Toxic Emissions
According to long time environmental activist Peggy Shephard, co-founder and executive director of We Act, environmental racism is the intentional targeting of pollution in communities of color and low income.
Shephard explains that this is because “most low income communities of color are less informed, they vote less, they have less political clout and often land is cheaper in these communities as well.”
One such area known as Cancer Alley is the eighty-five miles along the banks of the Mississippi river from Baton Rouge, Louisiana to New Orleans, Louisiana were more than 150 chemical plants exist. Because of the accumulative pollution coming from these plants this area has fifty times the average rate of cancer in the United States and has, in fact, the highest cancer rate in the country.
Robert Taylor, a resident of Reserve, Louisiana, in the heart of Cancer Alley, can be seen in the accompanying video explaining that the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is powerless to significantly reduce the threat.
You see the EPA only sets a recommended safe level of toxin discharge but leaves it to the states to set an enforceable formal legal limit, and Louisiana has, after five decades, still failed to do so.
Fighting the spread of concrete with green space
Environmental racism isn’t just about toxin discharge from chemical plants or oil spills from pipelines, pumping rigs or ships. It is also about green space versus concrete concentration. Flooding has become a major problem in urban centers largely due to sewer systems that become inundated during heavy rains causing a backup and flooding.
Plants, whether ground-cover, bushes, community gardens, trees, etc. hold the soil in place avoiding soil erosion. Root systems break up the soil allowing water to be absorbed easier and avoiding flooding. Plants absorb carbon dioxide and pollutants and release oxygen improving the breathing of residents in that area, particularly residents who have respiratory compromised illnesses such as asthma, respiratory infections and COPD.
Green spaces also lower area temperature and reduce ground-level ozone. Concentrations of concrete radiate sun light causing higher temperatures which harm the general health of both humans and beneficial plant life. Higher temperatures on the other hand benefit plants we consider weeds.
Green space contribute to positive mental health. By in large, humans feel comforted by living in green space and conversely feel depressed and/or experience anxiety disorders where empty space is full of weeds and wide stretches of concrete exist. Several studies have concluded that choosing boulevards with green space dividing the traffic, and building sidewalks with trees planted every eight or nine feet absorb automotive exhaust fumes, lower temperatures, bring bird and insect life into the street system of cities.
In areas where the green space is a park, people’s personal health is improved due to physical activities such as jogging, games of frisbee, hacky-sac, kite-flying, touch football, soccer, softball, etc.
In areas where the green space is a flower garden people report feeling calmer than when dealing with life’s problems. Yet other areas might be community vegetable gardens, which provide participants the opportunity to eat a more balanced diet of fresher vegetables than can be purchased at the local supermarket. Eating a better diet can lead to a diminishing of diseases such as diabetes and can lead to a longer life-span.
The reason we can talk about environmental racism is because frequently old and underserviced neighborhoods are the home of people of color rather than neighborhoods of White people. Park departments of many large cities such as New York City and Chicago have a long history of expending large amounts of budget funds in White neighborhoods and either ignore Black and Latino neighborhoods or service such neighborhoods with left-over funds. As an example, the Chicago Parks District, the oldest centralized park system in the country, has been sued repeatedly through the years stretching back to the early 1900’s over instituting policies that were “willful discrimination” against neighborhoods of people of color.
Green Gentrification
The average global sea level has risen 9.2 inches since 1880. That rate of increase is faster than in the last 2,700 years and it is having a dramatic impact on people who live along the coastal plain on all continents. In the United States forty percent of our population live in coastal cities and towns, and coastal cities are experiencing flooding 3 – 9 times more than they did just fifty years ago.
Rising sea level affects populations in three ways. It increases flooding of sea water, coastal soil is destroyed by sea water leaching into tidal land and the rising sea, in concert with higher temperatures, is increasing the strength and frequency of severe tropical storms and hurricanes.
Between the years of 1978 and 2015 a minimum of 30,000 homes have been flooded multiple times. Some of the cities that are experiencing coastal flooding include: New York City, Atlantic City, Boston, Annapolis, Charlestown and Miami Beach.
Green Gentrification, a newly coined term, is the replacement of low income people, mostly people of color, living along the coast with higher income people, mostly White people. These wealthier property owners can afford to modify their property to withstand present day flooding, as well as future flooding and the impact of soil erosion caused by sea water flooding and the lowering of the water table caused by pumping from aquifers to provide drinking water to increasing populations. Not only can they afford to modify existing property, they can also pay higher prices for property that is on higher ground, yet still on the coastline.
In either case, their actions increase the tax base, which in turn increases the value of the property. This tends to drive out the current low-income homeowners.
To combat these inequalities, the government officials need to involve low income residents when developing solutions to climate change. “Decisions about where to prioritize physical protections, install green infrastructure, locate cooling centers, or route public transportation,” should be made with low-income communities in mind, according to the report.
Native American Reservation Land
Lastly, we need to talk about the plight of Native American, or First Nations people. It’s difficult to rank the destructive desolation caused by White Europeans, but his treatment of Native peoples is certainly equal to if not more than that of the African people.
Native Americans were the original slaves working the White owned plantations of the Southern American colonies, later to be states. They were replaced by Africans because the plantation owners were killing them off so fast that native populations couldn’t keep up. The Spanish killed millions working them to death in the gold and silver mines of South and Central America. In addition, the native populations were susceptible to European diseases whereas the Africans had been exposed previously due to the long standing slave trade into the Middle East.
Even after they were replaced as slaves, the North American Native peoples faced more than two centuries of genocidal wars against the U.S. Army and broken promises of the U.S. Congress. Treaty after treaty was broken when White settlers invaded Native land that was promised to them by the Congress. Finally, as the Nineteenth Century closed and the Twentieth arrived, a vast system of tribal land called Reservations arose and stabilized.
Unfortunately for the Natives, in most if not all cases, the land was about the poorest in the country. One Native Chief accepted the treaty saying that he would accept the land because it was so bad no White man would want it. Another famously stated that the only thing that the White man’s government promised that did come true was the promise to kill the Indians.
Even today, Native Reservations usually have no running water, electricity or a system of paved roads. Thirty years ago I had a Navaho friend who lived in a house, mostly of his own building out of scarp materials, in Navaho Nation in the Four Corners. He didn’t have indoor plumbing but got his water from a pump. He didn’t have electricity or a phone. He had to journey for three days in wild territory to get to the nearest town that had bus service to a larger town that had an airport. If it was during the rainy season he couldn’t navigate the flooded road so he stayed home during those months.
Now thirty years later little progress has been made and many of the young are alcoholic and drug users because they lack what most White people have and that is “hope.”
So, amongst the squalid conditions of one North Dakota Reservation, Native Americans recently protested for several weeks to stop the building of a new oil pipeline across Indian land. The Native protesters were afraid that the pipeline would leak causing further damage to already poor land and would pollute the ground water that they relied upon for drinking water. The oil companies naturally stated that the pipeline was safe. Natives from dozens of tribes chose a spot where the pipeline was to go under the Missouri river as their protest site.
The oil companies argued that they were using the most up-to-date scientific equipment to ensure that the pipeline didn’t leak and that they had satisfied all the requirements of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers.
The Natives called to attention all the other cases in which oil rigs, oil tanker ships and pipelines had spilt oil over the last fifty years and recalled the hundred year history of being lied to by the White man. Additionally, they didn’t have confidence in the reports of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers because they didn’t trust the U.S. Army, based on experience.
In the end the oil companies, supported by the state, the police and a private security force physically drove the Native Americans from their position, water hosing hundreds and arresting many.
