Julie Mayfield, candidate for North Carolina Senate District 49, outlines a Green New Deal for North Carolina — her bold agenda to meet the challenge of climate change — in a new campaign ad. The ad is available on her website, mayfieldforncsenate.com, and is running on social media.
Mayfield, who is the co-director of conservation nonprofit MountainTrue and leads the city’s transition to renewable energy as a member of Asheville City Council, has made addressing climate change and restoring protections for air and water a key pillar of her campaign.
“We’ve already warmed the planet 1 degree Celsius,” explains Mayfield. “If we don’t adapt, we’re on track for 4-6 degrees of warming by the end of the century — which isn’t compatible with anything we would recognize as human civilization. Our choice is between climate catastrophe and building a more environmentally responsible and just society so we can meet the challenge of climate change together with dignity and compassion.”
In the 2 minute and 30 second ad, Mayfield lays out a robust climate agenda that would reduce the use of fossil fuels, invest in making our communities and infrastructure more climate resilient, increase funding for disaster response and preparedness, and sequester more carbon by expanding forests and green spaces. And because “climate change disproportionately impacts poor and working class people” Mayfield believes that this must be done equitably and in a way that creates green jobs that pay a living wage.
Transcript of “Choose Climate Justice” video:
Our choice is between climate justice and climate catastrophe.
I’m Julie Mayfield. I’m running for State Senate and I choose Climate Justice.
Humans have already warmed the planet by 1 degree Celsius and we’re experiencing those effects: melting ice caps, rising sea levels, human displacement and increasingly severe natural disasters.
California is on fire and much of Puerto Rico is still in ruins from Hurricane Maria two years ago.
Here in North Carolina, we had historic wildfires in 2016, and back-to-back-to-back historic Hurricanes in 2016, ‘17, and ‘18.
These storms wreaked havoc in Eastern North Carolina and heavy rains in 2018 triggered multiple landslides in Western North Carolina. At least three people lost their lives here.
We can’t bury our heads in the sand, the stakes are too high.
We need to come together and take action. As your next State Senator, I’ll fight for a North Carolina Green New Deal that …
Number one – reduces our dependence on fossil fuels by requiring more energy efficiency and that more of our energy comes from renewables, expanding our public transit systems and electric vehicle infrastructure, and giving people more control over generating their own energy for their homes and businesses.
Number two – we must invest in making our infrastructure and communities more climate resilient. That means more funding for disaster preparedness, more funding for disaster response, and creating distributed energy systems that can get back up and running quickly after storms.
Three – we must not only maintain existing forests and green spaces but add to them in order to reduce flooding, cool surface temperatures, and expand the best carbon sequestration technology we have — trees!
Four – we have to do all of this equitably. Climate change disproportionately impacts poor and working class people. We need an energy agenda that weatherizes homes so people who can least afford it pay less for energy, that enables low and moderate income people to access low cost renewable energy, and that creates green jobs that pay a living wage.
March 3 is Election Day. As your next state senator, I have the experience and commitment to lead us to this new climate paradigm.
About Julie Mayfield
Julie Mayfield is an environmental advocate and public servant who lives in West Asheville. During her 11 year tenure as executive director and then co-director of MountainTrue, she’s grown the organization from 5 employees to a staff of 23 dedicated environmental professionals. Through everything from lawsuits and direct action to public engagement and policy development, Mayfield has helped protect our public lands from irresponsible logging projects, develop an E. coli monitoring program in the French Broad and in three other watersheds, and pushed the NC Department of Transportation to come up with better alternatives for the I-26 Connector Project. She also led the organization’s work to make Duke Energy clean up its coal ash pits and retire the coal-fired power plant at Lake Julian.
In 2015, she ran for and won a seat on Asheville’s City Council where she has led the council’s advocacy for a better transit system, improvements to the I-26 Connector Project, a transition to clean energy, and for new revenue sources for the city, including a change in the occupancy tax.
She is the chair the two council committees that address affordable housing and planning, and she has become a leading voice for expanding the city’s tools to build more affordable housing and for better land-use planning to manage growth.
Mayfield has also served on and chaired the board of the North Carolina Conservation Network, served on the board of the WNC Chapter of the ACLU, served on the executive committee of the HUB Alliance, and served on the Advisory Committee for WNC Nonprofit Pathways. She is a 2014 graduate of Leadership Asheville.