Column: Economic recovery meets climate change head-on

As the world emerges from the pandemic, our attention is naturally turning to other critical matters: climate change, social justice, economic recovery and growth. These may seem like separate issues; in fact they are inextricably linked. To succeed at any one of them will require a comprehensive approach to all of them, and we have to start solutioning now.

Take climate change. Science tells us that on a global scale we need to halve our carbon emissions by 2030 to stave off its worst impacts. In Hawaii, we’ve legislated our intention to become carbon-neutral by 2045, but have lacked the follow-on action to get us there. To meet our climate goals, we must back our commitments with real investment.

Below, here’s how we see infrastructure, jobs and education through a climate lens. Goggles on, let’s go.

Infrastructure with a climate lens: Infrastructure investment is an important lever to pull in addressing climate change. We see this in everything from road usage tax, to electric-vehicle charging stations, to public transit services like bikeshare, to sequestering carbon in buildings. Island Ready Mix, Hawaii’s Department of Transportation and concrete-tech company CarbonCure have proved it possible to capture local carbon dioxide from industrial processes, inject it into concrete, and use that concrete for buildings and roadways. A city resolution has enabled this kind of project to scale from one roadway pilot to be considered in every single city infrastructure project.

Jobs with a climate lens: The American Jobs Plan and Infrastructure Plan put forth by President Biden’s administration is elevating the necessary conversation of the interconnected challenges of climate change, social equity and economic recovery. Research that supports the American Jobs Plan found that clean energy jobs pay 25% better than the national median wage. In 2018, Transcending Oil surfaced a similar finding: clean energy sector jobs in Hawaii pay $3 to $7 per hour more than the state’s median wage. Climate jobs aren’t just jobs in wind and solar, and don’t all require engineering degrees. They are technicians equipped with the latest energy efficiency technology, teachers in environmental science and STEM, farmers growing local food, roles in shared mobility and transit, bankers financing clean energy projects, and more.

Education with a climate lens: Supporting education to prepare people for those well-paying jobs means skills-training programs for today’s workforce as well as curriculum for in- and out-of-school learning for youth to be good stewards of this planet. Purple Mai‘a is doing both. They’re hosting training programs for those seeking jobs now, as well as education programs that fuse together technology and Hawaiian values for young entrepreneurs and students.

The good news is that we’re seeing extraordinary interest from young people seeking to take on climate change through their careers. This year, we received more than 1,400 applications for Elemental Excelerator summer internships. The interest, talents and energies of these young people fuel our optimism.

It is our mission at Elemental to redesign the systems at the root of climate change and to do that in an equitable way. We take seriously these bold commitments put forth by state government leadership — to double local food production, achieve 100% clean energy, and transition our city to 100% renewable ground transportation — and have been making investments toward making this a reality for the past 12 years.

Along the way, we’ve been able to solve and scale climate solutions, learned a lot and received critical feedback when projects didn’t go as planned. This is important. We cherish difficult conversations and recognize the urgency to have them now. We call on policymakers to invest in their commitments; on corporations to create climate goals, analyze greenhouse gas emissions in company operations and implement strategies to drive them down; and on whoever is willing to put on the climate lens for a day, look at the world around you, and seize the opportunity to take action.

Dawn Lippert is CEO of Elemental Excelerator, a nonprofit working against climate change that helps to accelerate climate-tech startups.