HOW TO FIGHT ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM, AMERICAN JOBS PLAN HELPS CLIMATE CRISES, SUSTAINABLE FUTURE... (2612 hits)
For Immediate Release From Climate Reality Project!
Environmental Racism: What It is and How You Can Fight It!
We can’t truly move forward as a movement without acknowledging our shared past and working to solve its most fundamental problems.
To build a winning coalition and beat the climate crisis, we need to understand and respond to how social inequities intersect with our movement. Only then will we be telling the real story of climate change – a crisis that doesn’t affect everyone equally, a challenge that in many instances impacts those already enduring other hardships more acutely.
And telling that story is important because, to quote Maya Angelou, “You can't really know where you are going until you know where you have been.” What Is Environmental Racism?
When we talk about environmental racism, we’re talking about the disproportionate burden of environmental hazards placed on people of color.
This oppression is often achieved systemically, through policies and practices that effectively place low-income and communities of color in close proximity to polluting facilities like power stations, plastics plants, and methane gas pipelines or to infrastructure like major highways.
Living close to pollution – often the same emissions driving the climate crisis – people of color are exposed to a variety of harmful pollutants at a higher rate than White and higher-wealth communities. This leads to far greater rates of serious health problems in communities of color, from cancer to lung conditions to heart attacks, as well as a higher prevalence and severity of asthma, lower birth weights, and greater incidence of high blood pressure.
Yes, It’s About Race
Disentangling the disparate effects of poverty and race can be a challenge – but mounting evidence points in one direction: Race is often a more reliable indicator of proximity to pollution than income alone.
A 2018 study by Environmental Protection Agency scientists found that people of color on average faced a 28 percent higher health burden compared to the general population thanks to living in proximity to facilities emitting particulate pollution like soot. For Black Americans, the findings were especially troubling, with a 54 percent greater health burden reported.
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To be sure, community wealth often plays a central role in determining environmental policies, particularly regarding land use, zoning, construction permits, and regulation enforcement. The result is that low-income families of every color are exposed to more pollution than their more-affluent peers.
But even when wealth is taken into account, researchers still find a greater correlation between race and exposure to environmental hazards.
Moral Obligation To Act
The environmental justice movement challenges injustice and unequal treatment of people of color, working to raise awareness and end the inequities that mean Black Americans breathe 56 percent more pollution than they produce and Latinos breathe 63 percent more – while Whites breathe 17 percent less – for example.
In the US, the movement was born in the 1970s, when Black activists in Warren County, North Carolina organized to fight toxic dumping in their community. Right around the same time, in Houston, Texas, activists like Dr. Robert Bullard began researching and challenging racist policies that lead to 82 percent of the city’s trash being dumped in Black communities – despite the fact that Black residents made up only 25 percent of the population.
Since then, the movement has continued to grow, fighting for safe water and justice in Flint, Michigan, clean air in the South Bronx’s Asthma Alley, and an end to the urban oil fields in Los Angeles linked to dangerous birth outcomes. Tragically, the list goes on.
Fighting environmental racism means doing what is fair and morally right. As a movement, we have an obligation to act to dismantle the structures subjecting people of color disproportionately to environmental health hazards – again, many of them the very same pollutants driving the climate crisis.
Doing so starts with listening to the communities already living with fossil fuel pollution and the families hit first and worst by climate change. By understanding what the crisis means for them, we can work together for truly just and equitable solutions. Because the only way to solve the climate crisis is by working together.
What You Can Do
We are committed to showing up and standing with our partners, colleagues, employees, friends, nearly 30,000 Climate Reality Leaders, and all people who experience social injustice and racism of any kind.
It’s clear: We are facing the real possibility that the climate crisis could steal the chance at a better tomorrow from people all over the world. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The American Jobs Plan Is the Plan We’ve Been Waiting For!
Biden’s plan to build back better will put millions to work, confront the climate crisis, and tackle systemic racism in America.
This is the moment we’ve been working for.
Today, President Biden announced the American Jobs Plan, a far-reaching plan to reimagine and rebuild the US economy with about $2 trillion in strategic investments over eight years.
We’ll cut to the chase here: This is a really big deal.
Yes, it could go farther on climate action. But what’s in the plan is a really strong foundation for Congress to build on – and hopefully improve – when members start developing actual legislation.
In the meantime, what’s important to recognize here is that the American Jobs Plan would fundamentally transform both the US economy and how we understand the very idea of infrastructure. Because what you see in the plan isn’t just a commitment to confronting the economic devastation of COVID all around us right now by investing in America and creating millions of jobs (it’s there in the name, after all).
It’s also a commitment to creating jobs and making investments in ways that finally confront not only the pervasive inequality and systemic racism that have plagued us for generations, but also the climate crisis that threatens our future. By putting millions to work rebuilding our roads and water pipes and power sector, we can start on making a nation that lives up to its ideals of equity and justice for all. What the administration calls its “Build Back Better” program.
It doesn’t get much bigger than that.
We’re all used to hearing tired platitudes about belief in the American people from stump speeches and rallies. But the American Jobs Plan might be the greatest actual expression of that belief we’ve seen in decades. No surprise, a broad majority of Americans across the political spectrum – Republicans, independents, and Democrats – all support the plan.
The plan in full stretches to some 25 pages and there are still some key details to be filled in. But three elements stand out.
Putting Millions to Work Rebuilding America!
The American Jobs Plan proposes a lot of big investments, including:
$213 billion to build, preserve, and retrofit more than 2 million homes and commercial buildings to address the lack of affordable, sustainable housing in America.
$115 billion to repair critical bridges, highways, and roads.
$85 billion to modernize public transit and help agencies meet public demand.
$80 billion to repair and update America’s rail network.
Other areas include replacing all the lead pipes in the nation, improving our ports and waterways, and making our power infrastructure ready and resilient in a future of more climate-related storms, floods, and freezes.
These investments need workers in a wide range of fields and the plan repeatedly calls for prevailing wages and union membership as an option to see them through. The bottom line here is that if enacted, the plan would help put Americans to work on a scale we haven’t seen in decades.
Pushing Practical Climate Solutions!
Climate may not appear in the title, but Biden’s jobs plan is also perhaps the most ambitious and downright practical plan for climate action the nation has ever seen.
The plan lays out investments in a wide range of efforts aimed to help slash emissions, put the US on the path to achieving a carbon-free power sector by 2035, and prepare our power and other infrastructure for the challenges of more extreme weather coming our way.
Among other features, the plan pledges that “every dollar spent on rebuilding our infrastructure during the Biden administration will be used to prevent, reduce, and withstand the impacts of the climate crisis.”
As part of this effort, the plan would invest heavily in cleaning up the transportation and power sectors responsible for the majority of climate pollution, including initiatives to:
Create an energy efficiency and clean energy standard to cut carbon pollution and energy bills.
$27 billion to create a Clean Energy Jobs Accelerator (aka climate bank) to invest in fenceline communities, lower energy bills, cut pollution, and attract billions more in private investment.
Over the past couple of years, young people have led an extraordinary groundswell of grassroots climate activism, making their voices heard everywhere from local rallies to congressional hearings to the most important international conferences of our day. They’ve attained a hard-earned seat at the table and, rightfully so, are there to stay. This explosion in youth activism begs the question: why are today’s young people so energized about climate?
The answer largely lies in two factors. First, a growing call for intergenerational justice. Second, young people recognizing that, in so many ways, climate action goes hand in hand with building the future they want.
THE CALL FOR INTERGENERATIONAL JUSTICE
First things first, what is intergenerational justice?
Simply put, it’s the commonsense idea that future generations have the right to inherit a habitable planet. That is, one that hasn’t been stripped of all of its resources and seen its atmosphere polluted, and warmed past the point of no return.
Furthermore, it’s the idea that young people should have the same chance to discover the world and realize their dreams the way their parents and grandparents did – without seeing those dreams threatened by more frequent storms, rising seas, and fast-spreading disease.
But commonsense as this idea maybe be — to leave a planet as habitable as the one we entered — it’s hardly one we are honoring today, far from it. At our current emissions trajectory, we're driving directly toward the edge of a cliff at a speed that makes the injustice palpable. And nobody sees that injustice as clearly as young people.
Take prominent youth climate activists Vanessa Nakate and Greta Thunberg, for example. Their messages are inspiring millions to act, in part, by speaking about intergenerational justice.
"The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you."
-- @GretaThunberg at UN #ClimateAction Summit. https://t.co/g4uXzT9aRM pic.twitter.com/2nBzFxsnxP
— United Nations (@UN) September 23, 2019
Greta, Vanessa, and millions of others are taking action because they know we must preserve a world for future generations.
THE CHANCE TO BUILD
Intergenerational justice is a key source of inspiration for the youth climate movement, but it’s not the only one. Increasingly, young people are recognizing that many climate solutions would — preventing climate catastrophe aside — simply make the world a better place.
Our Right To a Safe, Sustainable Future is Being Battled Out in the Courts!
We are at a pivotal moment in the fight against climate change. One where accountability for the crisis and how to move forward are being litigated in the courts. Almost immediately after taking office in January 2021, US President Joe Biden signed a flurry of executive orders aimed at tackling the climate crisis, and declared that the time had come to bring greater urgency to this fight. The US has also officially rejoined the Paris Agreement.
These are exciting steps toward securing a just, equitable, and green future for all. But how can we hold our government accountable for its commitment to this future? How do we push for new solutions that are ambitious enough to match the urgency of the crisis?
According to a joint 2020 report by the Columbia Law School Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), people around the world are increasingly engaging in climate change litigation to try to do just that.
Global Climate Change Litigation
The Sabin Center and UNEP define climate change litigation broadly to refer to cases where issues of climate change mitigation, adaptation, or science are central. Various areas of focus have emerged within this category, such as trying to hold fossil fuel companies responsible for negative impacts of climate change.
Recently, cases that seek to galvanize more ambitious government climate action are growing in prominence. An increasing number of these cases are based on claims that insufficient government action to avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis amount to violations of constitutional and international rights, including the rights to life, water, a healthy environment, and food, among others.
Globally, there have been some important successes in this arena.
In perhaps the best-known case, Urgenda Foundation v. State of the Netherlands (“Urgenda”), the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that the Dutch State’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was insufficient to meet the country’s commitment to protect its citizens under the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR). The Court ordered the Dutch government to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by the end of 2020.
In another historic case, the Supreme Court of Colombia ruled in favor of 25 youth plaintiffs who claimed that continued deforestation of the Colombian Amazon, one of the largest sources of emissions in Colombia, was a violation of their fundamental rights. The Court ordered the Colombian government to devise a plan, with the input of affected communities and other stakeholders, to reduce deforestation in the Amazon. Other suits challenging insufficient government action are pending in various countries, including South Korea, Peru, and Pakistan.
Cases brought under international human rights law are also pending.
In 2019, a group of Torres Strait Islanders filed a complaint against Australia with the UN Human Rights Committee, claiming that Australia had failed to meet its human rights obligations by failing to address the impacts of climate change on the Islanders’ lives. Last year, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, along with his predecessor, filed a brief in support of the Islanders.
US Climate Change Litigation
Just as in the global community, young people in the US, Indigenous groups, and other communities disproportionately impacted by climate change are leading the way in rights-based climate change litigation.
The most visible case has been Juliana v. United States (“Juliana”), brought by a group of young people.
Modernizing our infrastructure the climate-smart way!
A green infrastructure plan means more jobs, lower emissions, greater equity, and healthier communities. Who doesn’t like a win-win-win-win?
We’ve all heard the line: “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”
Except, with the climate crisis, it’s kind of the other way around. We’re in a planet-sized hole – temperatures are rising and climate-fueled storms, droughts, and more are deepening inequity and injustice across the planet as inevitably people of color and poor families get hit the hardest.
So how do we get out? The answer, perversely, might be to start digging.
No, really.
Because by rethinking and rebuilding our roads and infrastructure for the climate challenges coming our way – think stronger hurricanes, punishing blizzards, powerful floods just for starters – we can not only create resilient communities, but healthier and more equitable ones too. All while slashing emissions and accelerating the transition to the net-zero economy we need to avert climate catastrophe on a global scale.
Really. It’s what climate-smart infrastructure is all about.
On the (climate-smart) road again The first thing to think about when we talk about climate-smart, or green, infrastructure might be the most obvious: updating our roads and bridges. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, infrastructure in the US gets a grade of just C-, with 43% of roads rated in poor or mediocre condition.
We can do better. And we have to – experts estimate that hundreds of unnecessary deaths are caused by poor infrastructure each year.
And if we’re upgrading our roadways, there’s no point in using the technology of the past. We need the climate-smart roads of the future.
That means roadways and bridges that are designed to handle the extreme weather of our changing climate.
It also means upgrading how we travel on these roads and bridges. Today, the transportation sector account for the single largest percentage of carbon emissions in the US, more than the power generation sector or industry. We can make a big dent in these emissions by creating electric vehicle pathways to enable clean-energy cars to go the distance safely. And by investing in public transportation infrastructure that reduces emissions and travel times.
These investments can transform our transportation grid into a modern network, designed to lower our impact on the climate and provide safer modes of travel for all.
High wages, low emissions
But green infrastructure isn’t just about roads and bridges. It’s about jobs. When the House of Representatives passed a $1.5 trillion green infrastructure package in 2019, it included funding for good-paying jobs in construction, engineering, and manufacturing, as well as support for small businesses and more.
That’s because investing in infrastructure that tackles the climate crisis head-on means investing in American workers. The dollars we invest in upgrading our critical infrastructure facilities can go right back into our communities in the form of good wages for local workers.
That includes jobs in communities that can’t be outsourced, and high-wage construction jobs that don’t require retraining. But it also means climate-smart engineering jobs and more revenue to small businesses. Because modernizing our infrastructure is going to take a whole-of-industry approach, and that’s a good thing.
Ask your doctor if green infrastructure is right for you
Fossil fuel pollution is driving the climate crisis – and a crisis in air pollution. Right now, the National Institutes of Health estimates that nine out of every 10 people living in an urban environment is affected by air pollution. And due to racist redlining policies across the US, the worst of the pollution is often centered in BIPOC communities. This air pollution, including pollution from motor vehicle emissions, is linked to a variety of health issues. From cardiovascular disease to pregnancy complications and physical disabilities, the pollution that pours off our roads and freeways can have very real health implications.
But when we upgrade our infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions, we can protect local communities from pollution too. The ever-growing range of electric vehicles means less need for fossil fuel-powered vehicles. More robust carbon-free public transit means fewer cars on the road. And less pollution in the air means fewer emissions-related health issues.
