Photo courtesy of Holly Bender
Building on 10 years of experience working on the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, I have moved into a new and exciting role as a Senior Director for Energy Campaigns. In this role, I oversee the Sierra Club’s work across three critical and interconnected sectors: electricity, transportation, and buildings. I recently sat down (over Zoom!) with one of my heroes, Mary Anne Hitt, formerly the Director of Campaigns at the Sierra Club and now the Senior Director at Climate Imperative, to talk more about my new role and our opportunities to tackle the climate crisis.
Our conversation takes us back to the story of how I got into working on air pollution and climate change: We talk about the cancer-causing chemicals that pushed my family out of my childhood home, and about how pollution from fossil fuels affects us all – but affects low-income communities and communities of color first and worst. We talk about maintaining hope over the long haul, and deriving some of that hope from the young people in our lives. --Holly Bender
(interview edited for clarity and length)
Mary Anne Hitt: I am very honored that you asked me to do this, so thank you. I think you’re one of the most brilliant and inspiring leaders coming up in the climate movement. I love that I get to talk to you a little bit about where you came from, your new role, and all the opportunities you see out there to make a difference. To start, I want to hear more about your new role at the Sierra Club.
Holly Bender: Thank you for that lead-off, and the feeling is mutual. This is the highlight of my week, getting the chance to talk to you about my new role at Sierra Club.
I am now a Senior Director for Energy Campaigns, a role that oversees Sierra Club’s national campaign work across three of the most important and connected sectors of our economy in the fight for an equitable, clean energy future: electricity, transportation, and buildings. The goal of nesting these campaigns together is to more fully address the pollution from fossil fuels used in power plants, cars, buses, and gas appliances, while tapping in more fully to the clean energy solutions that support clean air, clean water, and more resilient communities.
MAH: So when you think about those three - electricity, transportation, and buildings - those are three of our biggest contributors to the climate crisis. When you think about leading that work, what are the opportunities to get it right and what is at stake if we don’t?
HB: Seventy percent of US greenhouse gas emissions come from these three sectors, where we are still totally hooked on fossil fuels like coal, gas, and oil. When I first sat down in this new role with our team of analysts to look at the data, it was so clear how much progress we could make by swapping fossil fuels for electricity, like an electric car, or an induction cooktop. Of course, all of this also requires us to get fossil fuels out of our power grid and switch to clean electricity. It’s really inspiring, because it’s not just about greenhouse gas emissions; it’s also about all the diesel pollution we can avoid, ensuring safer indoor air in our homes and schools, and building new, resilient systems that work for more people.
You asked about opportunities. President Biden is our first climate president and the next three years present a huge opportunity. The president has a mandate to act on climate justice, and it is imperative that we hold him accountable to that mandate, while doing what we can to provide support, clarity, and vision from the frontlines.
Second, environmental organizations have a track record of stopping bad stuff, like new polluting facilities, but what is needed of us now is to go to the mat for the good stuff. We need to reorient ourselves around solutions in a way we never have, and to reimagine how these solutions can remake our economic systems and our communities. I’m talking about solutions like emergent local clean energy models, unionized battery manufacturing facilities, electric car and bus infrastructure, and apprenticeship and training programs designed to bring historically marginalized communities into this work; and I could go on. This is inspiring and hard work, and it’s what’s needed at this moment.
A lot is at stake if we don’t get this right. I’m generally an optimistic person, so rather than going to the “planet on fire” framing with a clock ticking down, I see our windows of opportunity and time increasingly overlapping, and I’m focused on holding more complexity and simultaneity. We also have to carry an awareness that climate change brings urgency into our lives, while ensuring false or misplaced urgency does not lead us to false solutions.
The president has a mandate to act on climate justice, and it is imperative that we hold him accountable to that mandate, while doing what we can to provide support, clarity, and vision from the frontlines.
MAH: I’ve known you long enough to know that your personal experiences with pollution are part of what keeps you motivated and inspires you. Do you want to share more about that?
HB: As my aperture has broadened in this new role, I’ve rooted myself even more clearly in my purpose. I grew up in Vermont, and before I was born my parents moved into the house where I grew up and thought the well water tasted bad, so they had a new well drilled. Several years later, we learned about the extent of an underground pollution plume that resulted from a chemical disposal site in the pasture behind our house. The original well was totally saturated, and air quality readings inside the house showed elevated chemical exposure. Ultimately, the house was uninhabitable. I was eight years old when I stood in the pasture with my dad and announced that I wanted to be a lawyer to stop polluters from impacting families like ours. I went to law school, interned at the Environmental Law and Justice Clinic with my incredible mentors Helen Kang and Alan Ramo, and was assigned an air pollution case. Later, I interned at the Sierra Club and, since I had air pollution experience, I handled an air permit challenge for a proposed coal plant in Kansas. I got a job at the Sierra Club after that internship, and the rest is history (and that coal plant never got built).
MAH: How does that experience from your childhood form a common thread for you in what you are bringing into this role?
HB: The common thread for me is justice, and a vision of a world where we can all thrive and live free of fear of harm from corporate polluters, especially the fossil fuel industry. I can resonate with families who are worried about exposure to pollution. I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking about the long-term health impacts of my family’s exposure to chemicals that have been linked to cancer clusters. I also think about the privilege my family had in choosing to leave a place that was causing us harm.
It wasn’t until recently that I did some deeper research on the chemicals that were detected in our house, and I learned they are actually petrochemicals, derived from fossil fuels. When I made that connection, I felt so sure that I’m doing the right work at the right time. I want to work in solidarity with people toward dismantling the systems that allow the fossil fuel industry to treat communities—particularly communities of color—as sacrifice zones.
MAH: Picking up on that theme of justice, when you think about your years at the Sierra Club and working with communities, what are some lessons about centering racial justice?
HB: I’ve learned that equity and justice, and especially racial justice, are not guaranteed or inherent byproducts of decarbonizing our economy; they must be at the core of how and why we are doing this work. Simply swapping out coal for clean energy, or a gas-powered vehicle for an electric vehicle, or switching out your gas appliances for electric; those things that we know are needed to reduce climate pollution do not guarantee equitable, anti-racist outcomes. For example, electric utilities have reduced emissions from coal, but they are adding clean energy on top of regressive rate structures focused on utility profit, maintaining poorly designed energy efficiency programs, and shutting off services to customers for non-payment. We are missing the point of reimagining and reforming the power sector to achieve environmental and economic justice if we stop at the coal-to-clean energy swap. The Sierra Club has just finalized a new set of values, including the values of collaboration, anti-racism, and transformation. One of my priorities this year is taking a few steps back from the work we have been doing, look at it broadly, and ask ourselves: Who is harmed by our current systems, who benefits, and how can we do our work in a way that shifts this paradigm?
MAH: One of the things I’ve realized over the years is just how much hope the progress of the Beyond Coal campaign – which worked to retire hundreds of coal plants - has given to people in the US and around the world. It’s one of the climate success stories of the past decade. It’s inspired campaigns around the world. You understand the magnitude of the challenge and are undaunted by that task. What are some of the lessons you’re taking from the Beyond Coal campaign into your new, broader role?
HB: It’s hard to summarize a decade of lessons learned, but there are many that I’m bringing with me. First, we must confront the gas industry’s social license like we did for coal. The coal industry once argued that coal was “necessary, affordable, reliable” and the backbone of the electric grid. Now, we’re largely arguing about the timeline for coal to fully exit the US power grid; otherwise, it’s a generally accepted conclusion that it will happen. We’ve ramped up our efforts to dismantle the facade that gas is anything but a dangerous, expensive, and dirty fossil fuel, and I see that as a central tenet of the work ahead.
I’ve learned that equity and justice, and especially racial justice, are not guaranteed or inherent byproducts of decarbonizing our economy; they must be at the core of how and why we are doing this work.
Second, we don’t do any of this alone, and the best campaigns with the best outcomes are led by frontline organizations that are not just at the coalition table, but are at the negotiating table, and the policy-writing table. The Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition is the most powerful example I know of the evolution of a coalition that implemented a clear set of values that resulted in one of the most incredible climate, clean energy, equity, and just transition policies out there.
Third, stay humble, learn along the way, and celebrate small victories. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, and have come up short many times over the years. My philosophy is that if we are not trying things that don’t work, we’re not actually where we need to be on strategy. We also have to celebrate along the way. A really great news story (cheers!); a new volunteer who took a big leadership role (high-five); a conversation with a partner organization that unlocks new ideas (yes!).
MAH: Some people feel a lot of anxiety around our ability to succeed on climate. Legislation remains uncertain, emissions were up last year in the US, we have a crisis in our democracy, and an unfriendly Supreme Court that will be hearing some big climate and environmental cases this year. I can imagine some folks are feeling discouraged right now, but you are not. You’re very determined that we can make a huge difference and you seem optimistic in the face of some steep hurdles. Where does your optimism come from?
HB: My optimism stems from the fact that, while I share concerns about all the things you just listed—Congress, courts, the state of our democracy—I believe in the power of people to make change. A decade ago, the Waxman-Markey climate bill failed, and many thought all was lost. We then spent the next 10 years taking on the coal industry state-by-state, community-by-community, filing lawsuits against notorious polluters, ensuring clean energy got a fair shake, and lifting up the stories of people impacted by pollution. We far surpassed the climate reductions in the power sector that Waxman-Markey would have delivered. It’s not hyperbole to think of this moment as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to act on climate, and we continue to pull all the levers and use all the tools. What gives me hope is that success has never started and ended in Washington DC, and the Sierra Club has more than 3.5 million members and supporters who are changemakers in communities across the country.
MAH: One last question as we wrap up. We are both parents, we both have daughters named Hazel, and our kids are a big reason we do this work. What would you say to fellow parents out there who might be worrying about what kind of future their kids are growing up in?
HB: So much of my optimism comes from our kids, and the youth climate justice movement is fierce and inspiring. I feel deeply accountable to them on their terms for what they are pushing us to achieve. I’d tell parents to tap into the wisdom of their kids, and to get engaged as a family in local organizing efforts to address the most pressing justice issues facing your communities. I am confident that you will find inspiration and hope for the struggle against climate change and much much more.
I think we are both reading Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, by the late Thich Nhat Hanh. In the book, I underlined this passage of wisdom: “We may feel immense pressure to save the planet in this lifetime…[T]he stark truth is that the planet doesn’t need to be saved only once; it needs to be saved countless times, for eons to come…We belong to a stream of life, and this moment is our time and our turn to do our part, and to do whatever we can to pass on what we learn to future generations, so they can do theirs.” I think I’ll frame that and put it near my desk!