#BlackLivesMatter is Integral to Solving the Climate Crisis
The United States’ deep-rooted culture of white supremacy has brought Americans to a crossroads, forcing us to reckon with the pervasive worldview that skin tone equates to certain privileges. How we address the current eruption of frustration unfolding might determine if we will ultimately survive as humans in the face of the climate crisis.
The recent uprising in the United States is a result of ongoing struggles and frustration that culminated when a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, killed a black man, George Floyd, who was pleading for his life while calling out “I can’t breathe.” His words shine a light on so many injustices facing black people ranging from police brutality to environmental injustices. The murder occurred at a time when persistent racial inequities in healthcare access, income, education, economic opportunities, and a criminal justice system are being exacerbated by a worldwide health crisis disproportionately impacting black and brown lives. The backdrop to this uprising is the dire climate crisis that has become such a problem because of our inability to value black and brown lives.
Colonialism’s Destructive Role
White supremacy has its roots in colonialism and the “exploration” of lands outside the European region. What was colonialism other than a group of mostly white people that asserted their ruthless dominance over much of the rest of the world for centuries to loot, pillage, and destroy? Colonialists stole people and resources, destroying communities and the environments where people lived for the sole benefit of colonial power and profit.
The lasting impacts of colonialism cannot be overstated as they relate to environmental and racial challenges that persist in the U.S. and abroad.
Deforestation, the permanent removal of trees for profit, is a practice rooted in colonialism, one that is today destroying the earth’s ability to pull carbon out of the atmosphere that would help stabilize the climate. The environmental damage of deforestation impacts everyone indirectly, but directly impacts the lives of many indigenous people who are experiencing accelerated deforestation even amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Modern-day colonialism continues to exist through neoliberal policies allowing corporations to destroy poor communities around the world. Cancer, birth defects, and diseases are common among the residents of Bhopal, India. In 1984, chemical company Union Carbide leaked toxic chemicals into a community, killing over 15,000 people and leaving another 50,000 disabled; They never cleaned up the site, and it remains contaminated to this day. Would a company like Union Carbide get away with only a financial settlement if it was responsible for leaking poisonous gas into a white community?
Bhopal is one example of many. The same countries that have been looted and pillaged for centuries were left with economic and governance disasters rendering people powerless to neoliberal policies that replaced colonialism. These policies have continued to allow some countries to get rich on the backs of others. These are the same countries that have contributed the least to climate change, yet will feel the impacts more heavily.
The other lasting impact of colonialism is the racial inequity we see in the U.S. and abroad. Colonialism played a major role in enslaving millions of people, and the impacts of slavery have manifested in systemic racism. Jim Crow laws, redlining policies, the criminal justice system, and continual implicit bias that black people in America experience every day can be directly linked to the aftershocks of slavery and a system based on white supremacy.
Systemic Racism
Systemic racism has kept communities segregated and left black communities victimized by the disastrous oil & gas and petrochemical industries. It is no coincidence that Cancer Alley in Louisiana -named so because the air is so toxic and the number of cancer cases in the community is tragically high — is predominately black. Redlining was a U.S. government policy that kept black communities segregated from white communities. So when industrial and chemical plants decided where to set up, black communities, politically invisible, were the natural locations for these polluting plants. Surely if the fossil fuel industry had placed its plants in wealthy, white neighborhoods, resulting in residents experiencing high cancer rates, the companies would have been forced to find new ways to generate income and been held accountable for the harm done to their neighbors. Profit would not have been deemed a good enough reason to jeopardize white lives.
The same reason moved the Dakota Access Pipeline, originally routed through the predominantly white neighborhood of North Bismarck, to a route that ruined culturally sacred sites and threatened the water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. If the pipeline was too dangerous for white communities, why was it okay to place it through indigenous lands? If indigenous lives were valued the way white lives are valued, would the company responsible, Energy Transfer Partners, be allowed to construct such a destructive pipeline?
The fossil fuel industry has gotten away with destroying lives, destroying the planet, and making billions of dollars doing so. The climate and health impacts have been externalized because in most cases, they haven’t affected white people.
COVID-19
Enter COVID-19. Those most impacted by the virus are those with underlying medical conditions, who also happen to be disproportionately black and brown. If we unpack “underlying medical conditions,” we see systemic racism contributes at every point along the way:
- Community segregation because of historic redlining: deliberate racism.
- Proximity to power plants, chemical factories, and incinerators that release dangerous chemicals and fumes result in asthma rates that are much higher among black communities: deliberate racism.
- Food apartheid leaving poor communities unable to access healthy food: deliberate racism.
- Educational inequities that impact future employment opportunities: deliberate racism.
- A criminal justice system that has disproportionately affected black communities: deliberate racism.
A pandemic that is killing black people in greater numbers, their health issues almost always due to systemic racism, meets a white supremacist police officer who murdered a black man — his last words are, “I can’t breathe.” The parallel struggle of the Black Lives Matter movement and the environmental movement, advocating for clean air so we all can breathe, cannot be ignored. In 2019, we broke another record of carbon emissions: 33 gigatons and CO2 levels have reached their highest level just last month. We are treating our planet as an open sewer and killing ourselves in the process. If we want to address climate change, we must not only embrace the Black Lives Matter movement as integral to addressing climate change, but recognize that black and brown voices need to lead the movement.
Climate’s Watershed Moment
As the climate and environmental movements work to transition away from fossil fuels, they need to grapple with their racist and exclusionary history. By not being inclusive, environmentalists have not only failed frontline communities, but have also failed the larger climate movement. Protecting wilderness was prioritized over fighting urban air pollution, and the sad reality is that these spaces were for the enjoyment of white people and have not been safe spaces for black people. Just this year, we’ve seen two glaring examples of how black men are not safe outside. Ahmaud Arbery was chased down and murdered while jogging. Christian Cooper had the cops called on him while he was out birding. He could have easily met the fate of so many other black people that have died for no reason but the color of their skin at the hands of law enforcement officers.
It’s not enough for the climate and environmental movement to address its racist history, but to ensure the clean energy transition is diverse and inclusive (it is still predominantly white) and that the industry doesn’t repeat past mistakes. For example, lithium-ion batteries are a leading technology for energy storage solutions. Lithium-ion batteries use cobalt. Sixty percent of the world’s cobalt originates in Congo, where there is evidence of child labor, unsafe mining practices, and adverse health impacts due to the process of extracting toxic metals.
We cannot turn a blind eye to how we are mining for “clean” technologies if we want to transition to a clean economy and ensure a livable planet. We must value lives that are involved in the supply chain of these technologies. We must invest in research and development for safe, clean mining practices and recycling efforts. There are companies and organizations leading efforts to ensure that we remember why we are fighting for a clean, just, and equitable transition — perhaps they can lead us forward.
Climate change is an urgent threat, but if we do not join in the racial justice movement that is in front of us right now, we will not be able to address climate change. In 2018, we were warned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that we only have twelve years to avert the worst impacts of climate change. It is a movement that requires urgency and a fundamental shift in how systems operate. Similarly, Black Lives Matter is a movement that requires urgency and a fundamental shift in how systems operate. Quite simply, the environmental movement cannot succeed if it is not intersectional and inclusive, and champions frontline communities battling both toxic air pollution and police brutality.
Rozina Kanchwala is the DC Manager of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Clean Energy Leadership Institute (CELI) & Executive Director of Eco.Logic
