[Music]
what do you think of when you hear the
words climate change chances are you
might think of sad nature somewhere far
away but climate change also affects
humans in every corner of the world
including the corner where you live and
where I live it impacts the people in
places we see every day and it will
impact some of us more than others the
2017 Atlantic hurricane season was one
of the most active seasons in history
with 17 named storms and ten hurricanes
six of those hurricanes had winds more
than 110 miles per hour and while it's
hard to know if any single weather event
is due to climate change we do know that
it will make conditions more extreme
we're seeing what that future could look
like in Cape Town South Africa there a
drought has stressed local reservoirs
leading to water rationing as the city
prepares for the day when the taps run
dry and when you take a community that's
already facing these disparities and add
in extreme weather caused by climate
change it can make it even harder for
those communities to recover not every
community experiences these climate
changes in the same way some communities
have more resources better
infrastructure or more political capital
than other communities there's a concept
to deal with these inequalities it's
called environmental justice and the
idea is pretty simple communities
shouldn't be forced to suffer
disproportionate environmental effects
or deal with more pollution than others
because they belong to a certain race
national origin or income bracket people
in wealthy communities often think these
concerns are far away but even in a
place like the US where we tend to think
we're ahead of the curve on protecting
all people the execution has been spotty
we can still find lots of environmental
disparities right in our backyard as
Miami cleaned up after Hurricane Maria
officials dumped debris next to a
community with lots of low-income
residents and people of color definitely
close enough to see and smell it and in
Houston residents who couldn't afford or
work
physically able to evacuate before
hurricane Harvey had no choice but to
stay behind as the city flooded Porto
Rico has faced budget shortages and a
lack of infrastructure for decades and
after a spate of hurricanes residents
there had trouble finding clean drinking
water and large portions of the island
remained without electricity for months
it's more than extreme individual events
in many places days that were already
hot are getting even hotter and there
are more of them this heat can be
especially deadly in homes without
air-conditioning for example the heat
index inside public housing in Harlem
stays dangerously elevated overnight
even when it cools off outside and as
climate change brings the average
temperature up systemic inequalities
like this will become more obvious it's
not that the United States hasn't tried
to fix these problems before the fight
for environmental justice in the u.s.
traces its roots to 1982 in Warren
County North Carolina when residents
mounted mass demonstrations against a
plan to put contaminated soil in a
nearby landfill the US Environmental
Protection Agency or EPA found that
similar landfills in southern states
were all located in black or low-income
neighborhoods several years later a
report found this was a pattern around
the country hazardous waste facilities
were more likely to be located in
minority communities the proof was
undeniable so in 1992 President George
HW Bush found at the office of
environmental justice inside the EPA two
years later Bill Clinton signed an
executive order that told federal
agencies to consider environmental
justice in all policies and effectively
included environmental protections under
civil rights law sounds like things were
going pretty well right well
environmental justice policies stalled
when George W Bush shifted the focus of
the office of environmental justice from
protecting low-income and minority
communities to protecting all people
that sounds good but in practice it
meant those efforts no longer focused on
protecting the people who needed it most
at the same time many environmental
civil rights claims were delayed for
years or downright rejected after Barack
Obama's election
his administration recommitted to
environmental justice Democrats
controlled the House the Senate and
White House for two years but guess how
many bills they file to strengthen
environmental justice protections zero
today EPA funding itself is under threat
so these vulnerable communities remain
at risk it's easy to assume that climate
change will affect us all equally
but the truth is that communities all
around us including the one you're in
may be forced to bear an unequal brunt
of our changing world if we want to
change this we have to recognize those
disparities and engage with those
communities that way as we find
solutions everyone has a seat at the
table thanks for watching hot mess if
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