Clean Air, Clean Water, and Clean Energy Jobs are My Reasons for Voting for Kamala Harris for President of the United States – Milwaukee Courier Weekly Newspaper

By Warren Kirby

I’m a lifelong Milwaukee resident, a clean energy union worker, and a father to two girls, ages one and three. This election is important to me because I want to provide my daughters with the best future. I want my little girls to grow up with air that’s safe to breathe, water that’s safe to drink, and a country that protects their future.

I’m proud to work in clean energy—I’m helping people save on their energy bills while also making an important change in the world. I’ve been an Insulation and Air Sealing Specialist with Green Homeowners United for more than a year. I never knew I could be paid to help people make their homes more comfortable and save money for their families. I wake up and actually want to go to work.

I’ve helped Milwaukee residents, like Mr. Danny Miller, who received $12,000 in local and tax rebates to insulate his attic and seal his basements. Since I started my job, I have worked on many more homes that have also received these benefits. Right now, you can save between $1,500 and $10,000 on just one new rebate program alone. We are seeing a growing number of good-paying clean energy jobs like mine and home-savings opportunities for our community.

This is all thanks to laws like the Inflation Reduction Act, a law that Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote on. This law has created a clean energy boom in our country, creating more than 330,000 clean energy jobs like mine. Even better, the law is going to help families save $38 billion on electricity bills. Yes, you read that right, $38 billion US dollars in savings for families like yours and mine.

Kamala Harris has also taken steps to protect children like mine from environmental hazards at schools, which Black children are more frequently exposed to. Harris has worked to improve infrastructure by removing dangerous lead pipes, investing in clean energy school buses so our kids don’t have to breathe toxic fumes, and investing in climate resilience for schools so our children can remain safe and healthy even in extreme weather.

Wisconsin is ranked ninth in the nation with the highest number of lead service pipelines. There is no safe level of exposure to lead. But now Wisconsin is receiving close to $139 million to upgrade our drinking water infrastructure, which will replace lead pipes and address the dangerous PFAS, or “forever chemicals” in our water. We have the Biden-Harris administration and our Senator Tammy Baldwin to thank for these programs. This is real money that will make sure our children have safer drinking water.

But if Donald Trump is elected, he will end these investments, threatening thousands of American jobs like mine, and leaving our communities vulnerable to air and water pollution. Trump has the worst environmental record of any president in our country’s history. His administration weakened or wiped out 125 environmental protections, including protections to stop polluters from releasing toxic chemicals into the air we breathe and water we drink.

If Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda is implemented, American families can also end up spending more on their electricity bills, up to $200 to $400 more annually in the next 5 to 10 years. Black families across the country are already struggling with rising costs.

Trump is doing this to support his oil company executive friends in return for money. He promised oil executives that if they donated $1 billion to his campaign, he would do whatever they wanted– destroying our environmental protections, and allowing polluters to dump toxic waste into our lakes, rivers, and skies.

The good news is that Kamala Harris has a plan to lower prices, lower energy costs, protect our air and water and continue to grow made-in-America clean energy. This means more jobs like mine, which have strong benefits that help me take care of my family and children. Thanks to this job, I bought a new car and am looking to buy a house. I want others to have this same opportunity too.

I want a President my daughters can look up to and a President who, I know, cares about the well-being and future of my daughters. I’m voting to protect my daughters and their future. I’m voting to protect my clean energy job and the jobs of thousands of other hard working Americans across the country. That’s why there is no other choice for me: I’m voting for Kamala Harris.