Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Greta Thunberg’s tour of North America continues this week with a visit to Los Angeles to participate in the Youth Climate Los Angeles event at City Hall on Friday, Nov. 1. If you’re wondering why her attention has come to California, which has an image as being one of the most progressive and greenest states in the US, you might be surprised to learn that Los Angeles actually has the largest urban oil field in the nation.
This resilience and continued drive of Detroiters makes the city the prime location to implement Green New Deal reforms. A national dialogue about the Green New Deal cannot ignore its application on the local level, Onwenu says, especially around reframing how outsiders have touted the city’s revitalization.
In the absence of coordinated action on the part of the global community to mitigate ecological instability and recognize the plight of displaced people, there’s a risk of what some have called “climate apartheid.” In this scenario – climate change combined with closed borders and few migration pathways – millions of people would be forced to choose between increasingly insecure livelihoods and the perils of unauthorized migration.
The Environmental movement is heavily white and middle class. Both of which we are not. There is an uncomfortableness about entering that space.
The fossil fuel industry regularly deploys manipulative and dishonest tactics when engaging with communities of color, often working to co-opt the respect and authority of minority-led groups to serve corporate goals.
This isn’t just a weather disaster; it’s a failure of society. Lee County’s per capita income is $22,794, 19 percent live below the poverty line, and 17 percent of houses are mobile homes, nearly three times the national average. Unsafe shelter makes residents much more vulnerable to tornadoes.
Black leaders have long been pioneers in protecting communities and the environment — from Harriet Tubman, who in the mid-1800s used her knowledge of the natural world to guide escaped slaves north, to landfill protesters in Warren County, North Carolina in 1982 who galvanized the modern environmental justice movement.
Many residents of government-subsidized housing have already become climate migrants, in New Orleans, Miami, Houston, and Puerto Rico.
We’ll investigate how, in the face of ICE raids, labor violations, a housing crisis, and climate-fueled wildfires, the broader community is coming together to stand in solidarity with those who are being forced into the shadows.
What Rich left out is that the mainstream environmental movement – the ecosystem of big green organizations and funders – consistently excluded and failed to provide resources to organizations representing those most vulnerable to climate change: communities of color and low-income communities.
Wealth inequality dramatically increases between white communities and communities of color in the U.S. following a natural disaster, a new study found.
Sharon Lavigne and Geraldine Mayho took me to meet some of the most vulnerable members of their community, handicapped residents of St. James, Louisiana, who live near a terminal where the Bayou Bridge pipeline will end. “These people have no way of getting out if there is a spill or explosion,” Lavigne told me.
