POLICY AREAS

Environmental and Climate Justice and Equitable Disaster Recovery

Environmental and Climate Justice and Equitable Disaster Recovery
  1. In three and a half years, the Trump administration rolled back 100 environmental rules.
  2. African Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live where industrial pollution poses the greatest health danger.
  3. Black households with incomes between $50,000 to $60,000 live in neighborhoods that are more polluted than the average neighborhood in which white households with incomes below $10,000 live.
  4. A 2018 EPA study found in 46 states people of color live with more air pollution than whites.
  5. African Americans are exposed to 1.54 times more fine particulate matter than whites.
  6. In April 2020 Harvard researchers found air pollution linked to higher COVID-19 deaths.
  7. Blacks have a 5.3 percent higher prevalence of heat-related mortality than whites, and 64 percent of this disparity is traced to disparities in home air conditioning.
  8. Climate change will increase the number of “bad air days” and pose significant health threats, including cardiovascular, respiratory allergies, and asthma, with an unequal burden falling on low income and people of color households.
  9. Researchers from Rice University and the University of Pittsburgh found, in counties badly hit by natural disasters (areas with at least $10 billion in damages) white communities gained an average $126,000 in wealth following the damage and recovery efforts.  Communities of color lose up to $29,000 on average in personal wealth following events like hurricanes and wildfires.
  10. America is segregated and so is pollution.
  11. The politics of pollution translates into more illnesses, suffering and deaths. COVID-19 maps closely with race, class and environmental disparities.
  12. Toxic living conditions and environmental racism helped inflate death rates among African Americans before COVID-19 struck.
  13. An April 2020 Harvard study found air pollution linked to higher COVID-19 deaths.
  14. More than 68 percent of African Americans live within 30 miles of a dirty coal-fired power plant, compared with 56 percent of whites and 39 percent of Latinos.
  15. Each year between 7,500 to 52,000 Americans die prematurely from power plant emissions.
  16. Polluting industries such as toxic waste facilities, high-risk chemical plants, oil refineries, and coal fired power plants have turned many African American and poor communities into environmental “sacrifice zones.”
  17. Refineries dumping pollution on fence-line black and Latino communities is a fact of life along Houston’s Ship Channel, Port Arthur and Corpus Christi’s “refinery row,” Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” Southwest Detroit, South Philadelphia, North Richmond, CA and Los Angeles’ South Bay region.
  18. Zip code is still the most potent predictor of health and well-being in the United States.
  19. Many of the nation’s racially segregated communities have the highest poverty, highest uninsured rate, unhealthiest residents, shortest life expectancy and most pollution.
  20. Money does not insulate some Americans from pollution and environmental racism.
  21. Structural racism is a major factor creating the wealth gap between black and white families. Black wealth is roughly one tenth of white wealth.
  22. In 2016, the median wealth for black and Hispanic families was $17,600 and $20,700, respectively, compared with white families’ median wealth of $171,000.
  23. A disproportionate share of African Americans (55 percent) live in the South, a region where a disproportionate share of its governors and attorneys general are climate deniers who have routinely resisted stronger environmental protection and climate action.
  24. African Americans in southern states have not only had to fight environmental racism but have had to contend with state officials fighting the American Care Act (ACA) Obamacare, Medicaid expansion, Clean Power Plan, climate adaptation plans and renewable energy standards. Ironically, many of these same climate-vulnerable southern states have the highest poverty and highest electricity bills.
  25. African Americans also have the highest uninsured rate, unhealthiest residents, and the shortest life expectancy
  26. Air quality after improving over the past decades got worse in 2017-2018 and it is killing a significant portion of the population in these beleaguered communities.
  27. African Americans are overrepresented in populations who live within a three-mile radius of the nation’s 1,388 Superfund sites.
  28. The Fourth National Climate Assessment states, “climate change creates new risks and exacerbates existing vulnerabilities in communities across the United States, presenting growing challenges to human health and safety, quality of life, and the rate of economic growth.”  
  29. People and places in the South or Dixie are especially vulnerable to climate change.  
  30. African Americans, poor and marginalized communities in the South are exceptionally vulnerable to sea level rise, flooding, extreme heat events, hurricanes, and decreased water availability.
  31. Climate-related disasters in the South have outnumbered similar events in other areas of the U.S. annually by a ratio of almost 4 to 1 during the past decade.
  32. The Southeast has had more billion-dollar disasters than all other regions combined.
  33. A recent Brookings study reveals without effective climate action the nation will become a poorer and more unequal nation.
  34. The South, already the poorest region of the county—is predicted to experience a whopping 20 percent drop in GDP by the end of the century due to climate change.
  35. A disproportionate share of African Americans (55 percent) live in the South, a region where a disproportionate share of its governors and attorneys general are climate deniers who have routinely resisted stronger environmental protection and climate action.
  36. The Green New Deal Resolution is a positive first step that presents climate solutions to move the United States in the right direction toward  a just clean energy economy for all—solutions that eliminate greenhouse gases, create millions of high-wage American jobs, build green and accessible public transportation, reduce poverty and inequality, promote equal protection of workers, frontline communities and vulnerable populations, and provide safeguards against  climate and related environmental health threats.
  37. Global warming is expected to double the number of cities that exceed air quality standards.
  38. More than 43 percent of African Americans live in these urban “heat islands,” compared to only 20 percent of whites.
  39. A disproportionate share of places where people of color live, work, play, and learn have become racialized with toxic “hot-spots” and dangerous operations that pose  elevated health threats—especially to vulnerable children of color.
  40. Nationally, African Americans have a 5.3 percent higher prevalence of heat-related mortality than whites, and 64 percent of this disparity is traced to disparities in prevalence of home air conditioning.
  41. Nationally, one in three U.S. schoolchildren is at risk from a chemical catastrophe.
  42. Houston is also home to three of the top 10 United States facilities that put the most students at risk.
  43. Nearly three-quarter of people of color in America live in “nature-deprived” neighborhoods.