Michelle Wu: The First Climate Mayor
Michelle Wu made Boston history on November 16th, 2021 when she became the new Boston Mayor, the first woman and the first Asian-American to be elected into office. She comes from immigrant parents and graduated from Harvard Law School. Before becoming mayor, Wu was on the Boston City Council for eight years, collecting experience for her next step as mayor.
Her platform is centered on the “pursuit of racial, economic, and climate justice.” More specifically, she is the first person to run and win on a green New Deal Platform. Wu released a plan called “Planning for a Boston New Green Deal and Just Recovery” that outlines how she plans to deal with climate change and the social issues that come with it. Her stance on progressive climate justice leadership and her successful climate campaign have made her the first real climate mayor.
Through her New Green Deal plan, Wu has already made headway on many different policies and regulations that have to do with reducing the impact of climate change in the Boston area. Within less than a week in office, she signed a measure that stops the investment of Boston funds into fossil fuel industries. This rule specifically barred public money from being used to invest in companies that earn 15 percent or more of their profit from fossil fuels and tobacco use, which in total equals around $65 million that the city needs to divest by 2025.
Wu has also recently proposed a $3.9 billion budget to be invested in Boston housing. She plans to commit $380 million towards affordable housing projects and $350 million to boost Boston's green economy and climate resilience adaptations, which include electrifying the city’s public transportation system, creating a composting program, and investing in more open spaces.
Her affordable housing project budget was unprecedented, due to the large investment amount, but it is clearly needed. Boston's affordable housing has not received much attention and desperately needs more funding, with upcoming climate impacts that will be detrimental to the affordable housing communities.
Another upcoming plan is electrifying the city’s vehicle fleet as a part of her Green New Deal. This plan calls for electrifying all school buses and replacing the diesel ones. The plan is to electrify all buses by 2030, and she has already made some progress on this goal. Boston public schools have recently purchased 20 electric school buses as a part of their pilot program to be deployed during the 2022-23 school year. The plan also includes launching the electric vehicle “train the trainer” program which will teach students how to maintain electric vehicles as a way to grow the green jobs workforce in Boston.
Through all of these initiatives and policies, it has become clear that Michelle Wu is truly one of the only climate mayors out there that has made headway on her promises for a greener future. Other climate mayors include Bill de Blasio who has talked about climate goals for the eight years he was New York City mayor but was never able to do what was necessary to pass any climate policies and Mayor Sylvestor Turner of Houston who launched a climate action plan and has been able to achieve 3 out of 18 targets of Resilient Houston.
In this new age of politics, climate change becoming one of the major focuses is changing the way politicians are weighing important legislation. During the pandemic, it was hard to focus on enacting climate change policies because the present consequences of COVID-19 were a lot harder than the future impacts of climate change. But Michelle Wu has made it clear that one can juggle both and be successful in passing legislation that addresses both COVID-19 injustice and climate injustice. Wu’s Green New deal and recovery plan are the future of climate change legislation, both at the local and national levels.