Chicago City Wire

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson attended New York Climate Week and the United Nations General Assembly as part of the C40 network, a coalition of cities working on environmental justice. During his visit, Johnson took part in a panel at Hunter College’s Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute titled “Powering Possibilities: Tackling Energy Costs in a Changing Climate.” He outlined several Chicago initiatives, including transitioning all city-owned buildings to 100% renewable energy, creating what he described as the largest green social housing fund in the country, launching Green Homes Chicago to reduce emissions and costs for residents, planting over 60,000 trees with an emphasis on areas lacking tree cover, building more than 100 miles of bikeways since taking office, and cleaning the Chicago River to enable its first open water swim in nearly a century.

In the afternoon, Johnson helped launch the Economic Transformation Action Plan as Co-Chair of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative’s Mayors Commission on Economic Transformation. The plan aims by 2035 to attract half a million businesses to the region, create over 18 million new jobs in blue and green industries, protect water quality, and cut emissions by 300 million metric tons. Johnson joined other regional leaders from Montreal, Cleveland, Toronto, and St. Catherine’s for a panel discussion at the Quebec Government Office in New York.

Johnson also addressed comments made by former President Donald Trump during Trump’s United Nations speech. Trump called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and criticized immigration policies globally.

“He’s wrong about the climate, and he’s wrong about immigration. Both of those things are ultimately connected,” Johnson said regarding Trump’s remarks. He referenced neighborhoods on Chicago’s Southwest Side affected by flooding and areas on the Southeast Side impacted by industrial pollution: “Tell those families that climate change isn’t real,” he said. “Where families are not able to breathe clean air. But it’s easy for a billionaire to be dismissive of these real injustices.”

Johnson listed local efforts such as powering public buildings with renewable energy and expanding sustainable housing: “We’re doing everything a local government can do to respond to climate justice,” he said. “From sustainable housing to planting more trees, we are leading the way.”

He cautioned against short-term thinking: “We cannot think about election cycles when it comes to environmental justice,” Johnson said. “We have to think about the long-term sustainability of our environment … and how our environmental investments will build an economy that can outlast a presidency or a term.”

In another interview with Channel 4 News, Johnson stated: "Well, first of all, let me just first start off by saying that the president of the United States of America is absolutely wrong about climate change, but he’s also wrong about immigration. In fact, both of them are tied together. As we have seen, poor policies that have been implemented, particularly in the western hemisphere, has had an incredible saturnine impact on the rest of the globe. And whether it’s global population shift or climate change, these are issues that, at the city level, that we have to address, and I’m doing that as mayor of the city of Chicago.”

He continued: "As city leaders, it’s our responsibility to make sure that we’re making our cities affordable and making sure that they’re safe, but we have to do it through the lens of climate justice. In the city of Chicago, we’re building green social housing, making it affordable and sustainable. It’s one thing to be able to afford to live in a particular home, but we also have to make sure that we’re building our economy for the future, and that’s what we’re doing in Chicago.”

“We have a president that is more concerned about a comedian than he is about making sure that a child has access to a fully funded public education system. He’s more concerned about someone’s tweet versus ensuring that people have good paying jobs. He’s more concerned about someone’s opinion versus being concerned about making sure that people can afford to live in our communities.”