Having spent decades fighting for racial justice, Ben Jealous now sits at the helm of one of America’s largest environmental advocacy groups: the Sierra Club.

He joined Lisa McRee on "LA Times Today" with his reaction to President Joe Biden’s move and his own vision for the Sierra Club. 

Jealous said he and other climate activists were blindsided by Biden’s decision to approve a large oil project in Alaska this month. He also weighed in on how to balance clean energy with wildlife conservation.

"We all have to recognize that rewiring the planet is going to take a lot of tough decisions," he said. "We’re having conversations inside the Sierra Club about questions like, how should the U.S. extract the 50 million more tons of copper that we’re going to need to build a renewable power grid? Those are questions that nobody has all the answers to right now, but that all of us will have to wrestle with."

While at the NAACP, Jealous worked on climate and equity projects. He talked about how marginalized communities often get the worst effects of climate change and pollution.  

“You’ll hear again and again in these poisoned communities down South that our people get all the poison but none of the jobs," he said. "And so, as we’re shifting from industries that were really premised on destroying places to industries that are going to be creating more and more jobs help save the planet, we have to make sure that we do that in a way that breaks from old patterns, that builds an inclusive economy that gets people back to work again. This is one of the greatest opportunities we have had in my lifetime to truly build a new inclusive economy."

There are two particular projects that Jealous will prioritize as leader of the Sierra Club.

"We’ve got to keep on our work to shut down coal fired power plants and, frankly, to electrify everything for everybody," he said. "As we talked about, we can create a whole bunch of new jobs doing that to help lift all boats in the country. But I got to tell you, at 50, coming back to the club, which is part of my childhood, what excites me most is getting our outings going again... I think the beautiful thing about the Sierra Club is that our real day-to-day work is just getting people into the outdoors."

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