It is an honor to address this summit and its opening session, and I’d like to thank our chairs and the Pontifical Academy for the invitation. It’s a pleasure to follow our chairs, in particular, Professor and Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Boston Marcelo Suárez-Orozco. He is a leader not only in higher education, but so much more for Massachusetts, for our country, for our world. I am especially grateful to His Holiness, Pope Francis, for bringing us together, and for his unwavering global leadership on climate change and the collective responsibility and opportunity we share for “our common home.”
As we gather this morning there are billions who are counting on us, particularly those who are the most vulnerable, the poor, the closest to the pain. Those folks do not have the wherewithal or the agency that we have. And so, we must act. At COP28, His Holiness spoke of the need for a “breakthrough that is not a partial change of course, but rather a new way of making progress together.” Today, I humbly will focus on a new way of making progress in governing.
Last year in Massachusetts, many of our communities were struck by tremendous flooding at a scale and frequency no one could remember seeing before. After a series of severe rainstorms, rivers burst their banks and drainage systems were overwhelmed. Hundreds of farms were damaged, losing their entire season’s crops just before harvest. I waded through fields, knee deep in muddy water with farmers whose hard work and investment were destroyed. Their communities suffered as well, because most of these farms supply food pantries that help our most vulnerable residents. We rallied the state to raise relief and keep our farms going.
We also paid attention to what these events were telling us. Weather events are more severe, more frequent, more damaging than ever before. Sea levels are rising more quickly along our 1,500 miles of shoreline in Massachusetts. Our infrastructure is aging, and much of it was not designed to withstand these conditions in the first place. Lives and livelihoods, businesses and homes are all at risk. The same is true, of course, across the world. Climate change is hurting all of us.
As elected leaders, our response can no longer be seen as a question of ideology, or the work of a single agency focused on the environment. Rather, in my view, climate action falls squarely within the fundamental responsibilities of government – of a government who is there to protect public safety and prevent future harm; a government who is there to safeguard public resources; a government who is there to ensure stability in our economies.
In Massachusetts, getting to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 is not just the law, it is a social and economic imperative. But, like our aging infrastructure, our government systems were not designed to meet the scale or the urgency of this moment. We need to change the way we work to be more nimble, more innovative, and more collaborative, so we can work across every function of government in every sector of the economy. We need to align all our efforts around our climate goals. That means alignment of administrative infrastructure, alignment of science and policy, alignment of state spending, investment, and financing. It means alignment around a committed and internalized understanding that while we mitigate and build resilience, we must also prepare our communities physically, culturally, and psychologically, for the adaptation and transformation that is going to occur. And of course, we need to do this at a pace we’ve never seen before. In short, we need a new way of governing. And in Massachusetts, we’ve been working on a blueprint.
On my first day in office just over a year ago, I issued an executive order creating the Office of Climate Innovation and Resilience and the position of Climate Chief. We’re the first state in the United States to do so and Chief [Melissa] Hoffer, whom I appointed, is here with us today. Now, the Climate Chief’s principal responsibility, of course, is to advise me as governor on all matters related to climate. But more importantly, her charge is to be responsible for driving a climate agenda across every aspect of government.
Here’s what that whole-of-government approach looks like. Every agency – education, transportation, health and human services, budget, so on and so forth – every agency has an appointed Climate Officer. They meet regularly with the Climate Chief, and they have goals to manage and to implement. In housing, for example, we’re prioritizing the decarbonization of the building sector, which in urban areas drives up to 70 percent of emissions. In transportation we’re investing in public transit to get cars off the road, and we’re building electric vehicle infrastructure. In education, we are funding energy efficient school buildings and teaching our young people climate careers through pathways in our high schools. In health care, we’re looking to identify and mitigate the harms of extreme heat stress and air pollution. In emergency management, we’re focused on readiness and resiliency. And across all these areas, we’re prioritizing environmental justice to put first those who have been harmed most.
As Governor, I regularly engage with businesses, labor unions, philanthropists, community groups, and young people in this work. We’ve got to get everyone thinking about resilience and adaptation and then working together, and I know the Mayor of Boston shares this vision as well. It is a vision of an economy that works for everyone, and that recognizes the tremendous value nature provides in the form of clean water, healthy soil, forests, marshland that can help sequester carbon to protect those resources. It’s an economy that also uses technology wisely to develop clean fuels, regenerative agricultural practices, and nature-based resilience solutions.
In Massachusetts, this approach is getting results. For example, last year we created the Massachusetts Community Climate Bank. It is the first green bank in the United States that is dedicated to decarbonizing affordable housing. We also developed a planning tool to ensure that our state capital budget is investing in plans that are consistent with achieving net zero by 2050 – because a big part of what government needs to do is align our spending with our climate goals, and see that we don’t have to choose between a healthy economy and climate protection. We know that climate change threatens our insurance and our real estate markets and financial systems. Climate protection is an essential element to a healthy economy.
President Biden has led the way with what is the largest clean energy investment in America’s history. In Massachusetts, we are using that opportunity to deploy our unique talent for innovation to help solve the climate crisis. Our economic development legislation calls for a $1.3 billion investment in technologies that will accelerate the energy transition, decarbonize the economy, and increase resilience. In Massachusetts we are home to one of the world’s leading climate tech ecosystems, with research universities, startups, venture capital, all connected. We have companies commercializing technology developed in our universities that right now are working to decarbonize steel, cement, working on battery production, hydrogen fuel and so much more.
I’m proud that in Time Magazine’s list of top climate technology companies, 28 of them are based in Massachusetts. These are companies that are spun from our ecosystem of colleges and universities, which we invest heavily in, which will green the global economy and return our investments many times over. We’ve done this before in Massachusetts, we’ve invested in medical science and became the world’s global hub for Life Sciences, a producer of life saving cures and vaccines. I want us also to be the global innovation lab for the clean energy revolution.
Now to do that, we’re going to need a number of well-trained and well-paid workers. Because the heroes of this revolution will be the electricians, train operators, heat pump installers, wind turbine technicians, and much more. We need people who are skilled and ready to do these jobs, and we need to bring these opportunities to those who need them most. This means adapting our education and training systems along with our economy. So, we’ve been working with our schools, with our colleges, with our unions, and with employers to create new pathways into climate careers.
Today, I am proud to announce the Massachusetts Climate Careers Fund. This is a first-of-its-kind social impact fund to grow and support a workforce that is training in climate technologies. This fund will leverage philanthropic, public, and private-sector resources to accelerate the work. It will provide no-cost loans to support high quality training, including supportive needs such as childcare and transportation – because if you’re going to educate, you need to treat the whole person. This will enable, importantly, more women, more people of color, more low-income residents to participate in this clean energy economy and revolution in our state. It’s a recycling fund, where workers and employers pay back the loans into the fund as they accumulate income, which will help train more people and fill more jobs.
The Massachusetts Climate Careers Fund is led by Social Finance, the innovator of social impact investment. Its co-founder and CEO Tracy Palandjian is here this week, and we’re so grateful for her partnership. In Massachusetts, we cherish a history of mission-driven innovation. We’re America’s state of firsts – the first public school, public library, park, and subway system all built in Massachusetts. We pioneered cancer treatment, computers, and COVID vaccines. As we speak, America’s only utility-scale offshore wind farm is operating off our coasts, powering thousands of homes and businesses. America’s first green bank for affordable housing is making environmental justice a reality for communities. The first social impact fund for climate careers is set to launch. These are the innovations unlocked so far by our blueprint for a new approach to government in this era of climate change. We’re eager to see them built on across America and the world.
We know there is so much we can and must do. I want to acknowledge that this is a challenging time, a hard time for leaders in government and outside elected positions as well. We are being tested; we will be tested. We will continue to need to support our communities and our people as they face, as we face, unfathomable loss and tragedy. But this should not discourage us. It should only motivate us to align government and governing with this new reality. It requires a fundamental change in both what and how we do it. That’s what we’re doing now – leaders in this room, navigating an unprecedented challenge by creating new paths bringing government together with our corporate, academic, and advocacy partners.
Governing in this time of climate disruption requires us to be serious about transforming how we work. It takes a willingness to listen, to adapt, to change, and to grow. It takes a commitment to break through barriers that divide our work and to truly collaborate across government, academia, industry, philanthropy. It’s something I will encourage all of my fellow governors to do. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be here to learn and to foster collaboration. It is our obligation to those we serve and represent to seize upon collective action for our common home, a home more just, more equitable, more healing for our planet and our communities. We gather in this room on holy ground, where others have gathered in times of challenge, where others have gathered seeking answers, understanding, and resolve. This is our time, and this is our work. Thank you.