which created a permanent funding stream for infrastructure improvements and included the biggest cash injection into public transportation in state history.

These days, in addition to leading her voting rights organization Fair Fight, Abrams also runs the Southern Economic Advancement Project, or SEAP, which produces policy research to advance economic security, health care access, and environmental justice for Southerners. The nonprofit’s first report, released last year, outlines the South’s unique vulnerabilities to climate change and offers a policy roadmap to reduce emissions in the region. ..............(more)

https://grist.org/transportation/stacey-abrams-on-voting-rights-climate-transportation/

[Mickju]

1. There needs to be a Stacey Abrams in every red state.

I know, it won't happen.