Colette Pichon Battle, attorney, founder, and executive director of the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy. Colette Pichon Battle
By Karen L. Smith-Janssen
Colette Pichon Battle gave a December 2019 TEDWomen Talk on the stark realities of climate change displacement, and people took notice. The video racked up a million views in about two weeks. The attorney, founder, and executive director of the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy (GCCLP) advocates for climate justice in communities of color. Confronted with evidence showing how her own South Louisiana coastal home of Bayou Liberty will be lost to flooding in coming years, the 2019 Obama Fellow dedicates herself to helping others still reeling from the impacts of Katrina face the heavy toll that climate change has taken—and will take—on their lives and homelands. Her work focuses on strengthening multiracial coalitions, advocating for federal, state, and local disaster mitigation measures, and redirecting resources toward Black communities across the Gulf South.
<h4>How did Hurricane Katrina—which <a href="https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/150082.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">displaced more than 1 million people</a> in the Gulf region—propel your work, and how does it shape your mission today?</h4><p>I got into this work in the aftermath of the hurricane in 2005, and it's been 15 years as of August 29. Katrina was a massive disaster that I felt compelled to respond to. It was my hometown. I stayed because I began to understand how that disaster was a manifestation of a global climate reality.</p><p>We are anchoring the <a href="https://m4bl.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Movement for Black Lives</a> work that's centered around a national black climate agenda, and part of that will include in-depth communications to bring climate into the realm of Black lives—into communities that have been marginalized and targeted by our colonizing system. Part of our work is to begin a process of acknowledging the trauma that comes with being a person of color in this country, being in an environmental justice community and being poisoned every day, and going through a climate disaster. <em>We</em> are on the frontlines.</p>
<h4>How do you help communities heal from this trauma when the underlying problems have not been solved? </h4><p>The most difficult and time-consuming layer is building, healing, and strengthening relationships between different communities and acknowledging that many of us, especially people of color, have been systematically pitted against each other as part of a broader social infrastructure. What does it mean to reconcile these communities with each other? For example, we're making a <a href="https://www.gcclp.org/heal-and-reconcile" target="_blank">Sacred Waters Pilgrimage</a> down the Mississippi River for Black and Indigenous women to address the tensions between those two communities in the U.S. and begin to heal those relationships. In the climate movement, these are the people who are tokenized; it's just assumed they can stand on the frontlines together with no acknowledgment that there's a deep history of mistrust and tension between these groups—not of their own creation, and rooted in colonization. You've got to take some time to understand how the cultures are different and how people are perceived. You've got to reconcile and heal before you can work, and only then can the work that you do together stand. Otherwise, the work that you do together will fall.</p>
<h4>In addition to building coalitions, what kinds of services does the GCCLP provide to help residents cope with the impacts of extreme storms?</h4><p>We started out providing free legal services to folks recovering after a disaster. We are there as service providers but we also offer a political education about what is happening to you and why. We don't just get your <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/resources/going-under-long-wait-times-post-flood-buyouts-leave-homeowners-underwater" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">FEMA paperwork completed for flood remittance</a>, although that's part of what we'll do. You're also going to leave with an understanding of the frequency of flooding, the climate impacts, and how your area in particular has just been affected and is going to be affected in the future.</p><p>Today, we have four main programs, and in each, we have a level of advocacy within them: We do Equitable Disaster Recovery; Water Equity/Water Economy; <a href="https://www.gcclp.org/copy-of-equitable-disaster-recovery" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Sustainable Economy/Energy Democracy</a>; and Land, Labor and Just Transition. Our federal disaster advocacy work centers around the modification and re-envisioning of the Stafford Act, which controls and activates FEMA. We also do some state-level advocacy around mitigation planning here in the five Gulf South states. That involves educating decision makers not just on what the community needs but pointing out what's out there and within our budgetary reach or legislative duty. </p>
<h4>A lot of the initial recovery work following Katrina centered around <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/how-best-rebuild-hurricane-ravaged-city-listen-residents-says-new-orleans-native" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">building climate-resilient communities</a> that could withstand future storms. Has that work been successful?</h4><p>Over the years, as we've watched people trying to create resilient communities that are more physically ready for the storms that are coming, we've seen it either lead to gentrification or segregation or investment in non-Black, non-Native places. Money never makes it to the frontline. So we've got to put in our own infrastructure systems at the community level, rooted in political education around economy, racialized capitalism, and wealth-building.</p><p>In our understanding of climate change, the economy plays a major (if not <em>the</em> major) role in how we got to this place. The economic philosophy of this country is one of extraction; it's an extractive economy that started with the attempted genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans, all for profit, power, land, and control. So, we help communities to practice receiving, making decisions about, and distributing money to places where they want to see their dollars go—which is basically holding Black wealth. We help local organizations set up community-controlled funds all across the Gulf South region after every disaster. Yes, the community receives dollars, but they also go through a 12-month process to collectively develop a system of shared governance so that, should this happen again, we have systems of our own around our own money and its destination.</p>
<h4>The practice of "<a href="https://qz.com/1876202/new-flood-risk-maps-could-undermine-marginalized-neighborhoods/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">blue-lining</a>" is a new climate-driven threat that withdraws support for vulnerable communities living in high-risk flood areas. How did that manifest in New Orleans after Katrina, and how might it impact other areas?</h4><p>It's happening already in places south of New Orleans where decision makers have understood we will not make it. We're going to lose those areas. My community is one. You watch as <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/our-national-flood-insurance-program-going-underwater" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">federal flood insurance becomes impossible</a> because of the designations of flood risk by the Army Corps of Engineers. A point comes when you can't even get flood insurance to protect your home. After Katrina, officials said, "Everything below Interstate 10 is pretty much written off so if you live below I-10, you should begin to plan to move."</p><p>I think we're going to see false information about flood lines. On flood maps of south Louisiana, the city of New Orleans is not shown in the flood zone because of the levee system, which was only rebuilt to the standards that failed the first time. As a result, people in New Orleans can get insurance but people south of New Orleans can't.</p>
<h4>How do you reach community members who are not already part of the climate conversation but face climate change impacts in their immediate futures?</h4><p>Outreach is mainly folks just talking to the people they know. And we're part of larger coalitions that help us build new relationships. The problem is that the climate conversation has not yet made it into the daily rhetoric of Black, Indigenous, and brown communities, so giving generic information is not good enough. We're going to do more virtual education because video and social media are just how people get their information now in this COVID reality.</p><p>But the majority of folks we're trying to reach do not sit on a computer all day so there's still the problem of how to make it real. You have to understand that communication is not just words, especially down here in the South. You can sit under a tree next to somebody for a long time without words, yet a lot is actually being communicated, and they can feel that your energy is serious and authentic. I never had a problem communicating urgency to people of the Gulf South. They know I'm from here, that I love this place, and that I wouldn't be taking their time talking like this if it weren't serious.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/connector-gulf-south-15-years-and-counting" target="_blank">Natural Resources Defense Council</a>.</em></p>
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Participants hold an Indigenous sovereignty banner as hundreds of protesters disrupted traffic marching on Central Park West in New York City on Oct. 14, 2019. Activist group Decolonize This Place and a citywide coalition of grassroots groups organized the fourth Anti-Columbus Day tour. Erik McGregor / LightRocket via Getty Images
By Jazmin Murphy
Whenever you talk about race relations here in so-called "America," Indigenous communities [are] always the last ones on the rung," says Wanbli Wiyan Ka'win (Eagle Feather Woman), also known as Joye Braun, a front-line community organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network who fought against the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. In defending the land so deeply beloved and cherished by her people, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Braun recounts how actively her community is excluded from environmental work and how she and her colleagues are blatantly silenced, even when working alongside allies. "We've had to really fight … to even have a seat at the table," she says.
<p>The exclusion of Indigenous people and other non-White communities in environmental and conservation work is, unfortunately, nothing new. For centuries, conservation has been driven by Eurocentric, Judeo-Christian belief structures that emphasize a distinct separation of "Man" and "Nature" — an ideology that does not mesh well with many belief structures, including those belonging to Indigenous communities.</p>
<p>"Christianity has been largely built up around the idea of colonization," Braun says. Not only do these belief structures hold disproportionate power in environmental legislation, but they hold historical pains for those outside of Western religions. "Christianity was forced down our throats," Braun says. "Our reservations were divided up: 'OK this community … you can be Catholic. This community … you're Lutheran. This community … you're whatever.'"</p><p>Before the onset of such religion through colonialist conquests, the overwhelming consensus throughout the world was that human beings were just a small part of this natural world. Neither detached, nor superior. Of course, this "consensus" was not necessarily expressed in such a way that all groups adhered to the same belief structures. Yet, the underlying environmental ideology remains: Human beings are, to some extent, connected to all other living things on Earth, even the Earth itself. As European imperialism — and along with it, cultural genocide — began to take hold worldwide, so began the spread of the "Man versus Nature" dogma.</p><p>Today Braun's life is just one example of the ideological exclusion of non-European thought as it relates to wildlife and the natural world. Nonsubscribers are barred from participation in the protection of the world and nonhuman lives they hold so dear, which inhibits their environmental stewardship. But around the world, and especially in the United States, we are witnessing a historical push toward the dismantling of imperialism, the decentralization of power, and the welcoming of non-White, non-European values into conservation.</p>
<h3>How Modern Conservation Upholds the Superiority of Humans</h3><p>Christianity has deep, painful historical associations with the obsession of dominance. The same Bible that was used to enforce humans' domination over nature was also used to force Indigenous peoples to abandon their cultural truths for those more palatable to Europeans. This laid the foundation that continues to separate human life from nature to this day.</p><p>As the Bible states in Genesis, "Let [Man] have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over all the wild animals of the earth." We see echoes of this passage in the frameworks of many conservation objectives today, with concepts such as "creating" sustainable forests, "managing" wildlife populations, and "preserving" wilderness as a realm separate from that of humans. This reduces our perception of human connectivity to nonhuman life and to distance constituents from the objective recognition of Earth's intrinsic value.</p><p>Take one of the U.S.'s leading environmental organizations, for example. The <a href="https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/index.htm#:~:text=Follow%20Us-,Our%20Mission,of%20this%20and%20future%20generations." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">National Park Service</a>—a federal organization with <a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063447583" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">well-known racist origins</a>—has a mission statement that almost exclusively highlights the instrumental value of North America's natural lands: "The National Park Services preserves unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations … to extend the benefits of natural and cultural resources conservation … throughout this country and the world."</p><p>Their mission is painfully anthropocentric, never mind that the very lands it aims to extend were stolen from Indigenous tribes who are now denied access. Missions such as these create a nigh impenetrable ideological barrier through which environmentalists of non-Christian cultures cannot pass.</p>
<h3>Keeping POC Out of Conservation</h3><p>These organizational goals exclude other faith (or non-faith) groups and have nurtured a hostile environment that disproportionately affects people of color. Historical experiences function to reinforce these impacts, further preventing people of color from exercising agency in conservation initiatives. For one, White constituents do not live with the same generational trauma that people of color do.</p><p>Experiences rooted in genocide and slavery, for example, still inform people's experience of the outdoors. Black people were forbidden to enter certain spaces owned by the National Park Service and other natural lands because of Jim Crow laws and deeply rooted racism, <a href="https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/conl.12431" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">as pointed out by researchers Rachelle K</a>. <a href="https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/conl.12431" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Gould and others</a>. Many were lynched in these landscapes as well. Thus, for Black people, experiencing the outdoors was to put one's life on the line.</p><p>Simultaneously, "those in power [imposed] a particular concept of environment," Gould says, which denied Black people's experiences in natural habitats. Ideological disparities have likewise discouraged Indigenous agency in land management despite how profoundly they value land and wildlife. In the words of <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-0149-5_17" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Paula Gunn Allen of the Laguna Pueblo</a>, "The land is not really the place (separate from ourselves) where we act out the drama of our isolate destinies … It is not a matter of being 'close to nature'… The Earth is, in a very real sense, the same as our self (or selves)."</p><p>Inequality lies even in the evasiveness of definitions. "Google the word, 'environment' and see how far you need to scroll to see pictures of people in urban areas," Pomona College psychologist Adam Pearson says. "What counts as being an 'environmentalist?' And what counts as 'environmentalism?'" The vast majority of Americans believe that people of color do not feel strongly about environmental causes. Black, Latino, Asian, and White respondents <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/115/49/12429.short" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">in a 2018 survey</a> overwhelmingly associated environmentalism with whiteness and underestimated environmental valuation in their own communities. Some 65% of Latin and 68% of Asian respondents self-identified as "environmentalists," compared to 50% of White respondents.</p>
<h3>What Equal Opportunity Actually Looks Like</h3><p>The public has long held onto the idea that the socioeconomic inequalities play a large role in a person of color's individual capacity to care for the environment when in fact, conservation organizations often create unequal socioeconomic barriers. People of color who try to enter professional roles in American conservation often encounter pay rates <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/17/all-work-no-pay-the-plight-of-young-conservationists" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">below the poverty line</a> (and have done so for decades). That requires applicants to have enough accumulated wealth to be able to afford forgoing reasonable pay to "gain experience" — a luxury out of reach for many non-Whites because of <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining-the-black-white-wealth-gap/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">massive racial wealth disparities that result from long-standing discrimination</a>. Even those who fall in line with the Christian dogma are granted unequal access and compensation. Forty-nine percent of Black Christians, compared to 28% of White Christians, earn less than $30,000 annually, according to the <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/christians/christian/racial-and-ethnic-composition/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Pew Research Center</a>.</p><p>Ideological disparities have also had clear effects on Indigenous agency in land management. For example, the United States Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services works to combat "<a href="https://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damage/directives/pdf/1.201.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wildlife damage</a>," the idea that wildlife poses a threat not only to human health, safety, and property, but to natural resources as well. This concept is a stark contrast to many cultures' environmental values.</p><p>How would one expect an Indigenous person, a Buddhist, or a Muslim to feel welcome in such a space? The answer lies not only in dismantling millennia of imperialism, but also in the conscious invitation of non-White, non-European cultures into conservation.</p><p>According to Pearson, this requires combating stereotypes of environmentalists and creating enthusiasm for working in traditionally noninclusive spaces. Fulfilling these responsibilities requires taking an honest look at how ideological contrasts actively exclude people of color and perpetuate a negative feedback loop that overrepresents White people in environmental and conservation spaces.</p><p>"Inviting people to advise doesn't mean that they're gonna listen," Braun notes when discussing possible methods of increasing diversity in conservation. "I've seen that a lot. That's just them patting themselves on the back." She says real progress relies on human connection. "When you are facing one another, then you're forced to deal with things like the prejudices you carry on your back. You're forced to face the potential of racism. You're forced to face the economic divides."</p>
<h3>Abandoning Exclusivity for Diverse Community-Based Management</h3><p>As climate change becomes a mainstream concern, Indigenous knowledge can reveal truths not visible with White, Eurocentric approaches to conservation. Traditional ecological knowledge is <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-019-01218-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">central to monitoring and combating climatic change</a>, according to a 2019 study in British Columbia and Alaska. "The region is a bellwether for biodiversity changes in coastal, forest, and montane environments," the authors write, and "an extremely dynamic and resilient social-ecological system where Indigenous Peoples have been adjusting to changing climate and biodiversity for millennia."</p><p>Nearly 100 Indigenous elders from communities along the Pacific Coast shared with researchers the changes they had observed in coho and sockeye salmon migration patterns and the effects of warming aquatic temperatures with great detail. They had similar observations of the Sitka black-tailed deer, highlighting that their migration patterns had been influenced by fluctuating factors such as rising temperatures and reduced snowfall. Ultimately, the researchers asserted that present environmental governance is far too rigid in its exclusivity of Indigenous knowledge and that "token community visits" must evolve to invite Native environmental observers and managers to share their knowledge to create tangible progress.</p><p>While these ideas remain nascent in much of American conservation, other countries provide examples of success. For decades, forests in Benin were exclusively owned and managed by state officials. They were supported (and thus, politically influenced) by major stakeholders including the Fondation Aide á l'Autonomie Tobé, a Swiss non-governmental organization. Though the foundation surely had the best interests of the Benin constituents in mind, their collaboration didn't represent the public's values. Those living within the Tobé-Kpobidon forest, for example, did not feel welcome in forest management, which led to unsustainable resource use and degradation of the land.</p><p>To establish newfound hope for sustainable forest management and community involvement, a team of researchers, led by Rodrigue Castro Gbedomon <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1389934116300016" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">implemented a "community forestry approach" in 2016</a>. This methodology aims to "alleviate poverty among forest users, empower them, and improve the condition of the forests." The idea was that the invitation for community involvement (and thus, agency in management decision-making processes) would nurture a sense of ownership in constituents, encouraging them toward more conservative use of forest resources, thereby creating a more sustainable existence for the forest.</p><p>The team consciously invited varying ideals and perspectives into management practices by interviewing elders and community leaders on their perspectives regarding the forest's health. Stakeholders included nongovernmental organization leaders, and traditional and religious authorities that led and guided the surrounding communities. Divinity priests were invited as well, representing deities revered by the locals, including Ogu (the god of iron), Tchankponon (the god of smallpox), Otchoumare (the god of the rainbow), and Nonon (the god of bees). First Settlers and local hunters were also given authority in this work, serving to extend the network of participation deeply into every facet of the residents surrounding and within the Tobé-Kpobidon forest.</p><p>This decentralization of power and integration of diverse belief structures was supported by the foundation, which provided the financial resources and the means for reinforcement of the constituents' chosen management policies. This included warning signs indicating forest boundaries and guards to manage entry into the area. The foundation also rewarded locals' involvement with a yearly stipend of 500,000 FCA ($1,000) to further encourage their continued dedication to conservation activities.</p><p>This new governance structure yielded phenomenal results. As community access to the forest expanded for medicinal gathering, hunting, beekeeping, and more, the forest's contribution to the local economy increased to make up more than 25% of the First Settlers' income. Also, the native flora experienced a "progressive evolution" alongside a healthy, low rate of human agricultural interference. (Cashew plantations, for example, expanded at only 0.4% annually). This community-focused approach continued to have positive effects on the forest in the years after the study.</p><p>The Tobé-Kpobidon Forest experimental management approach, along with the extensive foundation of evidence validating Indigenous knowledge, serve as a beacon of hope amid the darkness that looms over non-White, non-European demographics that yearn for a role in conservation initiatives. It demonstrates that the present ideological chasms that keep people of color out of conservation can be defeated and that such cultural victories powerfully serve both humans and the natural landscapes in which we reside.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2020/09/15/conservation-decolonize-environmentalism/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+yes/most-recent-articles+(YES!+Magazine+Most+Recent+Articles)" target="_blank">YES! Magazine</a>.</em><br/></p>From Your Site Articles
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Green projects like the High Line in New York City have prompted similar concerns of accelerated gentrification, despite their original goals of neighborhood revitalization. espiegle / Getty Images
By Shelia Hu
The cycle is all too familiar: Affluent residents move into lower-income neighborhoods in cities and make their mark on the area's character and culture. Property values and the cost of living rise in tandem. While the process of gentrification may revitalize under-resourced neighborhoods, the skyrocketing costs of living displace longtime residents and businesses, leaving a new demographic to enjoy the benefits.
<p>As climate change starts to play a more significant role in where we live, it has become a trigger for gentrification and displacement in its own right. Coastal cities that lie on the frontlines of global warming have seen an influx of investments to improve <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/issues/climate-resilient-cities" target="_blank">climate resilience</a>. The efforts to redevelop or build new structures that can withstand the impacts of intensifying storms, flooding, erosion, and sea-level rise may inadvertently pose new threats to low-income communities of color.</p><p>On the other hand, the lack of equitable investment in low-income communities leaves people even more at risk for climate change impacts when the development model maintains a do-nothing status quo. The same consequence can happen when high-income households relocate from flood-prone coastal properties to higher-elevation cities, displacing the residents there. Extreme weather events fueled by global climate change can also rapidly reshape a city's identity and people's cultural connections to places they call home.</p><p>There are a few ways you can look at the causes of climate gentrification. <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/sasha-forbes-aicp" target="_blank">Sasha Forbes</a>, a senior program advocate in Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) Healthy People & Thriving Communities Program, breaks them down.</p>
The Lure of Higher Ground
<p>Increasingly, high-income households are moving away from coastal properties to avoid threats like sea-level rise and erosion. The lurking impacts of the climate crisis "are pushing people inland onto communities that have been rooted there and have endured disinvestment, racism, and inequality and are now under the threat of gentrification and displacement," Forbes explains. Meanwhile, even owners of more-resilient coastal properties are eyeing properties farther from the shore due to expenses associated with climate change, such as the <a href="https://publicintegrity.org/environment/flood-insurance-climate-change-risk-inequality/" target="_blank">rising cost of flood insurance</a>.</p><p>Residents of Liberty City in Miami are among those now <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/has-climate-gentrification-hit-miami-city-plans-find-out" target="_blank">facing the ramifications</a> of climate gentrification. Sitting at a higher elevation than the rest of Miami, Liberty City is less vulnerable to the expected sea-level rise of <a href="https://southeastfloridaclimatecompact.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2015-Compact-Unified-Sea-Level-Rise-Projection.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">14 to 26 inches by 2060</a>—and this has caught the attention of real estate developers.</p><p>A <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabb32" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2018 study</a> shows that real estate sitting on higher elevation in Miami has appreciated at a faster rate than anywhere else in the country. This value appreciation has not been leveraged to collectively benefit the predominantly Black residents of Liberty City who have been fighting for more resources for their community. Not only are they seeing a shift in their neighborhood, but these residents are also under pressure from developers to sell their homes.</p>Evacuation from Extreme Weather
<p>Natural disasters can also accelerate gentrification. "A large part of the reality is that Black- and brown-owned property is undervalued by the market, so in times of disasters—and we can include COVID-19 in this as well—predatory investors and developers take advantage of even cheaper property and land values than existed prior to a disaster," Forbes says.</p><p>Recent studies have shown that Black communities are undervalued <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/devaluation-of-assets-in-black-neighborhoods/" target="_blank">by an average of $48,000</a>. The recovery and redevelopment period presents "a mix of residents trying to maintain or recoup what might be left of their homes; residents who have lost their jobs and are on the verge of being evicted with no option for affordable housing elsewhere; land grabs; and cities engaging in redevelopment processes that might tout equity but still create intentional strategies to attract more higher-income residents without enough emphasis on supporting existing low-income residents—all of which can lead to gentrification and displacement," says Forbes.</p><p>Climate-related disasters in 2018 alone displaced more than <a href="https://www.internal-displacement.org/expert-opinion/displacement-and-housing-affordability-in-the-united-states" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1.2 million people</a>. These extreme weather events—which will only <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/global-warming-101#weather" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">increase in frequency</a> as climate change worsens—can spur immediate gentrification in under-resourced communities. In 2017, when Hurricane Harvey swept through Houston, one in six families receiving assistance from the Houston Housing Authority saw their home battered or destroyed. After the city's many displaced families returned to seek new accommodations, <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/climate-change-worsening-houstons-housing-crisis" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">they found skyrocketing rents across the city</a>. And one year later, Houston still wouldn't commit to rebuilding or replacing all of the lost subsidized housing.</p><p>The rebuilding of New Orleans, which bore the brunt of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, remains perhaps the starkest example of climate gentrification of a city in U.S. history. It is estimated that <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-katrina-anniversary/ten-years-on-hurricane-katrinas-scars-endure-for-black-new-orleans-idUSKCN0QB2AS20150806" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">100,000 Black New Orleans residents</a> have been permanently displaced from their homes due to the destruction of affordable housing following the storm. This included the razing of some developments that saw no significant damage as part of the city's rebuilding strategy.</p><p>Researchers have since concluded that hurricane damage was <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-12/new-orleans-gentrification-tied-to-hurricane-katrina" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">positively associated</a> with the likelihood of a New Orleans neighborhood having gentrified 10 years after Katrina. This suggests that natural disasters can sometimes pave the way for gentrification, uprooting existing populations en masse and wiping out infrastructure. Developers can swoop in afterward and invest in properties at lower prices and build higher-end projects meant to attract a wealthier population.</p>Green—but Inequitable—Investments
<p>Forbes also points to cities' efforts to implement eco-friendly infrastructure as a potential trigger for displacement. <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/ramya-sivasubramanian/tackle-green-gentrification-parks-and-affordable-housing" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Green gentrification</a>, such as the building of large-scale green spaces in neighborhoods, can inadvertently push out residents from the surrounding areas as it increases property values.</p><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bww18E0AQiL/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="12" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:540px; min-width:326px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:16px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bww18E0AQiL/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" background:#FFFFFF; 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font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;"> View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"><div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg)"></div></div><div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style=" width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"></div></div></div></a> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bww18E0AQiL/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">Low-income communities often face disproportionate environmental burdens, like higher levels of pollution and a dire lack of green spaces. But when investments into these communities are made, rents can skyrocket—displacing longtime residents. We can begin to address this green gentrification by advocating for genuine community collaboration, affordable housing, tenant protections, and a living wage. Because clean air, safe water, and green spaces should not be a luxury. Learn more by clicking the link in our bio! - #environmentaljustice #greengentrification #pollution #greenspaces #cleanair #safewater #affordablehousing #tenantprotections #livingwage</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/nrdc_org/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> NRDC</a> (@nrdc_org) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2019-04-27T14:59:09+00:00">Apr 27, 2019 at 7:59am PDT</time></p></div></blockquote> <script async src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script><p>"While it is good that cities adopt green interventions to increase climate resilience, the greening can lead to gentrification and displacement, given our racially and structurally unjust planning practices and policies, which don't focus enough on keeping people in place if they so choose, <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/sasha-forbes-aicp/keeping-renters-their-homes-through-collective-action" target="_blank">especially renters</a>," says Forbes.</p><p>These eco-friendly amenities may only end up benefiting wealthy residents—<a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/restoring-river-all-angelenos" target="_blank">which is what's in danger of happening along the Los Angeles River</a>, where profiteering developers are taking advantage of a restoration project intended to benefit surrounding ecosystems and riverside communities. One of two large projects proposed along the river, north of downtown L.A., would disrupt habitat restoration efforts and place a commercial development atop riverside land that the city had previously envisioned as part of a contiguous public park. The other proposed project features luxury housing in L.A.'s Chinatown and has already led to reports of landlords evicting long-term residents.</p><p>Other projects like the High Line in New York City, <a href="https://www.chicagoreporter.com/green-gentrification-and-lessons-of-the-606/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the 606</a> in Chicago, and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/runaway-gentrification-in-the-path-of-atlanta-s-beltline" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the Atlanta BeltLine</a> have prompted similar concerns of accelerated gentrification, despite their original goals of neighborhood revitalization. Forbes explains that there needs to be proactive strategies and policies tied to such projects that not only focus on anti-displacement measures but also allow low-income communities and communities of color to access the new amenities for their well being.</p>
<p>"Programs and policies for community ownership, cultural programs, income and workforce development that support communities should be implemented months or years<em> ahead </em>of the groundbreaking of any major development, as well as <em>after</em> the development is completed," Forbes says. "The continued failure to do so is as dangerous as the 'unintended consequences' of projects that are implemented to make things better. We don't account enough for inaction." Urban planning and zoning are key forces driving gentrification as a whole, Forbes adds, with local governments playing a significant role in regulating these practices.</p><p>Given that reality, Forbes and national and local partners with the <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/resources/strong-prosperous-and-resilient-communities-challenge-sparcc" target="_blank">Strong, Prosperous, and Resilient Communities Challenge</a> (SPARCC) say that community-led investment and self-determination by low-income communities and people of color are fundamental to any city's revitalization projects and to determining what happens to local land. Toward that end, SPARCC collaborates with community partners and amplifies local efforts to <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/sasha-forbes-aicp/principles-parks-and-equitable-development" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">promote equitable and sustainable development practices</a>—not just for housing protection but also for access to public transportation, cultural preservation, and parks.</p><p>"We must have increased voice, power, and access to adaptive financial resources, especially for community-led organizations, to make sustainable, healthy, and equitable development a reality," Forbes says. This can vary depending on the specific needs of the neighborhood. In the Bay Area, for example, <a href="https://www.sparcchub.org/communities/ba4a/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">64 percent of low-income residents</a> living near transit are at risk of displacement due to rising housing costs. To help mitigate this risk, SPARCC partners have focused on supporting the region's community land trusts—local nonprofit organizations that ensure long-term housing affordability in a neighborhood—and have succeeded in <a href="http://www.sparcchub.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/sparcc-year-three-evaluation.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">acquiring several single-family homes</a> in collaboration with residents, lenders, and developers.</p><p>We already know that climate justice, housing justice, racial equity, and economic opportunity are <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/marissa-ramirez/research-displacement-face-climate-change" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">interconnected</a>. To begin working through these issues and avoid the pitfalls of gentrification, cities need to ensure that they recalibrate their inequitable planning and economic development practices of the past and bring the decision-making table to those experiencing the issues firsthand.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/what-climate-gentrification" target="_blank">NRDC</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Households of color are far more likely to spend a disproportionately high portion of their income on energy bills. Wavebreakmedia / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Low-income households and households of color are far more likely to spend a disproportionately high portion of their income on energy bills, according to a new report from The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
<p>The report comes as tens of millions of American households face possible utility shutoffs by the end of this month as protections enacted in the wake of the pandemic expire. Twenty-five percent of American households, but a full two-thirds of low income households are described as having a "high energy burden," spending double the national average on energy bills as a portion of their income. Compared to white households, Black households spend 43% more of their income on energy costs, Hispanic households spend 20% more; and Native American households spend 45% more.</p>
<p>Racist policies like redlining have made households of color more likely to live in inefficient housing with old, energy-guzzling appliances and HVAC systems, Earther reported. Communities of color have been hit disproportionately hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, and "between having to stay at home to be to protect yourself and to remain socially distant, along with increased heat from the summertime weather … we found customers will see an increased energy bill of up to $50 per month," Joseph Daniel, a senior energy analyst with the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who did not work on the report, told Earther. </p>
<p>As reported by USA Today, Ariel Drehobl, a senior research associate at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy and the lead author on the report, described a "combination of factors" contributing to the crisis:</p><p>"We see that low-income communities of color and other economically disadvantaged communities often have similar characteristics, such as living in communities that have experienced racial segregation, high unemployment, high poverty rates and poor housing conditions, which are all due in part to systemic policies."<span></span></p>
<p><strong>For a deeper dive:</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/67-of-low-income-households-face-high-energy-burden-aceee/584961/?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=95047537&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--EZR87m0Dcnnc819t3emyZM_g10tlSOznpbjED6GZZqd45Vzf8XI3L5FCqYTOl9UDnCAv4tZons6Yms2m_6fAmawv2-g&utm_content=95047537&utm_source=hs_email" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">SmartCities Dive</a>, <a href="https://earther.gizmodo.com/poor-households-spend-nearly-four-times-as-much-on-util-1845010294?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=95047537&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8rtCyo7ex3IpVNwXJoSq1S3Io2ZNFi8Hm-Rf9PV9PEIeydS00SXkhM8tEgOydEcIG-KBZWlh_wqcmcQO49QnuTiEq3dA&utm_content=95047537&utm_source=hs_email" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Earther</a>, <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2020-09-10/report-highlights-energy-bill-inequities-in-us-cities?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=95047537&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9Oj6V4V7ps-b5jf9uVoy1nh80QLVh-DxSJIcr6kWCBqRKZKfc4wOQoWX9DaS6KZdF3rzZmHbdiSonMb7AolohDJ6YyVQ&utm_content=95047537&utm_source=hs_email" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">U.S. News & World Report</a>, <a href="https://grist.org/justice/report-black-households-spend-almost-50-percent-more-on-utilities-than-white-households/?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=95047537&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_cCdYL8ZsUJhjcXduHxa-3IFyRJDsSlPSTSKGFJ33Ddk9IjpQRIJYUO76NvzmgiP5qMgPMecXoD96gribhgwyo_vGwZg&utm_content=95047537&utm_source=hs_email" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Grist</a></p><p><a href="https://grist.org/justice/report-black-households-spend-almost-50-percent-more-on-utilities-than-white-households/?utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=95047537&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_cCdYL8ZsUJhjcXduHxa-3IFyRJDsSlPSTSKGFJ33Ddk9IjpQRIJYUO76NvzmgiP5qMgPMecXoD96gribhgwyo_vGwZg&utm_content=95047537&utm_source=hs_email" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a><em>For more </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/climate-change-news/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>climate change</em></a><em> and </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/business/renewables/" target="_blank"><em>clean energy</em></a><em> news, you can follow Climate Nexus on </em><a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateNexus" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Twitter</em></a><em> and </em><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClimateNexus/" target="_blank"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>, and sign up for daily </em><a href="http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Hot News</em></a><em>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
- Natural Disasters Disproportionately Impact Poorer Communities ... ›
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Pence Offers 'Prayers' as Hurricane Laura Hits Gulf Coast While Dismissing Climate Action at RNC
27 August
Politics
People prepare to board a bus for evacuation before the arrival of hurricane Laura in Lake Charles, Louisiana on August 25, 2020. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP / Getty Images
By Jake Johnson
Just hours before Hurricane Laura made landfall in Louisiana as a Category 4 storm with wind speed surpassing that of Katrina, Vice President Mike Pence delivered a Republican National Convention speech Wednesday night in which he mentioned climate action once only to reject it, continuing the GOP event's ignoring or downplaying of an emergency wreaking havoc and devastation in real time.
<p>"Wildfires are ravaging the West and a historic storm is barreling toward Texas and Louisiana, and yet not a single speaker had anything real to say about the climate crisis that is happening right before our eyes," Lori Lodes, executive director of Climate Power 2020, said in a statement. "Denial is not a plan. Thoughts and prayers are not a solution. We must take action now to stave off even more devastation."</p><p>Judging only by the attention Republican speakers gave the hurricane on the third night of their party's convention, one may not have grasped the severity of the storm that was barreling toward Louisiana and Texas as the evening progressed, forcing hundreds of thousands to evacuate as experts warned of <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/26/warning-unsurvivable-storm-surge-category-4-hurricane-laura-barrels-toward-us" target="_blank">catastrophic damage</a>.</p><p>The night opened with a prayer for those in the path of Hurricane Laura but, as <em>Politico</em> <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/27/hurricane-laura-rnc-trump-speech-402993" target="_blank">reported</a>, "it was nearly two hours before the hurricane was mentioned again" by President Donald Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who said "may God bless and protect the Gulf states in the path of the hurricane." Lara Trump's address came shortly after Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) spent a portion of her <a href="https://www.weareiowa.com/article/news/local/local-politics/iowa-senator-joni-ernst-2020-rnc-speech/524-261ff071-9d2e-43c8-b680-2663d5944c6b" target="_blank">speech</a> smearing the Green New Deal.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">.<a href="https://twitter.com/joniernst?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@joniernst</a> joined <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/RNC2020?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#RNC2020</a> & spent 1/2 her speech on floods devastating IA, then closed spreading lies about the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GreenNewDeal?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#GreenNewDeal</a>.<br><br>She never, however, mentioned the climate crisis, the $355k she’s taken from Big Oil, or GOP abandonment of family farmers.<br><br>Iowans will vote her out. <a href="https://t.co/VI37oC00ll">https://t.co/VI37oC00ll</a></p>— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) <a href="https://twitter.com/sunrisemvmt/status/1298808462160338944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 27, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p>Speaking live from Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Pence said at the beginning of his remarks that his "prayers are with" those affected by the hurricane <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-storm-laura-energy/stronger-hurricane-laura-aims-at-heart-of-u-s-oil-refining-industry-idUSKBN25M23P" target="_blank">set to strike at the heart</a> of the U.S. oil and gas industry, sparking <a href="https://twitter.com/BiologistDan/status/1298778265147105280" target="_blank">warnings</a> of a looming "environmental nightmare."</p><p>"This is a serious storm," added the vice president, who said the White House is "working closely with authorities in the states that will be impacted."</p><p>The one time Pence mentioned climate in his remarks was during an attack on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who the vice president said wants to "abolish fossil fuels, end fracking, and impose a regime of climate change regulations." Biden's climate plan, <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/14/more-work-do-major-step-forward-progressives-welcome-bidens-2-trillion-green-energy" target="_blank">viewed</a> by green groups as insufficient but as a step in the right direction, calls for new regulations on the polluting oil and gas industry but would not end fracking or abolish fossil fuels.</p><p>Pence also touted Trump's <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/26/incredibly-reckless-trump-moves-expand-fossil-fuel-drilling-alaskas-western-arctic" target="_blank">destructive efforts</a> to ramp up domestic fossil fuel production and <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/18/the-myth-of-u-s-energy-independence-has-gone-up-in-smoke/" target="_blank">falsely</a> claimed the U.S. has achieved "energy independence" under the current administration.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">3 nights. 69 speakers. <br><br>Now just one mention of climate change: Mike Pence saying they won’t pass a “regime of climate change regulations.” <br><br>Meanwhile...well, just watch the weather channel. <a href="https://t.co/xAoHaqqQ31">https://t.co/xAoHaqqQ31</a></p>— Jamie Henn (@jamieclimate) <a href="https://twitter.com/jamieclimate/status/1298836189277872128?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 27, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p>Pence's remarks came just before Hurricane Laura made landfall as a Category 4 storm near Cameron, Louisiana early Thursday morning, bringing maximum sustained winds of 150 miles per hour and causing <a href="https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1298892276517744641" target="_blank">widespread power outages</a> across Louisiana and Texas.</p><p>"Laura is a storm of historic proportions," the <em>Wall Street Journal</em> <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/hurricane-laura-08-27-2020-11598502621" target="_blank">reported</a>. "The fast-moving hurricane exploded in intensity Wednesday and had continued to gain strength into the night, with sustained winds of 150 miles an hour, according to the National Hurricane Center, close to the 157 mile-an-hour threshold of a Category 5 storm."</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">BREAkING! Buildings gutted in Lake Charles LA in powerful eye wall of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/HurricaneLaura?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#HurricaneLaura</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/RadarOmega_WX?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RadarOmega_WX</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/ChasinSpin?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ChasinSpin</a> <a href="https://t.co/wP3fPyREIZ">pic.twitter.com/wP3fPyREIZ</a></p>— Reed Timmer (@ReedTimmerAccu) <a href="https://twitter.com/ReedTimmerAccu/status/1298877061252222977?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 27, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">10:30pm UPDATE from the 4th floor of our hotel in Lake Charles! Really now seeing a ramp up in the winds. <a href="https://twitter.com/StephanieAbrams?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@StephanieAbrams</a> is LIVE on <a href="https://twitter.com/weatherchannel?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@weatherchannel</a> down on ground level! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/HurricaneLaura?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#HurricaneLaura</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LakeCharles?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#LakeCharles</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Louisiana?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Louisiana</a> <a href="https://t.co/cUc9NhX1lO">pic.twitter.com/cUc9NhX1lO</a></p>— Chris Bruin (@TWCChrisBruin) <a href="https://twitter.com/TWCChrisBruin/status/1298828419615072256?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 27, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><p>In a statement late Wednesday, Climate Power 2020 warned that flooding from the massive storm "could cause some of the 109 Superfund sites in Laura's path to leak toxic chemicals into neighborhoods and drinking water storage."</p><p>"In 2017," the group noted, "hundreds of millions of gallons of contaminated industrial products and hundreds of tons of air toxins were released into communities because of flooding and damage during Hurricane Harvey."</p><p>Echoing the grave warnings of other experts, meteorologist Eric Holthaus <a href="https://twitter.com/EricHolthaus/status/1298848201651486721" target="_blank">tweeted</a> early Thursday that "Southwest Louisiana will never be the same after this."</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/27/pence-slammed-offering-prayers-while-dismissing-climate-action-rnc-hurricane-laura?cd-origin=rss" target="_blank">Common Dreams</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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A Look at Why Environmentalism Is So Homogeneous — and How Organizations Might Cultivate Genuine Diversity
22 August
Climate
Protesters marching in Bushwick on June 13 holding a Pipelines Threaten Black Lives banner. Erik McGregor / LightRocket / Getty Images
By Ambika Chawla
As a child growing up in Los Angeles, Erynn Castellanos would spend hours exploring her grandmother's backyard garden, an oasis of greenery filled with oranges, sugarcane, yerba buena, guava and herbs.
<p>"Playing with my brother and cousins in my grandmother's backyard, climbing the trees, and trying different fruits — those experiences made me appreciate natural spaces," she says. "I think that is where I got my sense of exploration, of wanting to go to forests, mountains and rivers."</p>
<p><br/></p>
<p>Now a graduate student of environmental studies at the University of Montana and an active member of the environmental organization <a href="https://latinooutdoors.org/" target="_blank">Latino Outdoors</a>, Castellanos is passionate about educating young people of color about the importance of connecting with nature, hoping to inspire them to help protect the environment.</p><p>"Most of the people in camping advertisements are white people. You don't see people like yourself in the field of conservation," she says. "It is always this distant figure of someone else doing it, but not someone who looks like you."</p><p>Castellanos' perception that people of color are underrepresented in the environmental movement is accurate. Even though communities of color are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards, the environmental workforce remains overwhelmingly white.</p><p>As efforts grow around the U.S. to recognize and eradicate systemic racism, people of color can offer unique perspectives on both why <a href="https://ensia.com/features/diversity/" target="_blank">diversity is lacking in the green sector</a> and <a href="https://hbr.org/2020/05/diversity-and-inclusion-efforts-that-really-work" target="_blank">what organizations can do to diversify the environmental workforce</a>.</p>
Underrepresented
<p>In 2014, Dorceta Taylor, a professor of environmental justice and food systems and the director of diversity, equity and inclusion at the University of Michigan's School for Environment and Sustainability, published a landmark <a href="https://www.diversegreen.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ExecutiveSummary_Green2.0_FINAL.pdf" target="_blank">study</a> of racial diversity in green NGOs, government agencies and foundations. She reported that 16% or fewer of staff in these organizations were people of color and less than 12% occupied leadership positions.</p><p>A <a href="https://www.diversegreen.org/leaking-talent/" target="_blank">follow-up study</a> published in 2019 by Stefanie K. Johnson, associate professor of Management at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado, reviewed 40 green NGOs and foundations and found that green organizations were still overwhelmingly white, with only 20% of NGO staff identifying as people of color. In fact, the study found that from 2017 to 2018, the percent of senior staff positions at green foundations held by people of color fell from 33% to 4%.</p><p>And a <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/broadcast-networks/how-broadcast-tv-networks-covered-climate-change-2019" target="_blank">recent study</a> by Media Matters for America found that people of color comprised only 10% of people interviewed or featured in media coverage on climate change.</p>Root Causes
<p>What's behind the lack of proportional representation of communities of color in the environmental workforce?</p><p>Peggy Shepard, co-founder and director of <a href="https://www.weact.org/" target="_blank">WE ACT for Environmental Justice</a>, a nonprofit organization that mobilizes underrepresented communities around environmental justice education, energy efficiency, toxins in consumer products, climate justice, clean air and more, says it's part of a far larger societal malaise. WE ACT also engages in policy advocacy at the city, state and federal levels.</p><p>"I see the fight for environmental justice, housing justice, Black Lives Matter, prison reform — all of those are linked by the underlying systemic racism that really mandates that we have organizations to safeguard our lives from the police, and to safeguard our environment," she says. "All of those issues that are about protecting rights, and justice is what really links us all."</p><p>Castellanos says that, in addition to not seeing people like them already engaged, some members of the <a href="https://ensia.com/articles/latinos-care-about-the-environment-so-why-arent-green-groups-engaging-them-more/" target="_blank">Latino community</a> view environmental problems as less pressing than other issues. "Immigration is number one, with people being detained," she says. "How can you tell your students to care about the environment when they are afraid that their parents won't be home?"</p><p>Virginia Palacios, a climate change consultant for <a href="http://www.greenlatinos.org/" target="_blank">GreenLatinos</a><u>,</u> says that people of color may have fewer opportunities to engage in environment-oriented activities that require financial resources when they are growing up, such as summer camps. As a result, they may not have a background that predisposes them to moving into green careers or being active in environmental groups.</p><p>"People who are low income are more likely to be people of color," Palacios says. "When you are coming from that background, you are not going to have the same opportunities as a person who is more affluent had in their life. You might not have been able to go to the summer camp that prepared you to go to college. You probably didn't get to do all the extra stuff that people use to stack up their resume."</p><p>One of the findings in Taylor's 2014 report was that in addition to overt discrimination, unconscious bias often perpetuates workplaces that lack diversity in hiring and promotion practices.</p><p>"Homogeneous workplaces arise because of adherence to particular cultural norms, filtering, network structure, and recruitment practices. These are forms of unconscious or inadvertent biases that can lead to or perpetuate institutional homogeneity," states the report.</p><p>Palacios contends that implicit bias often occurs as part of the hiring practices of green groups. "People tend to hire people who look like them or who went to the same schools as they did. Or, they get a good feeling from this person because they are like them."</p>Strategies for Change
<p>Palacios says she believes training workshops on implicit bias can be an effective strategy for increasing diversity.</p><p>"Organizations that want to improve diversity have to know that they have unconscious bias. They will have to go through a process of unlearning habits," she says. "One of the things that has been the most successful in my experience are being able to go through an in-person training with your peers and then being able to have a conversation, to process things verbally. I think unconscious bias trainings are one of the first things that white folks can do to understand how they have been programmed."</p><p>The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has begun such trainings, according to senior vice president and chief human resources officer Sean Cook, in addition to other initiatives to promote diversity in the environmental workforce, such as fellowships and partnerships with universities.</p><p>"One of the initiatives that we have recently undertaken is unconscious bias training. Last year, we worked with an outside firm called Kaleidoscope to help us roll out this training initiative, which included increasing our knowledge of race and equity, leading inclusively, leveraging differences, and building a diverse team. Individual trainers from Kaleidoscope went to our offices in New York, San Francisco, Sacramento and Washington D.C. and trained all managers on these subjects. We began these trainings at the ground level of our organization and went all of the way up to the board of directors," says Cook.</p><p>According to Cook, staff gave the conscious inclusion training high marks. In follow-up surveys, 95% agreed or strongly agreed that "cultural competence can improve my experience in the work environment," and 89% agreed or strongly agreed that "the material in the session felt relevant to our workplace."</p><p>Cook says EDF is also working to ensure that during the hiring process, applicants are not judged unfairly based upon their educational background. "We want to make sure that we are inclusive of all, whether you went to an Ivy League school, whether you were self-educated, whether you attended a community college, a liberal arts school or a state university."</p><p>Palacios also recommends that organizations create guidelines for the skills that are critical for a job position, and that hiring managers should "really have a rubric in mind of how you are going to be judging the person in front of you. That can help to reduce bias when you are having an interview with someone, so you don't ask, 'Did they go to the same school that I did? Did they play the same sports that I did?'"</p>Genuine Diversity
<p>Hodan Barreh, a youth environmental advocate passionate about bringing diversity to the environmental movement in her hometown of Austin, Texas — which <a href="https://www.statesman.com/business/20160924/report-austin-most-economically-segregated-major-metro-area-in-us" target="_blank">studies show</a> is one of the most economically segregated cities in the country — cautions green groups to avoid tokenization of people of color if they want to bring genuine diversity to the environmental movement.</p><p>"They bring in that one Latinx person, that one Indigenous person, that one person of color, and they think that's enough. They think that one perspective speaks for all of the community," Barreh says. "That's very problematic, because not one person can give you the full perspective of what a community entails."</p><p><span></span>Shepard points out that it's important to remember that the environmental movement is more than large green groups: It also includes a constellation of community-based groups advocating for environmental justice within their localities. The problem, she says, is that the media and decision-makers are often deaf to their voices.</p><p><span></span>"When elected officials and policymakers want to know about environmental justice, they don't necessarily call environmental justice groups, they'll call [the Natural Resources Defense Council] or Sierra Club," she says. "It's the devaluing that we have expertise, that we're knowledgeable about our own issues and about the places where we are living."</p><p><span></span><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://ensia.com/features/environmental-workforce-diversity-systemic-racism/" target="_blank">Ensia</a>. </em></p>
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Gina Luster, 42, and her daughter Kennedy Luster, 8, stand at a now-defunct water fountain in downtown Flint, Michigan on October 11, 2016. Brittany Greeson / For The Washington Post / Getty Images
The state of Michigan has reached a settlement with the victims of the Flint water crisis. Michigan agreed to pay $600 million, which will primarily benefit the city's children since they were most affected by the lead-tainted water, The Washington Post reported.
<p>The settlement will be officially announced on Friday. It is expected that tens of thousands of residents will be eligible for compensation, which is subject to approval by a federal judge in Michigan, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/us/flint-water-crisis-settlement.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a> reported.</p><p>Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel have been entrenched in negotiations with lawyers for more than 18 months on behalf of the thousands of Flint residents who filed a lawsuit against the state, the <a href="https://www.apnews.com/be582ed788a70a2bb5ab29cd1132558e" target="_blank">AP</a> reported.</p><p>The issue in the case dates back to 2014, when Flint city officials changed the city's water supply source from Lake Huron to the Flint River. The decision was made under the leadership of a state-appointed emergency manager who overlooked safety precautions. This resulted in chemicals and lead leaching into Flint's drinking water through corroded pipes, <a href="https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/512856-michigan-to-pay-600m-to-victims-of-flint-water-crisis" target="_blank">The Hill</a> reported.</p>
<p>At the time, residents began to complain about discolored and foul-smelling water. Soon after that, residents reported skin rashes, but their concerns were ignored. Local pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha warned that abnormally high lead levels were appearing in children. Lead poisoning can severely harm brain development, The Washington Post reported.</p><p>Flint's water source is once again supplied by Lake Huron, but many residents continue to cook, drink and brush their teeth with bottled water. In 2016, researchers said there were no longer detectable levels of lead in many homes, according to the AP.</p><p>However, Flint's necessary pipe repairs remain unfinished. The repairs were supposed to be made by January, but were paused in the spring due to the coronavirus pandemic, The Hill reported.</p>
<p>Mayor Sheldon Neeley said the repairs are almost done.</p><p>The Washington Post reviewed the settlement and reported that 80 percent of the award is earmarked for Flint residents who were younger than 18 at the time of exposure, with more than half of that amount slotted for children who were under 6 at the time. The remainder of the settlement will go to plaintiffs who experienced lost revenue from property damage because of the water crisis.</p><p>Anyone living in Flint between 2014 and 2016 may be eligible for part of the settlement. The payments are expected to start next spring, and individual amounts will be in proportion to the plaintiff's degree of suffering, The New York Times reported.</p>
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Black Infants More Likely to Survive if Treated by Black Doctors, Study Finds
18 August
Health + Wellness
Outcomes for Black babies are better if they are treated by Black doctors, a study has found. Mongkolchon Akesin / Getty Images
Childbirth in the U.S. is simply more dangerous for Black babies. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study published last year, for example, found that Black babies were twice as likely to die before their first birthday when compared with white, Asian and Hispanic babies.
<p>But new research <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/08/12/1913405117" target="_blank">published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a> Monday has uncovered a factor that might contribute to this disparity.</p><p>"Findings suggest that when Black newborns are cared for by Black physicians, the mortality penalty they suffer, as compared with White infants, is halved," the researchers wrote.</p><p>To reach their conclusion, the study authors analyzed the records of 1.8 million Florida hospital births between 1992 and 2015 and discovered the race of the attending physician, <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/512439-study-black-newborns-more-likely-to-survive-when-cared-for-by-black-doctors" target="_blank">The Hill reported</a>. They found that, when the doctor in charge was white, Black babies were three times more likely to die than white babies. But when the doctor was Black, that mortality rate was cut in half.</p><p>The effect was strongest in complicated births and in hospitals that delivered more Black infants, the researchers found.</p>
<p>While Black mothers are two to three times <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2019/p0905-racial-ethnic-disparities-pregnancy-deaths.html" target="_blank">more likely</a> to die due to pregnancy complications than white mothers, the researchers found no statistically significant impact of the doctor's race on the mother's chances of survival.</p><p>The findings are the latest evidence that racism <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/racism-public-health-emergency-2646173766.html" target="_self">plays a major role</a> in <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/public-health" target="_self">public health</a> outcomes.</p><p>The findings suggest there may be more trust between Black doctors and patients, or that Black doctors may be more aware of the factors that put Black infants at greater risk, lead study author of George Mason University Brad Greenwood told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/17/black-babies-survival-black-doctors-study?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR0_MrqZwCadG44Yja9iL6w7Ms3kFf7NJPOVQ2VvWgyY9NGavBWNQ2yv330#Echobox=1597705110" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>.</p><p>On the other hand, white doctors may be acting out of unconscious bias when treating Black mothers and babies.</p>
<p>The findings highlight the importance of increasing diversity in the medical field, Greenwood said. Currently, only five percent of U.S. doctors are Black.</p><p>"Inasmuch as research suggests stereotyping and implicit bias contribute to racial disparities in health outcomes, the work also highlights the need for hospitals and other care organizations to invest in efforts to reduce such biases and explore their connection to institutional racism," Greenwood told The Guardian.</p>
<p>The findings mirror the experience of doctors in the field. When Black hospital obstetricians were contracted to treat uninsured mothers and babies in Eastern Michigan, the mortality disparity between Black and white babies fell significantly. Black babies were five times more likely to die in 1980 and only 1.4 times more likely to die by the mid to late 1990s.</p><p>"As black physicians we attended the same churches, barber shops, beauty salons, our children attended the same schools … this sense of community cultivates an entirely different level of relationship and accountability. The feeling that your provider genuinely cared for you is important … and, in my opinion, is more easily realized when racial concordance and genuine relationship is present," one of the doctors involved, Dr. Arthur James, told The Guardian. "Kudos to the authors for raising an important and often overlooked potential contributor to improved birth outcomes."</p>
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Trump Pulls Nomination of William Pendley to Head Nation's Public Lands, Yet Pendley Remains in Charge
17 August
Politics
BLM staff e-bike with BLM Deputy Director for Policy and Programs William Perry Pendley in Moab, Utah in October 2019. Bureau of Land Management / Flickr / CC by 2.0
By Andrea Germanos
Environmental campaigners on Saturday welcomed news that President Donald Trump withdrew his nomination of "pro-polluter" and "unapologetic racist" William Perry Pendley for director of the Bureau of Land Management, with groups saying he should no longer be allowed to continue in his role as unofficial head of the agency.
<p><br/></p>
<div id="063aa" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="432ae1f7934aea37d2d0c56a004220b2"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1294666847929937921" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">We are hearing the Trump administration is pulling down their nomination of William Perry Pendley for BLM director. It’s about damn time.</div> — Martin Heinrich (@Martin Heinrich)<a href="https://twitter.com/MartinHeinrich/statuses/1294666847929937921">1597507604.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>Pendley, who's <a href="https://twitter.com/Sagebrush_Rebel/status/1148664155525664768" target="_blank">called</a> fracking an "environmental miracle," was <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/03/worst-possible-person-300-groups-demand-senate-reject-trumps-pick-manage-us-public" target="_blank">panned</a> by civil rights, environmental, tribal, and immigrant advocacy groups as "the worst possible person you could conjure to be a leading steward of our shared public lands" given his public record that includes a history of racist and sexist <a href="http://williampendley.org/in-his-own-words/" target="_blank">comments</a>, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/08/01/william-perry-pendley-blm-native-americans/" target="_blank">"overt racism" toward native people</a>, dismissal of the climate crisis, suggestion that "the Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold," and <a href="https://www.citizensforethics.org/william-perry-pendley-50-conflicts-of-interest/%20" target="_blank">a 17-page list </a>of 57 potential conflicts of interest.</p><p>"Pendley never should have been nominated, and the fact that he was shows you what you need to know about this administration's conservation priorities," Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) said in a <a href="https://www.tomudall.senate.gov/news/press-releases/udall-statement-on-reports-that-william-perry-pendleys-nomination-being-withdrawn" target="_blank">statement</a> Saturday.</p><p>Trump formally <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/28/far-right-ideology-trump-public-lands-nominee-why-senate-must-reject-him-say-groups" target="_blank">nominated</a> Pendley in June to lead BLM, an agency within the Interior Department (DOI). However, he has been <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/07/30/new-blm-appointee-brings-conflicts-interest-and-plans-sell-public-lands-agency" target="_blank">overseeing</a>—to the outrage of progressive groups—BLM for over a year, with the agency's website <a href="https://www.blm.gov/leadership" target="_blank">describing</a> him as "exercising authority of the director."</p>
<p><em>Outdoor Life</em> first <a href="https://www.outdoorlife.com/story/blogs/opencountry/pendley-withdrawn-bureau-land-managment-nominee/" target="_blank">reported</a> on the news of the withdrawal.</p><p>Interior spokesperson Nicholas Goodwin <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/512169-trump-to-withdraw-controversial-public-lands-nominee" target="_blank">confirmed</a> the nomination withdrawal to <em>The Hill</em> but provided no explanation for the decision. "The president makes staffing decisions. Mr. Pendley continues to lead the Bureau of Land Management as Deputy Director for Programs and Policy," Goodwin said. </p><p>Critics of Pendley responded to the news with fresh attacks on his record.</p><p><a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2020/08/withdrawing-pendley-nomination-victory-for-public-lands" target="_blank">According to</a> Lena Moffitt, director of the Sierra Club's Our Wild America campaign, "Pendley's tenure as head of the Bureau of Land Management, like the entire Trump administration, has been a disaster for our public lands. At best, he's demonstrated a total disregard for the health of our communities and our wild places, prioritizing giveaways to polluting fossil fuel corporations. At worst, he actively worked against marginalized communities."</p>
<p>Collin O'Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, suggested the withdrawal simply represents the administration seeing Pendley as unlikely to be confirmed by the Senate.<br></p><p>"Unfortunately, the ignominious end of Pendley's nomination is more of a cynical nod to political realities than a retreat from the nihilist ideology he championed—and provides small solace for the communities and wildlife affected by the unbridled leasing of wildlife habitat and recreation lands across the West to energy development," said O'Mara.</p><p>Further dampening any reason for progressive applause is that Pendley is not yet ousted from his current role at BLM.</p>
<p>"This is a sham," <a href="https://twitter.com/PeterGleick/status/1294687412593938433" target="_blank">tweeted</a> climate scientist Peter Gleick. "Trump is withdrawing the nomination but leaving Pendley in charge anyway."<br></p><p>"Another unconfirmed, illegal appointment," he added.</p><p>Udall, in his statement, demanded that Pendley "not be allowed to continue in this role in an acting, unconfirmed capacity."</p><p>"It's time for DOI stand up for our public lands and our trust and treaty obligations to tribes," he said.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/15/following-outrage-trump-pulls-nomination-unapologetic-racist-william-perry-pendley?cd-origin=rss" target="_blank">Common Dreams</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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The Environmental Legacy of Kamala Harris, Joe Biden’s Newly-Announced Running Mate
12 August
Politics
California Senator Kamala Harris endorses Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden at a campaign rally at Renaissance High School in Detroit, Michigan on March 9, 2020. JEFF KOWALSKY / AFP via Getty Images
Former Vice President Joe Biden made a historic announcement Tuesday when he named California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate in the 2020 presidential election.
<p>Harris is now the first Black woman and the first person of Indian descent to run for national office for a major political party in the U.S., the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) pointed out. She also has a strong legacy of championing environmental justice throughout her career.</p><p>"Congratulations to Senator Kamala Harris, a true environmental champion!" LCV Action Fund Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Tiernan Sittenfeld said in a <a href="https://www.lcv.org/article/lcv-action-fund-statement-joes-bidens-vp-pick-senator-kamala-harris/" target="_blank">statement</a>.</p>
<div id="dd1a3" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="68af3c0112c4b985dfd2678d05cb02d9"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1293294015278985217" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">@JoeBiden @KamalaHarris Her stellar 91% lifetime score on LCV's Environmental Scorecard speaks for itself:… https://t.co/ZClO9w8soC</div> — LCV – League of Conservation Voters (@LCV – League of Conservation Voters)<a href="https://twitter.com/LCVoters/statuses/1293294015278985217">1597180296.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>Harris has a lifetime LCV environmental voting score of 91 percent, better than Biden's 83 percent, <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11082020/kamala-harris-joe-biden-election-2020-climate-change" target="_blank">InsideClimate News noted</a>. Her selection won praise from several mainstream environmental groups, including the <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2020/08/sierra-club-statement-biden-harris-2020" target="_blank">Sierra Club</a>, <a href="https://foeaction.org/news/friends-of-the-earth-action-applauds-the-historic-selection-of-kamala-harris-as-the-democratic-nominee-for-vice-president/" target="_blank">Friends of the Earth Action</a> and <a href="https://www.nrdcactionfund.org/kamala-harris-for-vice-president/?utm_source=tw&utm_medium=tweet&utm_campaign=AFciven" target="_blank">Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund</a>.</p><p>Harris is a co-sponsor of the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/green-new-deal" target="_self">Green New Deal</a> resolution, according to <a href="https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/what-the-kamala-harris-vp-pick-means-for-bidens-energy-and-climate-platform" target="_blank">Greentech Media</a>, and promised to end the filibuster during her own presidential campaign so that the major climate legislation would have a chance at passing. Her unique contribution to the green movement, however, is her lifetime focus on environmental justice in particular. This is a key issue for the Biden campaign as a <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/2020-election-climate-change-abortion-2638025748.html" target="_self">growing awareness</a> of the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a> corresponds with <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-activist-racial-justice-2646152490.html" target="_self">nationwide protests over racial injustice</a> and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/black--hispanic-americans-coronavirus-2645677258.html" target="_self">health disparities</a> made starker by the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coronavirus" target="_self">coronavirus</a> pandemic.</p>
<h3>Environmental Justice</h3><p>When Harris served as San Francisco district attorney, she created the office's first environmental justice unit in 2005, InsideClimate News reported.</p><p>"Crimes against the environment are crimes against communities, people who are often poor and disenfranchised," Harris said at the time, as <a href="https://grist.org/politics/kamala-harris-is-bidens-vp-pick-what-does-that-mean-for-the-climate/" target="_blank">Grist reported</a>.</p><p>She has continued championing the issue as a Senator. This summer, she introduced the Environmental Justice for All Act with Senators Tammy Duckworth and Cory Booker to ensure the federal government considers low income communities and communities of color when issuing permits, Greentech Media reported.</p><p>She also teamed up with New York Representative and Green New Deal champion <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/alexandria-ocasio-cortez" target="_self">Alexandria Ocasio Cortez</a> to introduce the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/harris-aoc-climate-legislation-2639501313.html" target="_self">Climate Equity Act</a>, which would create a new Office of Climate and Environmental Justice Accountability within the Office of Management and Budget to make sure that all environmental legislation and regulations are assessed based on their impact on frontline communities.</p><p>The duo first proposed the act last summer and formally introduced it last week.</p>
<div id="c4f11" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="67da6c1aa88b185f74fa063adbac316a"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1292181834571354115" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">This week, @RepAOC and I introduced the Climate Equity Act, legislation to ensure that we center the fight against… https://t.co/bpQi8aELxk</div> — Kamala Harris (@Kamala Harris)<a href="https://twitter.com/SenKamalaHarris/statuses/1292181834571354115">1596915131.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p>"COVID-19 has laid bare the realities of systemic racial, health, economic, and environmental injustices that persist in our country," Harris said in a statement about the new legislation reported by <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/510920-harris-aoc-push-climate-equity-bill-with-green-new-deal-roots" target="_blank">The Hill</a>. "The environment we live in cannot be disentangled from the rest of our lives, and it is more important than ever that we work toward a more just and equitable future."</p>
<h3>Climate Liability</h3><p>During her presidential campaign and her time as California attorney general, Harris also emphasized holding <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuel" target="_self">fossil fuel</a> companies accountable for their pollution, InsideClimate News pointed out.</p><p>As attorney general, she opposed a Chevron refinery expansion in Richmond, a majority Black and Hispanic community. She also sued Southern California Gas Co. over a methane blowout near Los Angeles.</p><p>Finally, she joined AGs United for Clean Power, a group of 17 attorneys general who said they would hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate change. However, Harris never actually sued ExxonMobil, despite mistakenly claiming she had during a debate last year. She did repeatedly emphasize the need to hold fossil fuel companies responsible on the campaign trail and promised to have the Department of Justice launch an investigation.</p><p>"They are causing harm and death in communities. And there has been no accountability," she said at a CNN Town Hall on climate change.</p>
<h3>Weaknesses</h3><p>But Harris' prosecutorial record has another side. She has faced criticism from Black and progressive voters for her role as top prosecutor in a state that incarcerates African Americans at a rate five times higher than their share of the population. This has dampened her image somewhat with younger climate activists.</p><p>"I think Kamala Harris is a big win for women of color and environmental justice, however she definitely has some work to do in order to show our generation that she's become more progressive since her prosecutor days," 15-year-old climate activist and <a href="https://earthuprising.org/" target="_blank">Earth Uprising</a> founder Alexandria Villaseñor told InsideClimate News.</p><p>On the environmental front, Harris' weaknesses include the fact that she was one of the last Democratic candidates to unveil a climate plan, and, when she did, it did not include a ban on <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/fracking/" target="_self">fracking</a>, Grist pointed out. She has also accepted donations from fossil fuel companies in the past, though she pledged not to do so this election.</p><p>Weighing Harris' legacy, <a href="https://www.sunrisemovement.org/" target="_blank">Sunrise Movement</a> co-founder Varshini Prakash said the Senator was willing to grow in response to criticism.</p><p>"Throughout the course of her campaign for President, Senator Kamala Harris showed her responsiveness to activist and movement pressure to make climate a top priority, and demonstrated her willingness to be held accountable," Prakash said in a statement reported by Greentech Media. "I'm also deeply aware of Senator Harris' record as a prosecutor and the ways in which a number of her decisions harmed communities of color, which our movement has spoken about in the past and will continue to."</p>
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The Anderson Community Group. Left to right, Caroline Laur, Anita Foust, the Rev. Bryon Shoffner, and Bill Compton, came together to fight for environmental justice in their community. Anderson Community Group
By Isabella Garcia
On Thanksgiving Day 2019, right after Caroline Laur had finished giving thanks for her home, a neighbor at church told her that a company had submitted permit requests to build an asphalt plant in their community. The plans indicated the plant would be 250 feet from Laur's backdoor.
<p>Laur has a premalignant blood disease, and for the past two years, she has been trying to build up her immune system to prevent the disease from evolving into a terminal form of cancer. "When I heard about this plant," Laur says, "I went to the Duke Cancer Research Center, and a Duke scholar in my illness told me this would be a life-threatening situation for me, and I would have to leave." Having to move from her home, where she has lived for 15 years, would be devastating for Laur, not to mention a monetary loss. Who would buy a home 250 feet from an asphalt plant?</p>
<p>Laur lives in Anderson, North Carolina, a rural <a href="https://northcarolina.hometownlocator.com/counties/subdivisions/data,n,township%2520of%2520anderson,id,3703390056,cfips,033.cfm" target="_blank">township with just over 2,000 people</a> (and zero cell towers). It is one of the many predominantly Black communities in the United States experiencing a perfect storm of injustices threatening the health of residents and their environment.</p><p>An informal community survey shows that more than 70% of Anderson residents are Black, while the <a href="https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/caswellcountynorthcarolina,NC/PST045219" target="_blank">county and state's populations</a> are 32% and 22% Black, respectively. Predominantly <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5844406/" target="_blank">Black neighborhoods in the U.S. have historically been exposed to higher rates of air pollution</a>. Specifically, Black people in America are exposed to about 1.5 times more particulate matter—a form of air pollution known to cause cancer—than White people. This <a href="https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/health-and-environmental-effects-particulate-matter-pm" target="_blank">exposure leads to higher incidences of health problems</a> such as heart attacks, asthma, and decreased lung function.</p><p>A growing number of studies show <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412016301386" target="_blank">polluting facilities are disproportionately located in Black and minority communities</a>, so it's hardly surprising that the asphalt plant was slated for construction in Anderson. A 2018 study from the Environmental Protection Agency concluded that <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5844406/" target="_blank">the discrepancy goes beyond geography or poverty</a>, too: Not only are more factories in minority neighborhoods, but these factories are more likely to produce greater emissions than those in non-minority neighborhoods.</p><p>These days, the risks are even higher. Because <a href="https://www.who.int/airpollution/ambient/health-impacts/en/" target="_blank">exposure to air pollutants decreases lung function</a>, communities in polluted areas are more susceptible to COVID-19; a recent <a href="https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/covid-pm" target="_blank">Harvard study found that people in areas with high particulate matter are 8% more likely to die</a> of the coronavirus than those in areas where the pollution is just one unit lower. That's been borne out in North Carolina, where <a href="https://covid19.ncdhhs.gov/dashboard/cases" target="_blank">Black residents make up 33% of the state's 1,568 COVID deaths as of July 15</a>, despite only making up only 22% of the population.</p><p>"This is not just an Anderson community health crisis," Laur says. "This is a North Carolina health crisis. It's an American health crisis."</p>
Grassroots Resistance
<p>The plant that would threaten Laur's health and home was awaiting the approval of an air permit by the North Carolina Department of Air Quality which, if approved, would basically greenlight the project. "This made me get out and go door to door," Laur says. One by one, she alerted her neighbors to the prospect of the asphalt plant. "I got to meet some of my neighbors I never knew before," she says. "There's no secret that there has always been a pretty strong line between the White community and the Black community here." In the end, three neighbors joined her efforts—the Rev. Bryon Shoffner, Anita Foust, and Bill Compton. Together, they formed the Anderson Community Group to advocate for environmental justice in their community.</p><p>"We are all the four corners of the community," Laur says with a laugh. "You've got a sick old White lady, Rev. Shoffner is a disabled vet, you've got Anita, who is a Black woman, and you've got a White, old country farmer. We all come from different faiths, but we've all come together as one."</p><p>Suddenly thrust into activism, the group contacted the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network, a coalition that provides resources and connections with other groups. "We advocate, we organize, and we assist communities with whatever actions they are thinking of trying to protect themselves," says Naeema Muhammad, the network's co-director. Muhammad met with the activists from Anderson and recognized their need for legal advice, so she connected them with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The legal resources were key when the group determined that the data from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality's environmental justice report wasn't adding up.</p><p>The report—a requirement for all DEQ permit requests—stated that the Anderson community was 33% minority. That seemed far too low to the residents, so the Anderson Community Group did a census of each house within a 1-mile radius of the proposed plant—the same radius considered in the DEQ's environmental justice report.</p><p>"Rev. Shoffner went out into the community and did his own survey and found out that it was more than 70% minority," Laur says. "That was huge, because that changed the situation to a Title VI matter." Title VI is a federal civil rights law that prevents people from being discriminated against on the grounds of race, color, or national origin. Title VI cases require a more rigorous and comprehensive environmental justice report, so recognizing the Anderson community as a Title VI matter increases the strength of their request for a more in-depth report.</p><p>The massive difference in race demographics comes down to census data, Laur says. The DEQ was using race data from the 2010 census, which was only <a href="https://www.censushardtocountmaps2020.us/?latlng=35.77385,-78.73807&z=7&query=coordinates::36.44038,-79.36343&promotedfeaturetype=states&arp=arpRaceEthnicity&baselayerstate=4&rtrYear=sR2010&infotab=info-rtrselfresponse&filterQuery=false" target="_blank">completed by about 64% of the population of Caswell County</a>—the county where Anderson is located. Laur says the Anderson population response rate could be even lower because the community is considered <a href="https://www.nccensus.org/about-the-census#hard-to-count-communities" target="_blank">"hard-to-count" by the U.S. Census Bureau</a>.</p><p>"The people who don't fill it out are rural people who want to keep their land and don't want zoning and minorities," Laur says, which creates skewed race demographics. The Anderson Community Group said that when they brought up this issue with the director of North Carolina DEQ, he said he was aware of the problem.</p><p>"So that tells me that all the EJ reports in North Carolina that have been done may not even be valid, just like ours," Laur says. "We were told that we are the first [community members] who have ever doubted it and checked it out."</p>Elevating Voices
<p>Determined to have new data collected, the Anderson Community Group rallied in early 2020. After learning from the state Department of Air Quality, the department responsible for approving or rejecting the asphalt air permit, that 100 statements of concern from community members would be sufficient to trigger a public hearing, the Anderson group gathered letters of concern from their community. They submitted more than 108.</p><p>"Then we were told there wasn't enough concern to have a public hearing," Laur says. "So, we started inundating the [Department of Air Quality director with emails and phone calls from the community."</p><p>Finally, in February 2020, the DEQ declared a public comment period for the issue, effectively placing the air permit for the asphalt plant on hold until a public hearing August 3. The public hearing will be held online because of COVID-19, but Laur says most people in Anderson don't own computers, and won't be able to attend. When the community group filed a complaint regarding accessibility, the DEQ then allowed public comments to be submitted via voicemail.</p><p>"Well, we don't have a cell tower out here," Laur says. She has personally never been able to use her cellphone in her home, and even her landline phone drops calls frequently. Even being able to afford a landline is a luxury in Anderson, Laur says.</p><p>To make sure community voices are heard, Laur says, the Anderson Community Group is "begging, fighting, scratching, and screaming" for the public comment period to be extended until the hearing can be held in person. The group fears that the community won't be able to properly participate, and as a result, the DEQ will approve the asphalt permit without listening to residents' concerns or considering accurate data.</p><p>The health impacts on the community could be huge. During Shoffner's unofficial survey, he also found that more than 90% of those within a 1-mile radius of the proposed plant have health conditions such as asthma, lung disease, and previous strokes and heart attacks that would be exacerbated by polluting industries.</p><p>"That's the thing that we feel they are truly missing: They're not allowing data to catch up," Shoffner says. Not only is the existing data outdated and inaccurate, he argues, but even data from 2018 would only provide a partial picture, because it does not account for the effects of COVID-19 on the community. "Of course, our ultimate goal is for them to say they're not going to build a polluting industry in a Black neighborhood, but our next move is to get them to postpone it until they get the data that shows how the asphalt plant and COVID-19 is affecting Black and brown people."</p><p>Shoffner says that the pandemic has thankfully slowed down the whirlwind of decisions on the asphalt plant and given the team time to consider what else they can do to halt its construction. For example, in July, the group <a href="https://acejustice.org/ej-petition" target="_blank">created a mail-in petition</a> for the North Carolina governor to stop the permit process.</p><p>"This team has been able to research and dig and get in a lot of doors," he says, noting that they have had productive conversations with leaders from the North Carolina DEQ. "We're winning as long as we're on the phone and getting conference calls. When they stop taking our calls, that's when we'll start asking what to do now."</p><p><em>CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Anita Foust. Text has been updated.</em></p><p><em>Isabella Garcia </em><em>is a former solutions journalism intern for YES!.</em></p><p><em><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2020/07/23/north-carolina-community-pollution/" target="_blank">YES! Magazine</a>.<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/r/entryeditor/2646927403#/" target="_self"></a></em><em></em></em></p>
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If you lived in a community suffering from bad air quality in 1981, chances are your neighborhood hasn't improved much. That's the takeaway from a new study that found despite years of progress to improve air pollution, wealthy, white Americans are breathing much cleaner air than low-income communities of color, The Guardian reported.
<p>"Disadvantaged communities remain persistently exposed to higher levels of air pollution," said Jonathan Colmer, an economist at the University of Virginia and co-author of the new <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6503/575" target="_blank">study</a> published in the journal <em>Science</em>, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-environment-pollution/after-three-decades-most-polluted-us-neighborhoods-havent-changed-idUSKCN24V3BS#:~:text=After%20three%20decades%2C%20most%20polluted%20U.S.%20neighborhoods%20haven't%20changed,-Nichola%20Groom&text=Likewise%2C%20the%20least%20polluted%20areas,decades%20in%20the%20United%20States." target="_blank">Reuters</a> reported. "This was true in 1980, it was true in 1990, 2000, 2010, and so on."</p><p>The study examined fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5, across the United States dating back to 1981. It found that the concentration of pollution from fine particulate matter fell about 70 percent between 1981 and 2016. Experts attribute the progress to stricter emissions regulations, more fuel-efficient vehicles and a decrease in coal-fired plants, Reuters reported.</p><p>But even with four decades of air quality improvement, low-income communities of color still do not have equal access to clean air. That's particularly worrying because of the connection between pollution and COVID-19. Recently, a group of <a href="https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/covid-pm" target="_blank">Harvard data scientists</a> found that a person living in areas with high-particulate pollution is 15 percent more likely to die from COVID-19 than someone living in an area with only slightly less air pollution, <a href="https://www.wellandgood.com/air-pollution-covid-19/" target="_blank">Well and Good</a> reported.</p>
<p>"The persistence of these relative disparities were striking," Colmer told <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/07/30/896635668/air-quality-disparities-persist-despite-overall-gains" target="_blank">NPR</a>. "Federal and state guidelines aim for all people and places to enjoy the same degree of protection from environmental hazards. We're falling short in terms of addressing relative disparities."</p><p>The study was released four months after the Trump administration rejected an Environmental Protection Agency recommendation to tighten air quality regulations, Reuters reported. Though the administration countered that current standards were adequate, the evidence suggests otherwise.</p><p>"If a child was born in Los Angeles county today, they would be exposed to the same amount of pollution the average child was exposed to in the early 1990s," Colmer said in The Guardian.</p>
<p><br>"This paper nicely shines a spotlight on the fact that these disparities continue to be large and that we ought to do something about them," said Joshua Apte, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Berkeley not involved in the study, Reuters reported.</p><p>To address the disparities, researchers note that housing discrimination is one of the main culprits, as low-income communities are often located near sources of pollution, according to NPR.</p><p>But housing discrimination isn't the only issue.</p><p>"Only when we figure out what the causes of the disparities are can we then think about, 'Okay, what are the appropriate policies we can use to mitigate these disparities?'" Lala Ma, an environmental economist at the University of Kentucky told NPR.</p>
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U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) speaks at a hearing of the Judiciary Committee on June 11, 2020 in Washington, DC. Carolyn Kaster-Pool / Getty Images
By Yvette Cabrera
This story was originally published on Grist on July 30, 2020
Fifteen years ago, Kamala Harris — San Francisco's District Attorney at the time — created an environmental justice unit in her office. The goal was to go after the perpetrators of environmental crimes that were hurting some of the city's poorest residents.
<p>The state attorney general's office had emphasized the need for state and local law enforcement to step up because of a void left by federal authorities in the Bush administration who were busy rolling back environmental protections. "One of the best tools out there to go after polluters is to go after them on a criminal basis," a spokesperson for then–State Attorney General Bill Lockyer told <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/SAN-FRANCISCO-D-A-creates-environmental-unit-2666667.php" target="_blank">SFGate</a> in 2005. Across the country, communities burdened by pollution and contamination have been calling for that type of accountability at the federal level for decades.</p><p>Now, even as the Trump administration continues to aggressively roll back environmental regulations, that dream has a better chance of materializing. Harris, as California's junior senator, is fighting for a comprehensive piece of legislation that will give vulnerable communities the tools they need to address environmental disparities. On Thursday, Harris plans to introduce a companion bill in the Senate to the <a href="https://naturalresources.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Environmental%20Justice%20for%20All%20Act%20Bill%20Text.pdf" target="_blank">Environmental Justice for All Act</a> introduced <a href="https://grist.org/justice/an-effort-to-bring-environmental-justice-for-all-goes-virtual/" target="_blank">earlier</a> this year in the House of Representatives by Democrats A. Donald McEachin of Virginia and Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona.</p>
<p>"Environmental justice is interconnected with every aspect of our fight for justice. From racial justice and economic justice, to housing justice and educational justice, we cannot disentangle the environment people live in from the lives they live," Harris told Grist in an email. "These crises we are experiencing have exposed injustices in our nation that many of us have known and fought our entire lives."</p><p>The Senate bill, whose lead cosponsors are Democrats Cory Booker of New Jersey and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, acknowledges how factors such as segregation and racist zoning codes have rendered communities of color more vulnerable to the effects of climate change and left them with limited resources to address ongoing environmental health disparities. To address this, the act aims broadly to meaningfully engage impacted communities in government decision-making processes, such as federal permitting decisions for infrastructure projects, the creation of climate resiliency plans, and the transition to clean energy.</p><p>For more than two years, Grijalva and McEachin have worked alongside environmental justice advocates to address these inequities during the drafting of the act. That work was underway well before the COVID-19 pandemic struck and before the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd at the hands of a police officer this spring, which unleashed massive protests calling for the country to reckon with systemic racism. While the health crisis and movement for racial justice has put vulnerable communities in the spotlight, Grijalva told Grist that their aim was always to deliver a comprehensive environmental justice bill that could help these communities.</p>
<p>"The premise was … that we were going to deal with the systemic root causes, with the systemic solutions, not just cover up the problem or change one little thing or create another task force," said Grijalva, who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee. "There had to be codified into law a systemic response to that systemic racism that created the situation."</p><p>The Environmental Justice for All Act would amend the Civil Rights Act to allow private citizens and organizations that experience discrimination to seek legal remedies when a program, policy, or practice causes a disparate impact. It would also require federal agencies to consider health effects that might compound over time when making permitting decisions under the federal Clean Air and Clean Water acts. In addition, it would fund research on and programs to reduce health disparities and improve public health in disadvantaged communities. Under the act, new fees on oil, gas, and coal companies would go toward a fund to support workers and communities transitioning away from fossil fuel jobs. Finally, the act also intends to codify and make enforceable a longstanding executive order on environmental justice that then–President Bill Clinton signed in 1994.</p><p>McEachin told Grist that the House and Senate bills acknowledge the racist roots of environmental burdens in low-income communities and communities of color. "This is a moment in time that does not just focus on police brutality, does not just focus on confederate memorabilia. The focus is on 401 years of racial injustice in this nation, and part of that has to be environmental justice," said McEachin. "If we're going to achieve a clean energy future, climate justice, and relief for those communities, the frontline community has to be the very centerpiece of that plan."</p>
<p>The Black Lives Matter movement has helped the act gain momentum toward passage in the House — Grijalva is optimistic that he'll be able to bring the bill to the floor of the House for a vote by September. Some of the act has also been incorporated into other Democratic proposals, like <a href="https://grist.org/politics/house-democrats-finally-have-a-goddamn-climate-plan/" target="_blank">the 538-page climate plan</a> recently released by the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. Some of the act's proposals are also reflected in the environmental justice <a href="https://joebiden.com/environmental-justice/" target="_blank">plan</a> released by presumed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, said Grijalva.</p><p>For example, Biden plans to revise and reinvigorate Clinton's executive order that directs federal agencies to review programs that may have disproportionately high or adverse health and environmental effects. Historically, the agencies have been inconsistent in addressing environmental justice within their strategic plans.</p><p>Environmental advocates who were involved in the creation of the House bill expressed enthusiasm for Harris' sponsorship of the bill in the Senate and said that the legislation could be a game-changer for frontline communities. Kerene Nicole Tayloe, director of federal legislative affairs for the New York City–based nonprofit WE ACT for Environmental Justice, said that the consideration of cumulative health impacts during permitting processes would be particularly important, especially in states like Louisiana that don't have meaningful environmental legislation on the books.</p>
<p>"Having something like the EJ for All bill, to consider cumulative effects in Cancer Alley and all of those kinds of places that have long been a dumping ground for companies and industry, I think would start to give communities the legal protections they need and put the tools in place," said Tayloe.</p><p>Angelo Logan, who is the campaign director of the Los-Angeles-based Moving Forward Network and who was also involved in crafting the House bill, told Grist that he hopes the act sets the stage for more community involvement in creating legislation at the local, state, and federal levels. "I think there'll be a dramatic change, a complete positive impact on communities that are the most impacted by environmental racism," said Logan. "And the multiplying effects that it would have on communities is tremendous."</p><p>As a <a href="https://kamalaharris.org/issue/climate-change/" target="_blank">presidential candidate</a>, Harris made acting on climate change a top priority. Last year, while running for president, she <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/29/us/politics/kamala-harris-aoc-climate-change.html" target="_blank">unveiled</a> a climate equity plan with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and created a climate <a href="https://kamalaharris.org/policies/climate/full-policy/" target="_blank">agenda</a> that would address the climate crisis and environmental injustices while building a clean economy with well-paying jobs. As California's attorney general, she defended the state's landmark climate laws in court and sued Chevron U.S.A. Inc. for <a href="https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-kamala-d-harris-announces-proposed-245-million-settlement" target="_blank">damaging</a> the environment. Holding polluters accountable will be critical moving forward, and the Environmental Justice for All Act will help communities do just that, Harris told Grist via email.</p><p>Race, she noted, is the No. 1 predictor of where polluting facilities in America are located. And 70 percent of Americans who live in the highest air pollution areas of our country are people of color. "These disparities were in part intentionally created and so we must intentionally address them," said Harris. "That's what this bill does."</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://grist.org/justice/exclusive-kamala-harris-to-introduce-comprehensive-environmental-justice-bill-in-senate/" target="_blank">Grist</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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