This report explores how climate change and transition impact the health of California workers and the communities where they live.
This report explores how climate change and transition impact the health of California workers and the communities where they live. Drawing from a review of existing literature and conversations with Californian workers across industries, we found that unmitigated climate hazards and unplanned transition exacerbate health risks, but addressing climate by ushering in good jobs and strengthening the public sector workforce offer health opportunities.
In California, climate change is changing everything. Climate crises are accelerating and devastating human health, life, and well-being — with Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other workers and communities of color feeling the greatest impacts. At the same time, climate policies and investments are bringing a massive economic shift that will impact all Californians with new industries, more jobs, and opportunities for healthier working conditions.
This is a critical moment of decision for California’s future and health. Workers and communities are at risk of being left behind as jobs and industries change, downsize, or shut down entirely. But all this change also presents an opportunity for the state to advance economic, climate, and health justice by ensuring an equitable, worker-centered transition, growing the labor movement, improving pay and labor standards, supporting workers and communities in transition, and shoring up the public sector to protect Californians’ health while mitigating climate impacts.
As detailed in Turning Up the Heat, the evidence is clear that climate change and transition present both health risks and health opportunities. Actualizing these opportunities is not an inevitability. Without action, we will perpetuate the same inequitable power dynamics and systems that lie at the root of climate crises and health inequities. Although transition is inevitable, health, racial, and economic justice are not. To advance a worker-led transition to a healthy, just, and climate-safe economy, we must:
- Strengthen California’s climate hazard protections and enforcement mechanisms to ensure the safety and well-being of workers across industries
- Promote fair labor practices, support local economies, and advance workforce development goals in emerging industries while ensuring accountability and transparency in the use of taxpayer funds
- Address the challenges faced by displaced workers in declining industries, improve health and safety standards in refinery operations, support workforce transition to good jobs in new technologies and sectors, and mitigate the economic impacts of declining oil and gas revenues on local communities
- Strengthen the public sector workforce to protect public health from climate change
This work would not have been possible without the collaboration and coordination of our partners at the California Labor for Climate Jobs coalition.
For more information about this research, please contact HIP Project Director Elana Muldavin at elana@humanimpact.org
