I've got to start by admitting that, in many ways,
me giving a talk about how climate action
can help black communities is surprising.
I grew up poor and black with a single mother in Tottenham,
one of the most deprived areas in London
in the 1970s and '80s.
Climate change was the last thing on my mind.
And representing Tottenham as its member of Parliament
for the past 20 years, my focus has been on trying to reduce
the deprivation I grew up around.
In the past, the climate crisis never featured
at the forefront of my politics
because it was never one of the most immediate challenges
my constituents were facing,
or at least it didn't feel like it.
Rising sea levels feel unimportant
when your bank balance is falling.
Global warming is not your concern
when you can't pay the heating bills.
And you're not thinking about pollution
when you're being stopped by the police.
And so, perhaps this is why,
as the Black Lives Matter movement roared across the world,
there's been so little mention of saving black lives
from the climate emergency.
For too long, those of us who cared about racial justice
treated environmental justice as though it was elitist.
And at the same time,
the leaders who did focus on climate change
were usually white and rarely bothered to enlist the support
of black voices in their work.
Even progressive allies sometimes took our votes for granted
and assumed that our community didn't care
or wouldn't understand.
The truth is the opposite is true.
Black people breathe in the most toxic air
relative to the general population.
We are more likely to suffer from respiratory diseases
like asthma.
And it is people of color
who are more likely to suffer in the climate crisis.
This is no coincidence.
The cheapest housing tends to be next to the busiest roads
and many of the lowest paid jobs
are in the most polluting industries.
People of color consistently lie at the bottom
of the housing, educational, and employment ladders.
This story connects black communities across the world,
from London to Lagos to LA.
Black Americans are exposed to 56% more pollution
than they cause.
White Americans breathe 17% less air pollution
than they produce.
It gives a whole new meaning
to the Black Lives Matter slogan, "I can't breathe."
We all rightly know the name of George Floyd,
who was murdered by the police.
But we should also know the name of Ella Kissi-Debrah.
Ella, a nine-year-old mixed-race girl from Southeast London,
was killed by a fatal asthma attack.
Evidence suggests this was caused partly
by the unlawful levels of air pollution near her home.
And it's not only urban areas where black lives
are disproportionately under threat from climate change.
My parents' home country of Guyana
is one of the most vulnerable countries on Earth
to the effects of climate change.
So far, Guyana has contributed relatively little
to the climate emergency, but it's one of the countries
facing the most serious threats from it.
While the annual carbon dioxide emissions per head
in the United States is a staggering 16.5 metric tons,
in Guyana it's just 2.6.
It is a pattern repeated across the globe.
Those countries that have contributed least
to the climate breakdown, mainly in the global south,
will suffer the most from floods,
droughts, and rising temperatures.
This is a pattern of suffering with a long history.
The exploitation of our planet's natural resources
has always been tied to the exploitation of people of color.
The logic of colonization was to extract valuable resources
from our planet through force,
paying no attention to its secondary effects.
The climate crisis is, in a way,
colonialism's natural conclusion.
The solution is to build a new coalition
made up of all the groups most affected by this emergency:
black people in American cities
who are already protesting that they cannot breathe,
people of color in Guyana watching sea levels rise
to the point where many of their homes become uninhabitable,
young people in places like Tottenham, London,
afraid of the world that they will grow old in,
and progressive allies from all nations,
of all races, religions, creeds, and ages on their side,
all demanding recognition that climate justice
is linked to racial justice, social justice,
and intergenerational justice too.
And let me say something about how we build
this new movement and what it must look like.
First, we need a recognition that the climate movement
is not only about protecting the planet.
It is primarily about caring
for the people who live on the planet.
Globally as well as nationally,
we need to recognize structural imbalances and inequalities.
A radical green recovery plan
should provide jobs to the people
who've been disenfranchised for centuries,
new jobs planting trees, insulating buildings,
and working on green technologies.
We cannot tackle the climate crisis
without addressing racial inequalities.
And we cannot solve racial inequalities
without fixing the economic system.
The new deal the economy needs is not only green,
it's green and black.
Second, we need more black leaders.
It cannot be right in 2020
that almost all the leading climate change activists
we recognize are white.
At Davos this year, five young female members
of the Fridays for Future movement
came together to give a press conference
at the World Economic Forum.
This is a picture the Associated Press put out.
Here is the original image.
As the Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate
herself put it afterwards,
"You didn't just erase a photo, you erased a continent."
We need to look at who is being cropped out
of leadership positions in environmental organizations too.
People of color makeup around 40%
of the United States population.
So, why is it a University of Michigan study
found that the percentage of minorities
in leadership positions in US environmental organizations
is less than 12%?
Global organizations should consider
moving their headquarters to the global south
and urban areas that are most affected
by the climate emergency.
There should be new scholarships
and bursaries in environmental science for people of color.
Educate yourself.
Join great movements that recognize the links
between climate and race.
To name a few, the Black Environment Network
and Wretched of the Earth.
And finally, racial injustice and climate injustice
are both rooted in the evil notion
that some lives are more important than others.
If you march to say Black Lives Matter
in Minneapolis, London, or Sydney,
please also march for the black lives
on the Caribbean island of Haiti
as its children are displaced by storms.
Please also march for the black lives being lost in Darfur,
the first climate change conflict.
And please also march for the indigenous people
of the Amazon rainforest
as Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro
weakens its protections.
If we are serious about protecting black lives
in the global south as well as the north,
we need to strengthen international laws.
We need a way to apply international criminal laws
like war crimes or crimes against humanity to the planet.
We need a new international law of ecocide
to criminalize the willful
and widespread destruction of the environment,
a law that criminalizes the most severe crimes
against nature itself,
even for acts don't involve direct human suffering.
Economics, race, and class
are at the center of today's political struggles.
The Black Lives Matter movement
needs to wake up to climate injustices
just as the climate movement must make every effort
to include the reality of people of color.
Young black boys growing up
in single-parent households in Tottenham
won't have the opportunities I had
in a world ravaged by climate chaos.
My distant cousins and relatives growing up in Guyana
won't have a future if their homes are drowning underwater.
Now is the time for black and climate movements
to come together unequivocally and say, "We can't breathe."
Thank you very much.