The Connection Between Climate Change and Racism is Real.

Today’s post was written by my friend, Eileen Flanagan. Eileen is an author, educator and environmental activist. She is a mother and one of the most dedicated social justice warriors I know. I asked her to write about the connection between racism and global climate change and she penned this insightful and urgent essay. Please read it and find your own way to action.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Knows the Deal

 

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently declared a connection between fighting climate change and establishing racial justice in the United States, haters denounced her as a fool. “Bigotry isn’t based on weather,” Tweeted one. Another retorted, “So now Carbon Dioxide is oppressing minorities? God this woman is hilarious.”

The thing is, AOC is basically right. Addressing climate change could help us decrease racial inequality, if we seize the opportunity. If we don’t, racism will continue to exacerbate climate change, while climate change fuels racism. Sound far fetched or even “hilarious”? Well, it’s not.

Fossil fuels are dangerous. Coal, oil, and gas cause health problems such as asthma and cancer at every stage of their production, transport, and use. They also release greenhouse gases that trap heat within the earth’s atmosphere, screwing up our weather in ways that will kill a lot of people if we don’t make major change. Think Biblical style floods, droughts, famines, and wildfires, intensifying throughout the lives of today’s children and their children. Scary, right?

Because Racism…

There are two ways racism keeps this insane system going. First, by devaluing the lives of people of color, who are statistically more vulnerable to climate disruption and way more likely to live near today’s toxic pollution, a pattern that even Trump’s EPA has acknowledged.

If Black and Brown lives really mattered to industry leaders, they wouldn’t dump cancer-causing coal ash in African-American communities in North Carolina, or fracking wastewater in Hispanic communities in Texas. They wouldn’t build pipelines through indigenous land in North Dakota. If all lives truly mattered, no neighborhood would be burdened with a polluting refinery or trains transporting explosive fossil fuels day and night. In short, our society couldn’t continue stoking climate change if politicians and the people who elect them didn’t turn a blind eye to environmental racism.

That’s not all. Racism also keeps us separate. While industries are most likely to site toxic facilities in low income communities of color, some research shows that they also look for sites where the surrounding area contains a mixture of races and classes, knowing that will decrease the likelihood of communities sharing information and working together to address issues that ultimately affect everyone. It’s a sadly effective tactic.

White Privilege Can’t Protect You From Cancer-Causing Chemicals

This really hit me while traveling in Louisiana, a state with hundreds of petrochemical plants and notoriously high cancer rates. Yet many white citizens of the state deny there is a problem, even as they count off their own family members who have died. They’ve bought the lie that what is good for the fossil fuel industry is good for them, so they stay silent about pollution, content with the privilege of slightly lower cancer rates.

These two aspects of racism–devaluing the lives of Black and Brown people and blinding white people to their own stake in fighting an unjust system–are especially evident when we look at global climate disruption.

Last year at my local library, I heard a scientist explain the reality of human-caused climate change. He had big scary graphs, but he talked about the trends as if they were a distant, abstract problem. When I raised my hand and questioned his detachment, this white man said, “Oh, yes, climate change will kill a lot of people, but they are mostly in the Third World.” Seriously, he said that. Out loud!

The truth is, climate change is going to affect everyone, but it will have the harshest impacts on countries where colonialism left behind poverty and undemocratic governments. From Central America, to Zimbabwe and Syria, food shortages, exacerbated by changing weather patterns, have fueled political unrest and emigration. As more climate refugees head toward the US and Europe, we are going to see more ugly xenophobia unless we address both climate change and racism head on.

The Way to Beat Climate Change and Racism

So how in the world could this be an opportunity, a chance to diminish inequality and division? Well, for one thing, a lot of people are waking up to the fact that we’re going to have to work together to tackle this thing. Around the world, new alliances are forming across historic divisions. White climate activists are working on their own racial biases and learning about systemic inequality. People of diverse backgrounds are looking for solutions that address racism and climate at the same time. It’s actually very exciting.

On a practical level, we have to build a new energy economy to quickly replace fossil fuels. That will create hundreds of thousands, if not millions of new jobs. We could actually make the decision to prioritize job training and creation in the very communities that have borne the brunt of the fossil fuel economy. Technologies like solar could also lower energy bills and build wealth, especially if a Green New Deal prioritizes community solar and other ways to make solar accessible to everyone.

Getting off fossil fuels won’t end racism, which affects people of all class backgrounds, but it will help narrow health disparities based on race by eliminating the prime polluters in many Black and Brown communities. And it could narrow the economic gap created by historic inequality and the redlining of previous industries. This may sound pie in the sky, but there have been grassroots groups hard at work to build this vision long before Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez made it trend on Twitter.

Taking Action at the Local Level

In Philadelphia, I am a volunteer leader with the Power Local Green Jobs campaign, which is pushing our local utility PECO to spur a major shift to solar, using solar jobs and ownership to decrease racial inequality in Philadelphia, the poorest big city in the U.S. I’ve seen how a campaign that combines bold climate action and racial justice attracts a broader range of people, exactly what we need to counter the power of the fossil fuel industry and their Washington lobbyists.

I’m hopeful about the growing climate justice movement, but I don’t consider our success “inevitable,” as AOC implied. We have an opportunity to dramatically change things, but it’s up to us to make the most of the moment. Linking work against racism to work against climate chaos isn’t hilarious–it’s serious and urgent business.

Resources

If you want to know more about climate change and racism or if you’re looking for a way to volunteer and join the cause, check out the following resources:

• If you live in southeastern Pennsylvania, join the Power Local Green Jobs Campaign which is led by Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) and Philadelphians Organized to Witness Empower and Rebuild (POWER).

• If you live outside of the Philadelphia area, check out the Sunrise Movement  which is pushing the Green New Deal in Congress, or google “environmental justice” in your community.

• To get Eileen’s insights on how to effectively make social change and news of her upcoming book on these issues, sign up for her monthly newsletter on her website.