Why Climate Change is Anti-Justice | Hot Mess

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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 and places we see everyday, and it will impact some of us more than others.

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Host/Writer: Talia Buford, ProPublica
Creative Director: David Schulte
Editors/Animators: Karl Boettcher & Derek Borsheim
Producers: Stephanie Noone & Amanda Fox
Editor-In-Chief: Joe Hanson, Ph.D.
Story Editor: Alex Reich

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Produced by PBS Digital Studios
Theme Music: Eric Friend/Optical Audio
Music: APM
Stock images from http://www.shutterstock.com

Thanks to the funders of Peril & Promise for supporting PBS Digital Studios. Peril & Promise is a national public media initiative from WNET telling human stories of climate change and its solutions. Learn more at: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/peril-and-promise/

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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
and places we see every day,

and it will impact some of us
more than others.

♪ (drum beat music) ♪

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season

was one of the most active
seasons in history,

with 17 named storms and 10 hurricanes.

Six of those hurricanes had winds
of 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 back yard.

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 weren't physically able to evacuate
before hurricane Harvey,

had no choice but to stay behind
as the city flooded.

Puerto 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 US

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 H. W. Bush

founded 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.

It 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 filed
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.

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