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Environmental racism

Oil Explosion In Black Town Traces Back To Iran And Venezuela Crises

John Beard takes no pleasure in being right. In January, he told Capital B that he feared U.S. military action in Venezuela, which ultimately gave America preferential access to the South American nation’s vast oil reserves, would lead to disaster in southeast Texas. “The chickens have come home to roost,” Beard said over the phone, between fielding calls from his neighbors. “Our exact fears have come true.” On March 23, an explosion at the Valero Port Arthur Refinery shook homes as far as 11 miles away and sent a thick black plume across the predominantly Black city.

Big Green + Big Tech = Bigger Environmental Racism

As David Holt, Mayor of Oklahoma City, remarked to Politico last month, “ If you had asked me about data centers five months ago, I would have said: ‘What’s a data center?” He continued, “Now it’s everywhere. So that’s a short amount of time to fully formulate what you think about it.” While it’s true that data centers to power artificial intelligence (AI) are a ubiquitous aspect of the current U.S. lexicon, the idea that positions on data centers have not been fully formulated is questionable. Clearly, Big Tech corporations are solid in their position that they need as much influence over the government and other decision makers to proliferate their data center infrastructure wherever they want and as quickly as they want.

Civil Rights Case Probes Racism Behind Cancer Alley Pollution

A major environmental justice case tying slavery’s legacy to Cancer Alley reached a new phase after a judge rejected defendants’ motion to dismiss last month. The lawsuit centers on claims that St. James Parish in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, where many industrial sites are located on former plantations where people were enslaved, violated the U.S. Constitution by pushing polluting industry into Black communities. “In their complaint, Plaintiffs tell the story of how plantations gave way to industrial facilities that now endanger black residents’ health, negatively impact their quality of life, and desecrate the unmarked cemeteries of their ancestors,” District Judge Carl Barbier wrote.

Gulf Coast Communities Take On Insurers Backing Fossil Fuel Facilities

Promising U.S. “energy dominance,” the Trump administration is moving to accelerate fossil fuel production. Key to this agenda is the approval of liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities across Gulf Coast communities that are disproportionately Black, Brown, and low-income, long treated as expendable “sacrifice zones” by the fossil fuel industry. Just recently, on May 23, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) reauthorized the massive CP2 LNG in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, which will be the biggest LNG export facility in the U.S. Local organizers and climate groups have been fighting the expansion of these “methane export facilities” which they say will intensify climate chaos and environmental racism.

Why All Hurricanes Should Be Named ‘Jim’

The devastation effectuated by Hurricane Helene represents yet another elucidation of a quintessential climate crisis that is right here and right now. It demonstrates that climate change is not a conclusion that awaits us, but a set of present day precarities taking and altering lives right now. According to initial assessments, Helene could cost U.S. taxpayers upwards of $175 billion , and of course, there is no way to quantify the estimated 230 lives that were taken, thus far, with the death toll expected to rise. Meanwhile, Hurricane Milton, which made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm, continued this season of carnage and calamity with a death toll of approximately 20 people and an estimated $50 billion in damages.

Kamala Harris’s Environmental Deceptions

Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency and the strongest environmental protections the US had ever seen in response to the mass movements of the 1960s. After Nixon, environmental laws gradually improved until Bill Clinton’s administration started rolling them back, especially through global “free trade” deals like NAFTA and those of the WTO, putting the environmental movement on the defensive. Every president since Clinton, Democrat or Republican, has successively worsened environmental protections. Obama expanded fossil fuel production more than any other president in US history, and Biden continued to expand it even more than Trump had. There’s little reason to think that Kamala Harris would be different, and she’s already reversed her opposition to fracking.

Communities Protest Banking Giant’s Annual Meeting Over Environmental Racism

Activists from the world are uniting against Dutch banking giant ING’s environmental racism. Specifically, at the company’s upcoming AGM they plan to call out ING’s financing of a big polluter and climate-wrecking industries harming marginalised communities throughout the Global North and South. On Monday 22 April community defenders from the US, Mexico, Brazil, Liberia, and the Czech Republic will attend ING’s AGM to call out the company’s financing for destructive big polluters. Fossil fuel finance accountability non-profit BankTrack and Netherlands climate campaign group Fossielvrij have facilitated their travel to Amsterdam, to take on the banking giant at this key meeting.

From Demolition Plans To Neighborhood Ownership

Minneapolis, Minnesota — It’s been a long road to ownership of the hotly contested Roof Depot site for the residents of the East Phillips neighborhood in Minneapolis, and they recently cleared one more hurdle in their way. On November 8, the City of Minneapolis accepted a guarantee from East Phillips Neighborhood Institute (EPNI) of their contribution of $3.7 million, effectively sealing EPNI’s end of the deal to purchase the Roof Depot from the city and launch next steps toward their vision for the site. The battle over the Roof Depot began nearly eight years ago in the Minneapolis city government as residents and activists fought to stop the city from demolishing the existing building to construct a new water distribution facility.

Biden And Democrat’s Climate Agenda Increases Environmental Racism More Than It Reduces Emissions

Earlier this month the Biden Administration, along with high ranking democrats including Senate Majority Leader, Charles Schumer, and former House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, as well as a slew of acolytes representing centrist environmental organizations, celebrated the one-year signing of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) at the White House. It was a curious time to celebrate an ostensible climate bill during a summer of cataclysmic events fueled by runaway climate change including deadly and crippling heatwaves, wildfires that blanketed major cities with toxic smoke, and the annihilation of Lahaina, Maui.

EU Weans Itself From Russian Energy; US Pushes New LNG Export Plant

Chester, Pennsylvania — When Zulene Mayfield testifies next week against plans to build a $6.8 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in her Pennsylvania hometown, she will be facing off against some of the most powerful fossil fuel interests in the United States. As co-founder of the community group Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living, Mayfield has spent years fighting to protect her majority Black and low-income city from the pollution spewed by the nearby Covanta waste-to-energy facility — the country’s largest waste incinerator. Now she finds herself pitted against a new confluence of forces — a lobbying effort by a fossil fuel complex stretching from her state’s Marcellus Shale gas fields to the boardrooms of European energy companies. 

Environmental Racism Links Lahaina And Katrina

August 29 will mark the 18th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history, which devastated much of the Gulf Coast (specifically Louisiana and Mississippi) and disproportionately struck New Orleans. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration states that this Category 4 hurricane caused at least $108 billion in structural damage, leading to more than one million people being displaced, many permanently, especially the poor and people of color. According to livescience.com, an estimated 1,833 people died in the hurricane and the flooding that followed. (Aug. 27, 2015) That flooding, mainly caused by broken levees, overwhelmed the Ninth Ward, a predominant working-class Black neighborhood in New Orleans.

Joe Biden’s Petroleum Puppetry Is Pulling The Strings Of War And Environmental Racism

Support for the Russia/Ukraine war is experiencing a precipitous decline according to polls of United Statesians taken at the war’s one year mark in February.  In fact, whereas 60 percent of those polled in May 2022 supported sending weapons to Ukraine, the February poll reveals support for the US military’s munificence plummeted to an all-time low of 48 percent. Moreover, the same poll demonstrated that less than 40% of United Statesians favor sending any government funds to Ukraine. There are myriad reasons for waning support for this war, one of them is likely associated with the price tag. According to estimates, in just a little more than one year, President Biden has approved largess of the U.S. tax payer in the sum of $115 billion.

Harlem Resists Gentrification, Environmental Racism

New York City - Harlem families and grassroots community groups gathered Jan. 28 on West 145th St. and Lenox Ave. in Harlem to protest the operations of a truck stop, which they say was opened in retaliation for their rejection of a gentrification project known as “One45.” Several rally speakers condemned the luxury real estate developer and former aide to Rudy Giuliani, Bruce Teitelbaum, for poisoning the community and worsening existing environmental issues, causing high rates of asthma and respiratory issues in children. The battle between the predominantly poor and working-class Black community and Teitelbaum began last year, when he proposed “One45,” a $700-million luxury high-rise residential complex that included only a small percentage of so-called “affordable” apartments. These units required a minimum household income of $112,000 to rent, whereas the median household income for the immediate area where One45 was slated to be built is only $36,804.

Barred From The Climate Conversation

When Kelo Uchendu prepared for this year’s Bonn Climate Change Conference (SB56), it had been three years since his previous application for the German visa was rejected. At the time, he was the only African student selected from a cohort of engineers to attend a career-advancing programme in Dresden. That visa rejection was costly and devastating, but he did not remain idle. He founded a climate justice organisation in his home country of Nigeria to advocate for clean air, began pursuing postgraduate studies and joined the organising team of Mock COP26. He would arrive in Bonn as the policy co-lead of the UNFCCC youth constituency knowing that his hard work has finally paid off.

Environmental Racism Leads To Water Crisis in Jackson, Mississippi

Jackson, Mississippi - Residents of Jackson, Mississippi, a city of 150,000 that is 82.5 percent Black, have not had reliable access to clean water for five days. On Monday, the Pearl River flooded from extreme rainfall, and caused the main water treatment plant to fail, resulting in low to no water pressure. A second treatment plant has simultaneously been having issues with its water pumps. If residents are getting any tap water at all, it’s brown. All this is happening while Jackson is facing extreme heat. Residents have faced long lines in order to get cases of bottled water, of which the city is running out. All schools have switched to remote learning since Tuesday.
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