The exploitation of our planet’s natural resources has always been closely linked to the exploitation of people of color. Climate change disproportionately affects Black and other marginalized communities in this country. We cannot have environmental and climate justice without racial justice.

Environmental Racism & Housing

“Climate change is the result of a legacy of extraction, of colonialism, of slavery. When people talk about environmental justice they go back to the 1970s or ‘60s. But I think about the slave quarters. I think about people who got the worst food, the worst health care, the worst treatment, and then when freed, were given lands that were eventually surrounded by things like petrochemical industries. The idea of killing black people or indigenous people, all of that has a long, long history that is centered on capitalism and the extraction of our land and our labor in this country,” explains Elizabeth Yeampierre, co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance

Decades of racist and classist policies, such as housing discrimination - including redlining - have concentrated people of color and poor people in the most polluted communities. Their water is more likely to be contaminated, as in Flint, Michigan, and Newark. They are more likely to have asthma and other health problems caused or aggravated by dirty air. People living in black communities in the US are 3x more likely to die from exposure to pollution than white people.

"It's all deeply ingrained in the history of racism and the history of civil rights," said Sofia Owen of Alternatives for Community & Environment. "The siting of these facilities — where our highways are, where incinerators are, where compressor stations or the bus depots are — is communities of color and low-income communities."

According to Peggy Shepard, executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, “Environmental racism is the intentional targeting of pollution in communities of color and low-income communities because they are less informed and they vote less. They have less political clout and often land is cheaper in those communities as well. As a result, industrial pollution tends to get located inside in those communities.”

COVID-19 & Air Pollution

Communities of color are experiencing some of the worst impacts of the coronavirus, while protests over racism and police brutality continue in cities across the country. Air pollution has increased the risk of more severe impacts from COVID-19 for people living in polluted communities. The link of environmental exposure to health outcomes is very strong, as shown by a Harvard study that came out recently.

"If you're living in a county and you're breathing polluted air for a very long time, even absent COVID, we know that your lungs are inflamed," says Dr. Francesca Dominici, a professor of biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health. "After you contract COVID, your ability to respond to the inflammatory nature of COVID is severely compromised because your lungs already have inflammation."

The result is worse for black and Latino people who contract COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in April that 33% of those hospitalized with the disease were black, as were nearly a quarter of those who died, yet only 18% of the U.S. population is black.

“In our communities, people are suffering from asthma and upper respiratory disease, and we’ve been fighting for the right to breathe for generations. It’s ironic that those are the signs you’re seeing in these protests — 'I can’t breathe.' When the police are using chokeholds, literally people who suffer from a history of asthma and respiratory disease, their breath is taken away. When Eric Garner died and we heard he had asthma, the first thing we said in my house was, 'This is an environmental justice issue'” says Yeampierre.

Where Do We Go From Here?

We need to start focusing on regenerative economies, creating community cooperatives and different kinds of economic systems that make it possible for people to thrive economically while at the same time taking us off the grid.

A just transition is a process that moves us away from a fossil fuel economy to local livable economies that include not just renewable energy but healthy food and all of the things that people need in order to thrive. The transition to a low-carbon future is connected to “workers’ rights, land use, [and] how people are treated,” says Yeampierre. She criticizes the mainstream environmental movement, which she says was “built by people who cared about conservation, who cared about wildlife, who cared about trees and open space… but didn’t care about black people.”

Environmental justice plans should not only benefit marginalized communities but also bring them into the policy-making process. Says Shephard: “When we talk about environmental racism and injustice, we're also talking about being engaged in environmental decision-making. If people of color and low-income people who are most affected by the issues are never in the rooms where the decisions are being made and the solutions are being recommended, we are going to continue to have two different worlds, two different realities, like we're seeing right now today.”

Sources & More Reading:

Unequal Impact: The Deep Links Between Racism and Climate Change (Yale University)

“Two Different Realities”: Why America Needs Environmental Justice (CBS News)

COVID-19 Exposes Environmental Injustice