Eric Adams Said Next to Nothing About Climate Change During New York’s Recent Mayoral Primary

UPROSE and its supporters argued that preserving the waterfront’s industrial nature would allow space for large-scale clean energy businesses and programs, and create better-paid jobs for Sunset Park’s predominantly working class Latino and Asian residents.

“We were advancing a vision for an industrial waterfront that would build for our climate future,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, the executive director of UPROSE. Her organization met with Adams and his staff to discuss this vision, but she said Adams declined to support their proposal.

A Just Transition? On Brooklyn’s Waterfront, Oil Companies and Community Activists Join Together to Create an Offshore Wind Project—and Jobs

He learned about the project through a community group he’s involved with, called UPROSE, which has fought to clean up the neighborhood’s dirty industries and bring in green development instead. The organization is currently fighting an effort to build a new gas power plant that would replace two of three oil- and gas-fired “peaker” plants that line the waterfront and fire up when electricity demand surges.

New York's Heat-Vulnerable Neighborhoods Need to Go Green to Cool Off

If the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance's agenda were implemented, electricity grid limitations in places like Brownsville would be addressed through projects like Sunset Park Solar, the city's first community-owned solar cooperative, that provide well-paying clean energy jobs and electricity savings for local residents.

As Protests Rage Over George Floyd’s Death, Climate Activists Embrace Racial Justice

Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE, Brooklyn's oldest Latino community-based organization, said she considers showing up to fight police brutality and racial violence integral to her climate change activism.