Curbing federal authority over carbon emissions reductions and increasing heat waves will have a cascading effect on the most vulnerable communities, says the activist of environmental justice
s temperatures hit record highs in Houston, Texas, recently, Robert Bullard, considered the father of the environmental justice movement, saw a pattern. Hospitalizations from heat stroke and health outcomes such as asthma from living next to noxious facilities in the city’s Black neighborhoods have the same root cause.
What does the supreme court’s decision to rollback federal authority on regulating power plants mean for Black, brown, and indigenous communities? The supreme court decision centered on what power the US government has to address climate change. Do you see parallels between the decision and the increasing natural disasters, heat waves and winter storms?
Texas is a textbook case for not having a federal policy that applies to all states. In the absence of that, you will have this patchwork. That applies to not just climate, not just greenhouse gases, but also voting and allowing states to gerrymander, suppress the vote – to do all the things that at one point, when we had a strong Civil Rights Act, would not be allowed to happen.
When we look at the EPA, it was founded in 1970. All these many decades, it has attempted to address this unevenness and unequal protection. But it has not eradicated the fact that some communities have the wrong complexion for protection. Some communities are seen as sacrifice zones. They don’t have the political power, organizations and lawyers that can force dollars, resources, infrastructure to protect certain communities. We still have communities that are overpolluted and underprotected.
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