🚨🚨 Today, we’re launching “Stop Greed Build Green,” a strategic framework and agenda to confront the affordability crisis and the climate crisis together by putting working people in charge of the economy and the climate transition. (1/10)
Awesome, Santa Cruz is very lucky!
Well, much of that funding had not even been distributed to some groups when the county refused to grant a no-cost extension, long before the draft specific plan and PEIR were even available to the public for community engagement.
ICYMI, Check out our report on lithium valley from last month. Power With a Purpose: Addressing Critical Gaps in Imperial County’s Lithium Valley Specific Plan. ccvhealth.org/reports/powe...
For more details, check out our report on the Lithium Valley Specific Plan: bsky.app/profile/jjab...
Our new report examines the California Grid Manufacturing Initiative introduced in AB 2516, a pro-worker green industrial policy designed to manufacture critical electricity grid components, lower energy costs for Californians, and create high-road green jobs. climateandcommunity.org/research/a-n...
Thanks for sharing. There is a lithium excise tax in California that was established in 2022 (SB 125) as the result of organizing from labor unions and environmental justice groups. legiscan.com/CA/text/SB12...
"Is Lithium Valley really a vision that's going to be a clean energy hub?" said James J. A. Blair, a professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, who has studied lithium extraction. "Or is it kind of a Trojan horse for these other industrial harms?"
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/u...
If your position is that next-gen industries can and should be built responsibly to avoid worsening the harms of a legacy of extractive development in places abandoned by oil/gas/coal/etc., you should take a keen interest in Lithium Valley.
You get at most one shot at getting these things right.
The county extended the deadline to submit public comments to April 17: imperialcounty.org/lvsppeir/
Imperial Valley has an opportunity to lead the way in renewable energy development. That leadership must begin with enforceable mitigation standards, transparent accounting of impacts, and measurable community benefits.
• Increased heavy-duty truck corridors through already overburdened communities
• Improper conclusion of consultation pursuant to AB 52 with insufficient mitigation for Tribal Cultural Resources
Read the full report and complementary fact sheets here:
• Insufficient cumulative impact assessment
• Estimates for water supply, energy demand, VMT, GHG emissions, and solid waste production not updated to reflect extended development timeline (10 years missing from the PEIR)
• Infrastructure planning deferred to unfunded future entities
Our report identifies several structural concerns in the revised draft Specific Plan, including:
• Streamlining of industrial uses beyond lithium and geothermal (e.g. data centers, anaerobic digestion facilities, green hydrogen and hydrogen fuel stations, and recycling centers)
I had the privilege of leading the research and writing of this new report commissioned by Comite Civico Del Valle and The POWER Coalition that analyzes Imperial County’s Draft Lithium Valley Specific Plan and its environmental health implications.
www.ccvhealth.org/reports/powe...
Ugh, same here! Just couldn’t get myself to do this any earlier.
Action Network petition: Cancel ChatGPT Edu. Invest in Humans. In February 2025, the California State University system announced a $17 million contract with OpenAI to provide ChatGPT Edu to all faculty, staff, and students on its 22 CSU campuses as part of a larger “AI-Empowered University” initiative. This is the largest contract ever established between a university system and an artificial intelligence company. Despite the name, ChatGPT Edu is not educational technology. It is a general-purpose chatbot that is not designed, trained, or optimized for education. Beyond its privacy and security features, ChatGPT Edu is identical to the free online version of ChatGPT. ChatGPT Edu does not use reliable peer-reviewed sources to answer students' questions and is indifferent to whether its answers are correct. Experts argue that ChatGPT Edu is harmful to academic working conditions, diminishes the quality of teaching and learning, introduces new forms of discrimination, and is dangerous to students' mental health. Recent polling shows that CSU students share these concerns, with the majority of students expressing that they are worried about the negative impacts of generative AI on human creativity and the environment.
Cal State University’s deal with OpenAI — providing ChatGPT to all faculty, students, and staff — will expire in June 2026. Amid the prospect of layoffs in the CSU, we’re asking the chancellor not to renew this costly and demoralizing contract.
Link below and anyone can sign:
The 1956 Lumbee Act was amended this week, concluding a decades-long effort to have Congress strike discriminatory language that subjected Lumbees to nearly 70 years of partial federal recognition. But no longer. The Lumbee Tribe of NC is now *fully* recognized by the US—the 575th Native Nation.
It was a pleasure to be interviewed for this excellent EcoJustice Radio podcast episode that focuses on geothermal lithium development at the Salton Sea. It includes critical insights from community partners as well.
socal350.org/ecojustice-r...
Imperial County Board of Supervisors meets tomorrow. They will consider a few recommendations from the planning commission including resolutions to deny a water supply assessment, environmental impact report certification, and other variances needed for a large solar + storage project on farmland.🔌💡
Last call before the deadline. Accepting applications until filled.. #academicbluesky 🧪🏡
I have been wanting something like this for so long because of the missed opportunities in many Community Benefits Agreements to date. Feel lucky so many people are committed to making a better world and laying the groundwork for it with this sort of solid research.
Our new report examines a wide range of detailed case studies of communities involved in community benefits agreement (CBA) negotiations.
open.substack.com/pub/climatec...
New report on community benefit agreements!!! It was super fun to work with this amazing team and with @cplusc.bsky.social on a timely and important topic.
Building Community Power: Community Benefits Agreements Across the Global Energy Supply Chain.
Who should benefit from the energy transition? Communities? Workers? Billionaires?
As federal posture toward a clean energy supply chain shifts rapidly, our new report shows that communities are turning to community benefit agreements (CBAs) to gain control over their futures. 👇
Excited to share our new report for @cplusc.bsky.social
Building Community Power: Community Benefits Agreements Across the Global Energy Supply Chain
This is practically a book’s worth of research and writing. An interactive CBA toolkit is also forthcoming. Grateful to work with such a great team!
