[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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