Cameron Steinback has taken a long journey from beginning his career as a teacher to Climate Justice Program Manager for Front and Centered in Washington State. In late 2025, he found himself in a data-center roundtable convened by Washington state Governor Bob Ferguson. It was an ‘experience’ for someone who still considers himself new to the policy landscape. The following is from our conversation on January 15th, 2026. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. ~ Mark Chavez How did you get from Hayward, California to being the Climate Justice Program Manager of a nonprofit in Seattle? Cameron Steinback I have always enjoyed and been encouraged to try and do many things from sports to various educational and artistic activities. That was something that was instilled by family members and my elders: from horseback riding and Black rodeo shows to museums and science centers, and enjoying the mountains up in the Sierra Nevada and the beaches and coastlines in California. So when I chose my educational pursuits, science, exploring and understanding the natural world were definitely motivating factors. Through my undergraduate work and my first professional experiences, a lot of them centered around schools and working with young people because I had so many great experiences being out and learning in those spaces, being shaped by those educators in the classroom as well as in those outdoor learning environments just instilled the love and appreciation for those people and places. At the same time, I have also very much taken pride in the movements that Black folks have shaped on this continent for generations upon generations. From a very early age, going to MLK marches in the Bay Area, being exposed and understanding what my parents’ generation lived and experienced as teenagers and adults during the Black Power movement, and being proud of my connection to that history gave me the confidence to go out into a lot of new and different spaces and places. So with all of that, education became a natural place for me. I worked in public schools in Oakland, California, and Atlanta, Georgia, in the first part of my teaching career. From there I transitioned to teaching in museums and science centers in the Bay Area. The last focus was on doing ocean conservation, marine mammal and climate change education to everyone from kindergarteners up to university students from different parts of the country. I came to Seattle after that because I wanted to take my next step in my educational career. I wanted to see what else could unfold. And through the excitement and joy that I get from teaching young people, I built up enough skill that I was like, ‘How can I shape the next educators?’ How can I continue to build upon the joy and the experience of teaching and connecting people to the parts of the world that sustain us, that let us thrive, and speak to the inequity of people’s access to and relationship with healthy environments, or the burdens of climate change on Black, brown, and poor folks all over the world. I wanted to take that next step, and [think about] how I could shape educators. So I came to Seattle for a graduate program at Antioch University concentrating on urban environmental education, which at that time was a confluence of so much of what I cared about, learning about environmental justice and climate justice, with education as a tool for community agency and civic action, [I was thinking] how do we take our knowledge and understanding to actually continue to shape the world into the place that we want and to need it to be. From that graduate school experience, I got experience working with a land-use policy organization. I never thought of policy as part of what would be my professional pathway. But by virtue of the kind of things that I ended up doing next, which was working with an environmental education organization here in Seattle, creating new science-based curriculum, that did not just focus on the science, but tied it to the narratives of people and social movements for climate justice. We cannot solve environmental issues without solving social issues. They’re intertwined, they’re interconnected, and the solutions lie in how we grapple with both. I started seeking out roles and positions where I could continue to leverage my educational skills and build upon my policy knowledge, and it just so happened that Front and Centered was looking for a climate justice program manager. I read the description, read the kind of policy sphere in which Front and Centered works and operates. I recognized the value of community education, community activation, it’s a key part of how they do that work. I’m like, yeah, I’m an educator. I can do that stuff. I don’t have the deep policy experience, but I’m just going to put my name in the hat because you’ve got to give yourself a shot. You’ve got to give yourself a chance. MC If you went back to Hayward and you ran into somebody you haven’t seen in decades, how would you describe Front and Centered to them? CS I’d describe it in a lot of the same ways that I’ve described it in Washington. Front and Centered is an organization that aims to advance climate and environmental justice in Washington State, in part by supporting a statewide coalition of organizations that represent and serve ‘frontline communities.’ That means the people who are most impacted by environmental harm and policymaking, the people who are hit first and worst by the impacts of climate change. These communities are literally at the front and center of the work we do to undo those harms and create a just future. Whatever the ways in which that happens – from creating and making policy, to holding state agencies and government accountable, to creating resources for folks to continue to be activated and working for justice in their communities – frontline communities are the ones to shape it. MC What are some of the key issues that Front and Centered is focused on moving into 2026? CS One key legislative focus is the CURB Pollution Act and how we are taking the cumulative risk burden (CURB) of pollution that frontline communities already face and using that information to create clear boundaries in terms of where new polluting industries can and cannot go. We recognize that frontline communities have borne an inequitable, disproportionate measure of that pollution for far too long—a burden they shouldn’t have borne in the first place—and that no new polluting facilities should be permitted in or near those communities. That’s a very general summary of what the CURB Act is. We are advocating heavily and strongly for measures for affordability, specifically a bill to create a statewide energy assistance program, HB 1903 (Update: this bill was passed and signed into law on March 30th!). This new energy bill assistance program supplements existing programs run by utilities, and we hope will be a step closer to closing the assistance need gap. Energy costs are rising for everyone, for a lot of reasons, and we believe every person has a right to enough energy to thrive while not continuing to burden low-income households. And there’s a lot of other laws that need to be enacted to ensure we protect rate payers from continued increases as we make an energy transition. MC You straddle these two places, where you grew up in the Bay Area and now Seattle, that have such deep ties to the tech industry. But as you mentioned ratepayer burden, I’m curious if you can share a little bit about the recent boom of data centers and AI and how you all have seen that unfolding in Washington. CS There are so many things to talk about when it comes to artificial intelligence, data centers specifically, and probably the most important place to start is right at the resource consumption of these new facilities. The first interest for us for Environmental and Climate Justice: is there harm being done where these facilities are being sited. And that goes to the way in which Washington State has a permitting system set up. Is there appropriate and enough transparency, and access to assistance for communities to really understand what these permits are saying and what’s being put in, before the cranes and construction start moving in? The resource consumption of electricity, these things take a significant amount of energy every single day. Here in Washington, we are committed to a clean energy transformation, which is to move to an electricity supply free of greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. So at the same time we’re coming off of fossil fuels, we’re also increasing demand for electricity in which we need a continued rollout of renewable energy supply. There’s a pinch that happens in there. As utilities need to build out and update infrastructure, they can recoup some of those costs on rate payers. But if rate payers aren’t the driving force behind the demand, that’s an equity issue, right? We need to ensure that data centers are paying not just their fair share, but more explicitly paying for all of the new energy and new interconnection that their demand is pushing. Another important resource is, of course, water. Water has been and it’s going to continue to be, such an important Environmental Justice concern. The way in which water rights are established and distributed, to the ways dams and hydroelectric power blocks divert and impact fish passage, causes me quite a bit of concern I apologize if that feels like a little bit of a word salad, but there’s so many things that are going on in there. The first and foremost is protecting those resources from the exploitative nature of industry. Industry is going to find the best way to make it profitable for themselves and make the protection of people, lands, and waters optional. Let’s make sure those protections are first, front and center. MC You were part of a six month data center working group convened by Washington’s Governor Bob Ferguson. How was that? What happened? CS That was an experience, as a person being new to the policy and political landscape. And for context, I’ll probably call myself new at this for the next five years. (laughing) MC Welcome. CS It was an important space for us to be at the table. Our coalition is concerned about Environmental and Climate Justice in all the ways that it shows up. So we recognize this is a place that is important, and we’re grateful for the invitation from the governor’s office to participate. It was the full spectrum of folks interested and involved in data centers. Everybody from people invested in the data center consortium, the lobby of folks who want to ensure that they have the best incentives and least amount of hindrance to their business model, to Google and Amazon Web Service, to electeds here in Washington state, to other groups that prioritize the public interest and environmental concerns, including folks representing the Yakama Nation were there as well. So a lot of people, right, at and around that table. And the charge, the responsibility given to this work group was to provide recommendations to the governor’s office around what could and should be done, as this was an emerging issue for Washington State and nationally. There are incentives for data centers that are already in Washington state law, in the form of tax incentives. So there was a subgroup focused on economic landscape of the data centers in Washington. The other subgroup focused on resource and environmental issues related to data centers. With two subgroups: one focused on tax,revenue, and economics, and the other one focused on resource and environmental concerns there was a lot to cover and an accelerated timeline over six months – with the facilitators’ charge to get recommendations done by the end of October 2025. So many questions were brought up. The pace was accelerated in ways in which it was hard to be confident that we would arrive at clear recommendations to the governor’s office that would alleviate a lot of the concerns, at least a lot of the concerns that came up from the folks who were working in the public interest and those butting against what kind of new restrictions that could or should be put in place, and have those restrictions immediately challenged by folks working on the pro data center side. One point that was explored was if data centers are receiving tax incentives, should those incentives be tied to certain efficiency mandates and what kind of energy was being brought onto the system? It is an imbalance that we incentivize industries that are straining our grid and potentially bringing non-renewable sources to the grid when we have a net zero law that requires us to reduce emission by 2045, 2050? What eventually came out in the recommendations were not as bad as I felt going into the process. The findings established that there was need for clear guidelines from the legislature, more powers to the Utilities and Transportation Commission, and utilities to be able to set appropriate kinds of rates for these new large loads, to the transparency of the kind of connections that were being asked for from data centers. Right now, what’s being worked on for this legislative session are a couple of bills to clarify some of the things, to put in place some transparency, put in place some restrictions, so that if and when new data centers do come online, they’re not creating harm, and they’re in line with our commitments as a state to a clean energy transition. And of course, we’d like to see and ensure communities have a lot of say and control ultimately of where these facilities are built and the kind of benefits that can come from them. We’re in the 21st century, artificial intelligence is a tool. How significant a tool it’s going to continue to be is to be determined. I’m old enough to have enough awareness of the dot-com boom of the 90s and this industry is known for booms and busts. And it would be horrible if we as a state continue to allow a proliferation of these data centers in communities with a lot of flashy, maybe potentially short-term benefits, but long-term we could be left holding the bag. (Update: Through the 2026 short legislative session, a coalition of organizations led by the NW Energy Coalition worked hard to pass HB 2515, which would have brought comprehensive regulation on data centers in Washington state. It did not pass, but the process illuminated the challenges of such legislation and the determination to come back stronger in 2027.) MC Were there any points that the people in favor of data centers brought to the table that you thought to yourself, ‘wow, I hadn’t thought of it that way?’ CS When I talk about an idea that any new data center or new large load facility needs to bring its own clean energy. Right? So, that can look a lot of different ways from they’re paying for new infrastructure to go right here in Washington for the energy grid, or they get permission to build their own facility behind the meter to power themselves directly, or they go into a power purchase agreement to get power from Oregon or Montana or Idaho or something like that. And the part in that I hadn’t thought about, or it was like tying into all the different threads, was the thinking okay, so yeah, say they go into a power purchase agreement, who’s to say that power is not coming from a coal plant? or who’s to say that, say it is a renewable facility, but they may be operating under unfair labor practices, right now there’s not a collective bargaining agreement happening in that part of the country. You know, are we offloading the issue to someone else just to meet our goals? That was the piece I was like yeah, the Northwest power infrastructure, and where it all comes from, where it all is all sourced is complex and takes dedication to really understand the current needs and in capacities to how it’s maintained and upgraded for this new century. MC Oh, there’s so much. I feel like we could keep going on this forever. I have a curveball. Do you still ski? CS I do. I still consider myself a skier. It’s happening less and less for a number of reasons. You know, age. I put in my miles when I was young, so I’ve got early onset arthritis. But it’s become really prohibitively expensive for most folks. I could, but it’s so far from what I was able to grow up with, I was part of a great Black national ski club. I still love the sport. I invested in a lot of it. Yeah, I still ski. Sorry, that was a long answer MC Do you want to go up someday? I snowboard, but I won’t hold it against you that you’re a skier. CS Oh yeah for sure. I’d be down. MC What else do you do for fun? CS Science fiction, short stories. I love short stories. For the past four years I’ve particularly been focused on Black, indigenous, people of color authors. First, it’s great, amazing creativity that I’ve always loved. Also the ways in which folks bring their culture and their own stories that have been passed down into these new ways of expression. Let’s see, let’s see. I made a commitment last year to learn to play the banjo. I’ve been inspired by different banjo musicians and how they’ve talked about the history of that instrument being a unique instrument of the Black diaspora in the Caribbean and the Americas, and how that’s been transformed throughout history. And there’s some great folks in Oakland and North Carolina, doing some really cool reclamation of that instrument. And then the cultural music that has been muddled by minstrelry, right? There’s a whole beautiful musical tradition and culture that was appropriated and turned into minstrelry. And so that’s why the banjo is associated with that, but it’s transcendent, it goes way, way before all that. So I’m enjoying learning to play the banjo. And getting my hands in the soil and dirt. I love gardening. Doing some great projects. A significant part of my family lives in Georgia now, and I go back there pretty frequently and try to get a wildflower meadow established and working on my mom’s legacy out there that she really wants to pass down to her grandchildren. MC That’s awesome. Who’s a sci-fi author that people should know about? CS I mean, I think everybody knows Octavia Butler. Probably another author that’s moved me with their books, N.K. Jemisin. Those are two that immediately come to mind. MC So great talking to you, Cameron. I really appreciate it. CS Thank you The post Cameron Steinback on Coming to Climate Justice Work as an Educator, WA’s Data Center Working Group, and More. appeared first on Climate Justice Alliance.

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