In 2021, Lawrence passed a Green New Deal.

Well, now it’s called the “Five Principles of Sustainability”, but it was known to the Sustainability Advisory Board (SAB) and the community as a Green New Deal. The SAB’s letter of recommendation references the original House of Representatives bill and even mentions the phrase “Green New Deal” enough to warrant usage of the acronym GND. They aren’t subtle about the origin and intention of these principles.

A screenshot of the City Commission meeting on February 9, 2021

The Five Principles as adopted by City Commission unanimously over two years ago are as follows:

1. To achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers;
2. To create jobs with livable wages to ensure prosperity and economic security for all people;
3. To invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century;
4. To secure for all people for generations to come: clean air and water; climate and community resiliency; healthy food; access to nature; and a sustainable environment; and
5. To promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of Indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, de-industrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the working poor, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth.

These principles were then supposed to be integrated in city plans wherever possible. Climate justice covers such a wide variety of issues that “whenever possible” essentially means “always”.

Where all should these apply? For instance, we need to overhaul our energy infrastructure to replace everything that uses fossil fuels. We should be expanding public transit and making plans to reduce reliance on cars for transportation. We need to be aggressively protecting our natural environment and heavily scrutinizing new developments. We need to safely and equitably house every Lawrence resident as soon as possible. Our budget should heavily deprioritize the police department, responsible for generations of systemic oppression, and put that money into solving problems like food insecurity and housing instability. Or at least, Lawrence should be doing these things based on the scope and nature of the Five Principles.

There’s a reason that most people know we don’t have a Green New Deal, though – the city rarely, if ever, acknowledges that these principles are supposed to guide every decision they make. The reality is that Lawrence is not nearly as focused on sustainability as is necessary to mitigate systemic issues from the ongoing climate crisis, even by its own standards.

Where Lawrence Has Failed To Apply Its Green New Deal

I’ll discuss a handful of headline-worthy things that have happened in Lawrence in the past two years since the passage of the Green New Deal that illustrate how much work we have to do as it relates to these principles. There’s been some good news too, though, which I’ll cover as well.

Most recently, an ordinance that would ban single-use plastic bags in Lawrence failed in City Commission yet again. This is an ordinance that has been being passed back and forth between the SAB and City Commission since 2018, and the Kansas Legislature has been attempting to preemptively stop us for years. We know that plastic bags are bad for the environment. We know that paper bags are a better alternative if only for their increased biodegradability, and reusable bags are even better. Yet this ordinance has been in discussion for five years. Is this not a necessary step to secure clean air and water for all people for generations to come?

Note: On August 8th, 2023, the City Commission successfully passed the plastic bag ban, which will go into effect on March 1st, 2024. This is a significant step forward, but the fact that it took as long as it did despite Lawrence’s GND still remains.

In a different sector of the city, the planning and construction of the Multimodal Transfer Facility at Bob Billings & Crestline showed a concerning lack of focus on sustainability. The firm in charge of construction presented the city with its plans of a facility running entirely on methane gas. As Lawrence has a commitment to eliminating all usage of fossil fuels from municipal buildings by 2035, this seemed like a short-sighted decision to make. The building would have to undergo construction within the next ten years, so why not fix it now?

Those in charge of construction told us that creating a design that ran fully on electricity would cost months of time and more money, which I took to mean that they simply did not consider full electrification the first time and would have to take that time and money to redesign the entire building. The City Commission chose to go ahead with the methane-run building (despite many of them also expressing concern that electrification had not been considered), and I honestly can’t blame them. It’s an important facility that will really improve transit in Lawrence, and I definitely understand wanting to push its opening as much as possible.

Its opening was delayed a full year anyways. I’m sure it was due to unavoidable complications, but I can’t help but be frustrated by the irony of it.

As mentioned previously, another thing Lawrence could do under the scope of the Five Principles is balance our budget differently. Two years ago, the same year the Five Principles were passed, Sunrise and many other members of our community gathered to urge the City Commission to act on the principles they passed and increase the Sustainability Office’s budget. This increase in funding would have expanded the department to what would be required to ensure that the Five Principles were being applied correctly. City Commission discussed this increase but ultimately struck down the increases in funding.

This is all while the police budget has seen an increase every year, taking around $30 million from other services the city could be providing its citizens annually. We have expressed our frustration at this in the past couple years as well, but to little avail. Demilitarizing police and using that money to improve the quality of life in our communities is the first step to fixing historic oppression that the police continue to perpetuate.

Rendering of the $17 million police station opened in 2020

Also on the topic of the budget – last year Lawrence packed City Hall and gave public comment in droves against the decision to close Prairie Park Nature Center. Thankfully, this decision was reversed, and the city funded the center. This should not have even been in the draft of the budget if the Five Principles were being considered “whenever possible”. “Access to nature” is a key point in the fourth principle, and the dozens of residents who came to give public comment emphasized just that – that Prairie Park was a big way that they accessed nature.

Then, several months later, Lawrence’s Parks & Rec department shocked the community by spraying the remnant prairie behind the Prairie Park Nature Center with herbicide spray. Millions of flowers that had flourished in the prairie for millennia were destroyed. The city cited high turnover and the resulting loss of knowledge for how to care for the prairie.

Hoary Puccoon, one species of flower present in the prairie before the spray

A loss of this magnitude is difficult to comprehend. There is little remaining of the prairie that used to stretch across the Midwest, and Lawrence’s lack of focus on how to take care of its outdoor spaces has permanently destroyed yet another part of this dwindling ecosystem. Many of the flowers lost in the spray were especially rare species, making this destruction even more devastating.

There’s no guarantee something like this wouldn’t happen again, either – at least based on the way Lawrence operations have not considered sustainability and environmental consciousness “whenever possible”.

There’s Good News Too Though!

I don’t mean to paint the city of Lawrence as a total climate justice villain – they aren’t, and there’s a lot of good they’re doing. The city and county are joining together to make a Climate Action Plan, though it was delayed a couple years due to COVID. Buses have been free to ride for all of 2023, part of a pilot project to see what kind of effect fare-free service would have on ridership. The Land Development Code, or zoning code, is currently undergoing review that would encourage mixed-use developments and housing density. Both of these combined could lead to a much more walkable, bikeable, and therefore livable Lawrence. The city is launching a new Homeless Programs Department with a two-million-dollar budget. Actual action on housing everyone in Lawrence has been long, long overdue, and I’d advise everyone to keep an eye on this to make sure it isn’t just a shiny new version of the status quo. I’m hopeful that it will lead to real change, though. And, most recently, City Commission has passed an ordinance declaring Lawrence as a safe haven for queer and gender non-conforming folks (and anyone facing any form of oppression), which is a huge win in a state with a legislature so hostile to its trans citizens.

Again, it’s not so much that Lawrence is doing nothing about climate justice. We have made commendable progress in some areas as laid out above. Yet, explicit reference to the ordinance is basically zero. It’s just strange to me that it seems to apply in some places and be completely forgotten in many others. Again, these Five Principles are to be applied “whenever possible”. But that’s where we come in.

In some ways, the hardest part has already been taken care of. The law that we can use to push for climate justice at every level has already been passed! It’s just up to us to come together as a community to remind our elected officials about that law and its scope, and that working climate justice into everything we do is not an option – it is the only way we can fix the problems we face every day.