Katie Porter Releases Planet for Our Future Plan That Will Protect the Environment, Strengthen Economy

February 20, 2024

Katie is the only candidate in the race who’s made climate action a top priority during her time in the House

CALIFORNIA—Congresswoman and U.S. Senate candidate Katie Porter today released her plan for climate action that strengthens California’s economy and safeguards our planet for current and future generations. Katie is the only candidate in this race to serve on a House committee that deals with climate issues, making this a priority for her time in public service. Her Planet for Our Future plan builds on her successful record holding Big Oil accountable and lists eight steps to reduce pollution, grow our green energy economy, and protect Californians from climate-related disasters.

“Decade after decade, career politicians in Washington have failed to deliver the necessary climate action to keep Californians healthy and safe,” Katie said. “Green investments not only protect California families from climate-related disasters; they are necessary to building the strong, stable, globally competitive economy of tomorrow. As a mom of school-age kids, I’m worried about the planet my kids will inherit—and the job opportunities they’ll have. California has led the way in clean energy, and we deserve a partner in the Senate that will build on that success and bring federal investments back to our state.”

For decades, career politicians have taken campaign cash from fossil fuel companies and rewarded them sweetheart deals in the form of tax breaks, cheap leases, and weaker environmental regulations. As a result, Californians have suffered devastating wildfires, droughts, and more recently, atmospheric river events. Katie is the only elected official in this race who’s never taken money from corporate PACs or Big Oil executives, so she’s bold in calling out polluters on behalf of Californians.

Here are the eight points of Katie’s Planet for Our Future plan:

Holding polluters accountable: Katie will hold Big Oil accountable for exploiting taxpayers and will fight for policies that protect the environment from fossil fuel drilling. Big Oil has reaped the benefits of sweetheart deals for too long: companies have been able to drill on public lands for pennies on the acre and have only had to pay a fraction of the cost for the cleanup. Katie successfully pressured the Biden Administration to update the rules to make Big Oil put up enough money for cleanup up front instead of leaving taxpayers on the hook for its messes afterward. In the Senate, Katie will fight to make those changes permanent. Katie’s Ending Taxpayer Welfare for Oil and Gas Companies Act was signed into law, increasing what polluters must pay to drill on public lands. She co-leads legislation to end fossil fuel subsidies and will push to get it done in the Senate, building on her successful record in the House debunking an oil executive’s claim that the industry doesn’t receive special tax breaks.

Protecting our public lands: Preserving our public lands and waters will mitigate the harms of climate change while protecting our planet for generations to come. In the Senate, Katie will lead the charge to make our public lands accessible to all, building on her leadership of the Every Kid Outdoors Program that provides universal free park access to fourth grade students and her oversight of disability access to federal lands. Katie will keep sounding the alarm about the shrinking National Park Service workforce and lead Senate efforts to streamline its hiring process. She has visited national parks to see how climate change is creating infrastructure challenges and will fight for investments to make our most beautiful and fragile lands resilient to climate harms. Katie strongly supports efforts to protect 30 percent of our natural landscapes by 2030 and to make sure these protected lands include communities that lack recreation and green space. She will continue her leadership in rejecting Big Oil’s efforts to drill on protected lands without proper environmental review and public input.

Fighting for California’s fair share of water: Despite historic droughts, California has been the leader in conserving water among the Colorado River Basin States and has helped bring Lake Mead’s water level back up after hitting record lows. Despite these sacrifices, climate change makes the reliability of California’s water supplies uncertain. That is why Katie spent countless hours in Natural Resources Committee hearings fighting anti-science efforts to eliminate a critical federal program that monitors the Colorado River’s supply and addresses water shortages. She will fight in the Senate to make the program permanent. Katie will also continue her successful track record of securing millions of federal water infrastructure dollars. In the House, she secured money for the expansion of recycled water projects, groundwater storage projects, and the Syphon Reservoir Project, which will expand water storage capacity ten-fold. Katie will be a warrior in the Senate for California’s water infrastructure needs, allowing us to stretch our water resources and protect fragile environments.

Making California resilient from future climate disasters: For years, career politicians have failed to tackle the climate crisis, leaving Californians vulnerable to devastating disasters. Washington has not updated its response to climate-related disasters, continuing a backwards-looking approach to expensive aid programs rather than investing in climate resilience. Katie knows that poor disaster response is a failure of oversight. As your next Senator, Katie will continue to advance her legislation that creates a nonpartisan, investigative agency to study and provide recommendations to better address wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods. In the House, Katie led a bipartisan effort to uncover solutions to the increasing challenges of obtaining homeowners insurance in California. She will push to make it affordable for working families in high-risk areas to improve the resilience of their homes and will avoid repeating the mistakes of the effectively-bankrupt National Flood Insurance Program, which pays out about one-third of its resources to 1% of properties—rather than creating strategies to prevent expensive climate disasters. We as taxpayers cannot keep paying out hundreds of billions of dollars each decade because Washington has failed to enact climate-mitigation policies.

Investing in clean and renewable energy: California leads the nation in clean energy research and renewable energy adoption. We know firsthand how investing in the technology of tomorrow strengthens our economy and helps avert climate-related disasters. But, we are consistently shortchanged on our share of federal funding for clean energy, despite having led the way and having a large population in harm’s way from climate change. Katie will make sure the federal government rewards California for our clean energy investment and harnesses our renewable energy potential. For example, Katie has led the fight to get California its needed share of federal funding to give every kid a safe ride to school on an electric school bus. This strategy is proven to save taxpayer dollars, improve student performance, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and traffic. Katie will advocate for investments in research and development of clean energy fuels in our long-distance transportation sector—such as trucking, aviation, and maritime shipping—which is the hardest sector to decarbonize. She will oppose expansions of fossil fuel infrastructure, like the construction of new LNG terminals, that would reverse our climate progress. With her deep commitment to oversight, Katie will advance clean energy development that avoids the deep environmental injustices created by the fossil fuel industry in our low-income communities. Finally, Katie will build on the progress of the Inflation Reduction Act by helping low-income Californians afford electric vehicles, extending the electric vehicle tax credit, building more infrastructure that Californians need to charge their electric vehicles, and strengthening credits for wind and solar power development.

Upgrading our national electric grid: For far too long, career politicians have only passed legislation that streamlines the approval of new natural gas projects, leaving our national electric grid to deteriorate since its construction in the 1960s and 1970s. The consequences of this inaction are an aging electricity grid, prone to power outages and climate-related disasters, and unable to effectively deliver electricity created by renewable sources like wind and solar. Katie released a Congressional report that documents the barriers to modernizing our electric grid, and as California’s next Senator, Katie will pass the legislation needed to update our national electric grid. Without these reforms to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), we cannot reduce greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to mitigate the worst harms of climate change. Standing up to polluters, Katie will advance policies that streamline the approval of clean energy projects and that update our electrical grid to be climate resilient and energy efficient.

Fully implement the Inflation Reduction Act: The Inflation Reduction Act is our nation’s largest ever investment in fighting climate change, but too much of the law has not yet been implemented. Californians are still waiting on billions of dollars in promised rebates for home energy efficiency and electrification projects. As a single mom of three, Katie knows firsthand the frustration of how high costs can make it hard to upgrade to safer, energy-efficient appliances. That is why she’s forcefully pushed the Biden Administration to get clean energy rebates and tax credits to California families. Katie will also do oversight of implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, stopping federal funding from going to Big Oil companies that continue to lobby for subsidies and de-regulation. Katie will fight for Californians suffering from past environmental injustices and pollutants, who should be at the front of clean energy investments that improve access to clean air and water and reduce health harms.

Decarbonizing our infrastructure: As our country builds next-generation infrastructure, we must transition to using next-generation construction materials. For example, cement is the most widely-used material on the planet, but it is also one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, representing 8% of the total. In the Senate, Katie will fight for federal investment in and tax incentives for the development of clean cement technology, boosting a critical market that has great potential to reduce emissions. California produces more cement than any other state, and with the right investments, our state can be the market leader for the green building materials of the future. Katie also sees the connection between California’s housing affordability crisis and climate change. Her Housing for All plan is explicit about the need to use climate resilient materials and greener technology for home building.

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