The Mainstream Environmental Movement Is Mostly White. Here’s How To Change That.

Climate justice organizer Elizabeth Yeampierre says the movement needs to work from the bottom up, not the top down.

From her office in Sunset Park, environmental attorney Elizabeth Yeampierre looks out on a neighborhood cast from the melting pot of American life: Puerto Rican, Mexican, Dominican, Chinese and Indian immigrants. Yeampierre, who is herself of African and indigenous descent, is worried about the future of Sunset Park. Her neighbors, nearly one-third of whom live below the poverty line, work and dwell in the shadow of polluting factories, which Yeampierre believes are fueling all manner of respiratory illness.

In the coming years, climate change will multiply environmental risks, driving up the price of food while intensifying devastating storms. In the face of such threats, struggling families in neighborhoods like Sunset Park stand to suffer the most. Communities of color are among the most vulnerable to climate change and other environmental health threats in the United States .

Read the rest at Think Progress.