A Livable Planet for All

Introduction

Climate change is upon us — across the country, and right here in NY-7. Our energy bills are skyrocketing, our waterfronts are flooding, our kids are inhaling pollution and wildfire smoke, and our apartments are becoming dangerously hot in the summer. And it will only get worse.

Voters in both parties overwhelmingly prefer policies that will help the climate, but private interests like fossil fuel companies, big tech, and utilities — as well as the politicians who take their money — have consistently let them down. We’ve reached this point because of an extractive, capitalist system that prioritizes short-term profit over the health and well-being of ordinary working people. Fossil fuel companies and private utilities line the pockets of their shareholders instead of delivering cheaper, renewable energy to working families. Tech oligarchs build data centers to boost their stock prices while too many struggle just to keep the lights on. The same economy that’s deepening inequality and creating an affordability crisis is burning the planet. The solution must address both problems at once.

Our Vision

Americans deserve an economy that is affordable, worker-focused, and climate-friendly. By ushering in a Green New Deal that creates millions of jobs, we can make energy cleaner and more affordable for everyone, all while building the climate-resilient infrastructure that protects our homes and neighborhoods. Claire will advance policies that use the full power of the federal government to drive a just transition to a green, worker-led economy of the future. She will fight to rein in the influence of private interests that have delayed progress on these widely popular proposals. And she will actively support efforts to reduce exposure to pollution and toxic chemicals right here in the district, which have had lasting impacts on the health of too many neighbors, especially in North Brooklyn. All of these goals reinforce our fight for a more just and affordable economy: Claire’s vision would lower costs and create millions of high-quality, union jobs to help build the future we need.

As a member of Congress, Claire will:

• Call for freezing electricity rates, holding corporations accountable, and investing in a rapid transition to an affordable, clean, and reliable energy system;
• Push for tough AI regulation, so its rapid expansion doesn't increase energy bills, degrade the environment or lay off millions of workers
• Fight to build resilient infrastructure that protects communities from flooding, extreme heat, and other climate impacts;
• Work to update labor standards to include heat protections, and support local cleanup efforts where toxic exposure has harmed residents for years

Drive Down Utility Bills and Rapidly Transition to Clean Energy

The case for transitioning to renewable energy has never been stronger; decades of research, technological innovation, and supply chain investments have made wind and solar energy more affordable than fossil fuel alternatives. And greening our energy system will make us healthier and better able to withstand oil market disruptions, while slowing the advance of climate change. Achieving a grid that is powered entirely by clean energy will require the full force of the federal government. Towards that end, Claire will work to:

• Freeze electricity rates and deliver immediate relief. Skyrocketing utility bills are a crisis today. Claire will fight to enact a federal freeze on residential electricity bills, giving working families immediate protection from rate increases while we invest in the clean and affordable energy system of tomorrow. To ensure that utilities do not use a rate freeze as an excuse to slow investment, the freeze will be paired with federal incentives conditioned on utilities meeting clean energy buildout. Big commercial and industrial customers, including data centers, will remain exposed to market rates, preserving the price signal for those with the ability to curtail energy demand while protecting households who depend on electricity for basic needs.
• Build a federal public power authority. Private utilities and independent power companies are incentivized to generate returns for their shareholders, not to deliver affordable, clean, and reliable energy to working families. Our private energy system is a core reason that the transition to renewable energy has been slow and costly. Claire will fight to establish a federal public power authority with the mandate and financial capacity to do what private interests won’t: plan and build new clean energy, support states and cities in acquiring and forming publicly-owned utilities, and finance the infrastructure and supply chains necessary to decarbonize our energy system.
• Create a national clean energy standard (CES). Alongside making generational investments in our energy system, Claire will work to pass a federally enforceable, national CES that requires utilities be powered by 100% clean energy. The CES will ensure high standards for worker, public, and environmental safety, and it will be paired with federal incentives that enable utilities and industry to meet the ambitious timeline that our climate demands. Clean energy standards have been highly effective job creators for U.S. workers, especially when coupled with investments in our energy system.

Make Data Centers Pay Their Fair Share

The rapidly growing Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry has an insatiable demand for power, with hyperscaling tech companies rapidly building new data centers anywhere they can. These centers demand enormous amounts of electricity and water, disrupt local communities, and increase fossil fuel consumption; by 2030 a quarter of new power demand will come from these centers. They’re also hitting people’s wallets: electricity bills will rise an average of 8% nationwide by 2030 and up to 200% or more in some areas because of data centers and cryptocurrency mining.

Given limited energy available through existing sources, tech companies are increasingly purchasing or directly building “off grid” power, most using natural gas, through subsidiaries that invest in power and sell electricity. This practice risks increasingly privatizing what should be publicly owned, and could lock in a dependency on coal and natural gas sources that need to be phased out, undermining the just transition to renewable energy that we desperately need. Claire will fight to rein in this unchecked expansion, and to reimagine renewable-powered computing that serves public interest applications — like research — and is accountable to working people. Specifically, she will fight to:

• Stop data center expansion without safeguards. Claire will fight to put a moratorium on AI data center expansion. Claire will cosponsor the proposed bill from Senator Sanders and Representative Ocasio-Cortez that would place a moratorium on new data center development contingent on several safeguards being in place, including worker protections related to job displacement, effects on energy prices, and climate impacts. As a member of the Assembly, she has cosponsored a similar moratorium here in the state.
• Make sure you don’t pay for data centers’ energy usage. When a tech company builds a new data center, it can trigger billions in upgrade costs to our electric grid. Under the current system, some of those costs can flow through to your utility bill. Worse, tech companies that build data centers through subsidiaries can restructure or exit their energy commitments entirely, leaving working families footing the bill. Trump’s response has been to ask these companies to voluntarily pledge they won’t raise your bills — a promise with no teeth. Claire will work to pass federal legislation requiring data centers to pay the full costs of the grid infrastructure their data center requires, and that those payments be locked in before a single shovel hits the ground.
• Force tech companies to invest in public power, not just themselves. Tech companies currently have two moves when it comes to investing in energy: connect to the grid and let your family pay for the upgrades their data centers require, or build their own private gas plants and skip commitments entirely. Claire will push for another path, fighting to ensure that tech companies invest in the grid via a federal fund to build out publicly-owned power. And she will work to close the loopholes that allow tech companies to build private gas plants. Public power will not only ensure the public benefits from private investment, it will make our energy transition faster and more efficient by enabling federal coordination and procurement of new energy infrastructure.

Build Climate Resilience

Two of the hottest years on record in NYC happened in just the past five years. A large portion of our district is at very high risk of extreme heat, and heat-related deaths in the summer are rising, mainly due to a lack of air conditioning. Rising sea levels will increase the risk of coastal flooding in the areas near Newtown Creek and its intersection with the East River, with Greenpoint, Long Island City, and East Williamsburg all especially vulnerable. Climate change is here.

We need to adapt to these changes with infrastructure that’s more resilient. Claire will work to:

• Establish a federal Housing Climate Corps for building retrofits. A retrofit can make a building more resilient and energy efficient by improving insulation, modernizing cooling and heating systems, and reducing emissions. But the financing and coordination is often beyond what individual building owners can bear, and requires a large, dedicated workforce. The idea for a Climate Corps is not new: modeled after the New Deal era Civilian Conservation Corps, the concept gained momentum under the Biden administration but never received congressional funding, and was shuttered in 2025 by the Trump administration. Claire will fight to bring back a version of this program that focuses on building retrofits, with dedicated funding for public housing (including NYCHA), and to hire and train a new workforce that can earn a living wage and benefits, operated in partnership with unions.
• Expand access to cooling and cleaner air centers. When it’s dangerously hot, or when wildfire smoke fills the skies — as it did for a day in NYC in 2023, when our air quality was worse than any city in the world — people need spaces with cool temperatures and clean air. Claire will support legislation expanding funding opportunities for developing cooling centers and establishing resilience hubs in existing community spaces across the country. Here in NYC, she will fight for federal funding to transition public school buildings to clean energy with modernized cooling and air filtration, and replace flood and heat-prone asphalt playgrounds with green spaces for students and community members, turning schools into a model for local centers of climate resilience.
• Defend against sea level rise. As our seas rise, NY-7 is becoming increasingly susceptible to flooding, particularly in parts of the district along the East River waterfront and Newtown Creek. These areas have little natural protection from storm surge, leaving residents and critical infrastructure vulnerable to flooding. Claire will fight to secure federal funding to leverage natural infrastructure solutions such as living shorelines, bioswales, and wetland restoration that can help protect our communities from flooding while making the environment healthier. She will also invest in and expand the Army Corps of Engineers' capacity for natural climate resilience infrastructure development, and support the fight to keep them based in NYC.
• Make climate risk data public. To plan resilient infrastructure, in NYC and across the country, we need to know when and where climate impacts are likely to hit. With the Trump administration slashing funding for federal climate science and closing climate research centers, a growing industry of private companies — including a major firm based here in New York — are building models of climate risk and selling the data to governments, insurance companies, and consumers. But the private sector cannot be relied on to provide this information equitably and reliably. Claire will reverse this trend, by directing federal investment into public climate models, demanding transparency from private firms, and using federal funding to procure private data and license it for public use, ensuring that authoritative climate data is a public good, not a luxury.

Protect Workers and Communities From Environmental Harm

The concentration of environmental hazards in Brooklyn and Queens — including three of the city's four superfund sites, toxic fumes from the Greenpoint Energy Center and Ravenswood Generating Station — have created a serious public health problem in our district. Decades of industrial activity has left behind toxic chemical compounds associated with cancer, organ damage, developmental harms, asthma, and neurological symptoms, with exposure occurring directly in homes, schools, and public housing. Straddling Brooklyn Queens, Newtown Creek, one of the most polluted waterways in the country, has been contaminated for over a century by oil spills, heavy metals, sewage, and industrial waste, contributing to environmental degradation and indirect exposure risks in surrounding communities, and this is only one example in our backyard.

Environmental hazards, along with the negative effects of climate change, fall disproportionately on vulnerable populations, including low-income residents, renters, and communities of color, who often live in high-exposure areas, and lack access to environmental testing and mitigation.

Claire will work to quickly eliminate and alleviate these harms and ensure that promises made to residents are kept. In Congress, she will work to:

• Guarantee mitigation for homes and public buildings impacted by the Meeker Avenue Plume. Claire will push for a federally funded program to ensure that every home, school, and public facility experiencing vapor intrusion from the Meeker Avenue Plume receives comprehensive, no-cost testing and mitigation systems. This includes long-term monitoring, maintenance of installed systems, and proactive outreach so that renters and undocumented residents are not excluded from relief.
• Hold the EPA accountable for cleaning up Newtown Creek and the Wolff-Alport Chemical Company. After more than a century of contamination, the EPA’s Superfund cleanup efforts at Newtown Creek and in Ridgewood are finally underway. But the timelines have been delayed, and the Trump administration’s dismantling of EPA enforcement risks even further setbacks. Claire will fight to defend federal Superfund funding, hold polluters accountable for their share of cleanup costs, and rebuild the EPA, so it’s able to meet its commitments through partnership and oversight. She will also ensure that the cleanup plan accounts for sea level rise, so that flooding doesn’t bring buried contamination back into surrounding neighborhoods.
• Retire all fossil fuel-burning power plants by 2035. A clear timeline to phase out all fossil fuel plants is essential to meeting our climate goals and protecting public health. Facilities like the Ravenswood Generating Station and the Greenpoint Energy Center sit directly next to NYCHA complexes, creating lasting health problems for residents. We must move quickly to shut them down as we transition to renewable energy sources. But we must also ensure workers currently reliant on the fossil fuel industry are not left behind. As part of her commitment to a federal jobs guarantee, Claire will fight to ensure that displaced fossil workers have a pathway into the work of building a modern, green economy.
• Complete Bushwick Inlet Park. For years, residents have been let down by the slow progress to remediate and complete the development of Bushwick Inlet Park. Claire will use the power of her office to help bring the polluters responsible for the area’s contamination — National Grid, Chevron, and Exxon — to the table, secure the remaining funding, and ensure the plan for the park is fully completed.
• Mitigate the effects of Green Asphalt and hold them accountable. The spewing of debris from Green Asphalt has left many on both sides of Newtown Creek suffering from noxious odors, with additional reports of worsened breathing. Claire will continue to be an outspoken advocate for Blissville and Greenpoint, ensuring Green Asphalt does not resume operations until the stack height has doubled, and that the NYS DEC levies appropriate fines and closely monitors air quality testing.
• Establish strong federal labor standards to protect workers from extreme heat. Cities across the country are experiencing more and more days with dangerously high temperatures, and workers are particularly vulnerable. The Biden administration proposed a comprehensive Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) heat standard in 2024 but the Trump administration stalled rulemaking and then gutted OSHA’s existing enforcement program, all while temperatures continue to rise and workers continue to die. To address dangerous heat exposure for workers, Claire will fight to enact and enforce a federal OSHA heat standard by helping pass the Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness Prevention Act — which includes mandatory water, rest, and shade breaks and safeguards workers in construction, delivery, agriculture, warehousing, and other high-exposure sectors.