The Origins of Environmental Racism
The destruction caused by the climate crisis is disparately affecting the lives of people of color in our lower-income communities.
The effects of climate change run rampant, and the list only begins with the increase of rising water levels, as well as extreme weather events/deregulated weather cycles, such as increased drought, hurricanes, and heatwaves.
Certain parts of the world have become uninhabitable, forcing people out of their homes and causing possibly the world’s greatest refugee crisis, among other devastating consequences.
Currently, we are already seeing the effect that carbon emissions, pollutants, and rising sea levels are having in our low income, and unfortunately, mostly black and brown communities in the U.S.
This is what environmental inequality/racism is.
Corporate CEOs of these fossil fuel companies have known about how they were directly causing the climate crisis that was to come since the 70s and have dismissed it.
They corrupted certain scientists, whose goals were only chasing money, to claim that the climate was always changing and that the one we’re heading into isn’t in largely man-made.
Officials such as Sen. Bernie Sanders have in the past floated the idea of prosecuting the CEOs of these fossil fuel companies for valuing profits over lives, which is a benefit to our society; but sadly with Sen. Sander’s failed campaign to be president, along with too many politicians having taken money in the form of campaign contributions from these fossil fuel companies, this is near impossible.
In Louisiana, there lies an 85-mile stretch of land along the Mississippi River called Cancer Alley.
The reason for this name is because those who live there, have an increased chance of miscarriages and getting cancer, as a result of the harmful emissions from the abundance of petroleum plants in this area.
During the 1990s, this area of land was particularly bad; When describing their living conditions, inhabitants of the area reported that “the air that smelled of rotten eggs and nail-polish remover” with one of them revealing, “‘We were inundated with plants.’”
In a story done by ProPublica on the 30th of October, 2019, multiple interviews were conducted on residents living in this area.
One of the interviewees said, “‘I bet you money there are 20 plants right now just around St. Gabriel.’” This was later proven to be a major underestimate of the number of factories in her area, because the article disclosed that “there are now 30 large petrochemical plants within 10 miles of her house, most of them outside the city limits. Thirteen are within a 3-mile radius of her home.”
In California, the ramifications of climate change are very clear, with recent wildfires combined with the droughts that have been happening.
Despite the Anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about the California wildfires spread by congresspeople such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, it’s that, just a conspiracy. It is caused, in fact, by humans and the effects of climate change.
As stated by Scientific American, “More than half of the acres burned each year in the western United States can be attributed to climate change.”
The dry, warm, windy weather is the perfect weather not to only start, but also to extend the life of these wildfires and is what caused the number of wildfires to double since the 1980s.
The article also goes on to state the urgency of this problem, which needs to be addressed in the near future, in that “without aggressive reduction of greenhouse gasses, forests in Northern California, Oregon and Washington could experience an increase of more than 78 percent in area burned by 2050.”
This is also inevitably linked to environmental inequality because the lower-income, black and brown folks that inhabit these areas have their homes destroyed in these wildfires, and can’t afford another home, thus completely destroying their livelihoods.
Sinking cities that will soon be underwater are also a source of environmental inequality.
The wealthy living in places will be okay, but it’s the people who are of lower-income that will not. This inequality really shows off the greed of these fossil fuel companies who are seeking profits at any cost imaginable.
Stricter regulations from the government can fix, and even in some cases, reverse action. But the fossil fuel industry’s campaign contributions towards politicians, specifically in the U.S., make it more difficult to do so.
This is environmental racism. Whether it be activism on the ground, voting in politicians who don’t deny climate change and its undeniable links to race, or donating to organizations committed to achieving environmental justice, we must acknowledge and take the action to fix this.
