Climate change is a global issue, but data shows its impact isn't equal to all
The climate crisis disproportionately harms low-income communities — which are majority women — communities of color and Indigenous communities, according to data from several government agencies.
“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during his Christmas Sermon of 1967
(Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash)
Climate disasters are occurring more rapidly than ever before: The world’s air quality is worsening. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent. Wildfires are plunging through the Western and Southwestern U.S. Brazil is recovering from severe flooding. And the warming planet aided in an underwater volcano eruption so powerful, its explosion was equivalent to that of 1000 Hiroshima bombs and triggered a tsunami in Tonga.
It is undeniable that the climate crisis is a global issue, but its impact is not felt equally by all.
A report from the Environmental Protection Agency states low-income communities — which are majority women — Indigenous communities and communities of color are disproportionately more vulnerable to and more likely to die from the climate crisis.
It’s proven by data that if marginalized communities are excluded from conversations, the climate crisis cannot be resolved since these populations are experiencing its consequences most.
What is environmental racism?
Environmental racism is a form of systemic racism — often through public policy and government decision-making — that places a disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on communities of color and low-income communities.
“At its core, environmental injustice hits communities of color in ways that are not seen or felt immediately,” says the EPA’s most recent environmental justice progress report.
Examples include unequal access to natural resources, exclusion from institutional power, low land values for marginalized communities and increased exposure to hazardous waste and other pollutants in urban areas.
It also includes intentional neglect, such as that experienced during the Flint water crisis — when majority-Black community could only readily access contaminated water for 18 months — and the Indigenous communities’ fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline, an oil pipeline they say could contaminate the Missouri River, the primary water source for the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
During an online panel about environmental justice, Vice President Kamala Harris said “race is the number one indicator of where you will find toxic facilities.”
According to the Climate Reality Project, about 68% of Black Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant and “people of color are exposed to up to 63% more pollution than they produce – while White Americans are exposed to 17% less.” Vice President Harris said Black children are three times more likely to have elevated blood lead levels.
Consequently, these communities are at greater risk of serious health issues, including heart attacks, lung disease and cancer, and death.
The Environmental Defense Fund adds that communities of color are twice as likely to die in heat waves due to a lower prevalence of central air conditioning and a higher likelihood to live in urban heat islands with low-to-no tree canopy.
“Racism has fueled, as we know, deadly policies,” Vice President Harris said in the 2020 panel. “And that relates to everything from policing to housing to the environment.”
“Black folks have always had a deep and physical connection to the environment. The land that our ancestors were forced to work was the very same space where they lived. The field where our mothers toiled was often the place where they also gave birth. Our history has entwined with the land in a profound way, and our connection to the land is as symbiotic as bees to flowers. Yet our voices are constantly ignored on matters concerning climate impacts and environmental protections.”
— Heather McTeer Toney in ‘Collards Are Just as Good as Kale,’ an excerpt in “All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for Climate Change”
More vulnerable to climate disasters and extreme weather
Natural disasters can’t discriminate but do still disproportionately impact communities of color for many reasons: Infrastructure negligence, limited resources, and often, the inability to evacuate due to financial hardships or lack of transportation.
“In the United States and around the world, people of low SES (socioeconomic status) are more likely to live in homes that are more vulnerable to the impact of disasters than those of people of higher SES. As a result, their experience of a disaster may involve more material losses, less protection from disasters, and perhaps greater damage to or destruction of their homes,” states a 2017 report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
During Hurricane Katrina, four of the seven most-severely damaged zip codes had majority-Black populations of at least 75%, the Scientific American reported. Data shows about 112,000 residents had no readily available transportation.
About 51% of Katrina’s deaths were Black individuals, according to the Louisiana Department of Health, and 42% were white. Nearly half of those who died were 75 years or older — and many had physical disabilities that prevented evacuation.
In addition to a higher chance of direct impact, studies also say the recovery from climate disasters can be more difficult for communities of color because of an unequal distribution of monetary aid and recovery relief and undocumented immigrants — who frequently live in the areas impacted most by natural disasters — because of their ineligibility to receive federal assistance.
In 2018, the Federal Emergency Management Agency published an internal report addressing its failure to adequately support Hurricane Maria victims in Puerto Rico.
More than 1,000 Puerto Ricans lived without electricity for nearly a year after the storm cut power to every building on the island, the New York Times reported, and about 3,000 residents died in the hurricane aftermath because of long-term issues with their electricity and water source.
“At first, a lot of agencies came, giving water and food,” Jazmín Méndez told The Times in 2018. She was among the last residences of which the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority restored service. “But that ended, so now you really have to do everything yourself. I don’t know where Puerto Rico is going to end up. It seems everything went from bad to worse.”
Journalist Eliván Martínez Mercado told NPR in November, more than four years later, the island’s electric grid remains in poor shape, and he believes it will be years before Puerto Ricans see something better.
“This is a very important subject because this is a matter of life and death,” Martínez Mercado said.
Who are the key players of environmental justice?
Although advocates began to lay the groundwork for the Environmental Justice Movement around the same time as the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, it is now at its peak.
One of the most prominent organizations, Intersectional Environmentalist, launched amid the Black Lives Matter protests in June 2020. The organization defines itself as “a climate justice community and resource hub centering BIPOC and historically under-amplified voices in the environmental space.”
Its founder Leah Thomas announced the community’s launch after she published an “Environmentalists for Black Lives Matter” protest graphic on Instagram, along with her definition for intersectional environmentalism and a pledge to bring social justice to conversations about the climate crisis. The original post and pledge reached more than 1 million people, according to the organization website.
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson — a marine biologist and policy advisor — is the co-editor of the “All We Can Save” anthology and co-host of the How to Save a Planet podcast. Both projects address many issues within the climate crisis, including environmental injustice and systemic racism.
In an opinion piece for The Washington Post, Johnson asserted the need for greater diversity in the climate movement.
“If we want to successfully address climate change, we need people of color,” she wrote. “Not just because pursuing diversity is a good thing to do, and not even because diversity leads to better decision-making and more effective strategies, but because, Black people (57%) are significantly more concerned about climate change than white people (49%) and Latinx people (70%) are even more concerned.”
“To put that in perspective, it means that more than 23 million black Americans already care deeply about the environment and could make a huge contribution to the massive amount of climate work that needs doing,” Johnson added.
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Brandi D. Addison covers all things nature, outdoors, climate, wildlife & our greater earth with the occasional arts & culture piece.