In the wake of the protests against police brutality and the realization that people of color have suffered more in the COVID-19 pandemic than others, no one can doubt that inequality in America is widespread. In environmental matters, the air we breathe, the food we consume, and access to clean water, racial inequalities are also widespread. Global warming, an existential crisis becoming all too real like COVID-19, will only exacerbate these inequalities, unless we act now.
Environmental Impact of Segregated Neighborhood
Due to the legacy and continued practice of racial segregation, people of color are more likely to live in unhealthy neighborhoods. Power plants, toxic waste dumps, and other air and water polluting industries are more often located in poor neighborhoods where there is a higher concentration of people of color. This issue was documented in a 1986 landmark study that found toxic waste disposal sites were more often located in African American neighborhoods.
Sadly, the location of these types of polluting industries has not changed over the years.
As reported in Climate X-Change, African American, Indigenous, and other people of color account for more than half of all residents living within two miles of a hazardous waste site, even though they only account for around 23% of the US population.
In 2012, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) published a study that found African American and Hispanic families are more likely than white households to live near coal-fired power plants.
The result of living in polluted neighborhoods means a higher level of exposure to pollutants and emission according to a 2016 study in Environment International.
More recently, the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment found that people of color are much more likely to live near polluting industries and breathe polluted air. Specifically, the study finds that people in poverty are exposed to more fine particulate matter than people living above poverty.
Managing Climate Risk
While people of color are more at risk of global warming because of racial inequality and how it impacts where they live, they also have fewer resources to deal with the effects of climate change.
Most of the worst effects of climate change are hitting—and lingering in—poor black neighborhoods in the South.
Likewise, a paper in the journal Science found that climate change will cause the most economic harm in the nation’s poorest counties; many of those places, like Zavala County, Texas, and Wilkinson County, Mississippi, are home to mostly people of color.
Overall, in the US, African Americans are 52% more likely than whites to live in urban heat islands, which soak up more heat than other parts of a city, according to a 2013 study by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley. That threat puts people in those areas at greater risk during spikes in temperature, the study concluded.
And those communities are not always able to cope with rising temperatures, floods, and hurricanes. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, more than 30 percent of black residents didn’t own cars and could not evacuate. Of those who did leave, many could not afford to return.
Health Effects of Pollution
Pollution and global warming have very real health effects from heat stroke to asthma to premature death caused by cancer-causing chemicals. These effects will only get worse under President Trump’s dismantling of environmental protections which could “cause severe health effects on major portions of the population (particularly children, the elderly and other vulnerable populations), including 1,630 more incidences of premature deaths, 120,000 additional asthma attacks, and 140,000 missed school days and 48,000 lost work days.”
African Americans, Hispanic and other people of color are more likely to be exposed to dangerous chemicals such as benzene. In addition, overall levels of particulate matter exposure for people of color are higher than those for white people. For example, Hispanics face rates of chlorine exposure that are more than double those of whites. Long-term, breathing in chlorine causes cardiac problems.
A Harvard study also found lead poisoning among children to be higher in poor Chicago neighborhoods where the population was largely African American.
In Flint, Michigan, after the city changed the water supply from Detroit’s system to the Flint River to save money, the water was contaminated and caused a range of health problems. Studies concluded that the failure to deal with the water crisis was largely due to “systemic racism”.
Inequalities in Producers and Consumers of Pollution
New research has found inequalities in the amount of air pollution produced and consumed by people of color.
The study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences found that African American and Hispanic communities in the US are exposed to far more air pollution than they produce through actions like driving and using electricity.
It found that whites experience about 17 percent less air pollution than they produce, through consumption, while African American and Hispanics bear 56 and 63 percent more air pollution, respectively, than they cause by their consumption.
Exclusion of Minority Voices in Environmental Movement
It isn’t just that pollution and climate change are affecting communities of color; the environmental movement has historically excluded them.
A 2014 study by the Green Diversity Initiative found that people of color made up about 12 percent of staff members and leadership at nongovernmental environmental organizations and foundations. According to the University of Michigan Environmental Sociologist Dorceta Taylor, “The world of climate activism has historically been dominated by white men.”
Activist Elizabeth Yeampierre agrees. 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.”
However, global warming is a top concern among African Americans. In a survey of 750 US black adults released by the Commission to Engage African-Americans on Climate Change, 81 percent said the US government should take strong action to deal with global warming.
Meanwhile, kids of color are spearheading America’s youth climate movement. A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll in 2019 found that at least twice as many black and Hispanic teens participated in school walkouts on climate change than their white counterparts; they were also more likely to say people need to take action.
As an organization committed to sustainability, we need to rethink how we are engaging with people of color because climate justice means racial justice. It’s time to build racial equality into your company’s sustainability plans.
Contact SSC for a free consultation.