Pollution more intensely affects low income urban communities. (Steven Buss/Flickr)
WASHINGTON –In 2013, his fifth year in office, President Obama announced his plans to take action against the growing threat of climate change. He chose Georgetown University as his venue, speaking to students and faculty about ways to cut carbon emissions and develop renewable energy. But he was silent on an issue looming over less-affluent communities around the country.
While climate change may be high among the issues Obama hopes to address in his final two years in office, the notion of a climate gap, or the excessive impact of climate change on poor and marginalized communities, does not seem to be in his talking points. But concern that minority communities may suffer disproportionate harm has given new life to the environmental justice movement, advocating for basic standards of living for all communities.
“Environmental justice started from grassroots and people not accepting the fact that the places that they work, live, play and pray aren’t places they could grow up living healthy lives,” said Dr. Jalonne White-Newsome, the director of policy for WE ACT, an environmental justice advocacy group. “Environmental justice grew out of something similar to the civil rights movement: Fighting for basic human rights to breathe clean air, drink clean water and live in a place that doesn’t make you sick.”
In outlining his strategy to combat climate change, Obama has not emphasized the issue of environmental justice, aside from last year renewing an executive order signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1994, recognizing the existence of inequity in environmental protection.
That order, however, lacked the power to accomplish much by way of closing any climate gap, serving more as a suggestion than a requirement for policy, according White-Newsome.
“It’s a great statement, but it has no teeth,” White-Newsome said. “The agencies can choose to or choose not to adhere to what’s there, and there’s no real accountability.”
WE ACT works to ensure environmental fairness in climate protection policies and practices, while also raising awareness about the peril of a climate gap. The non-profit group opened an office in Washington, D.C. in 2012 to take its case to the federal level. White-Newsome has spearheaded the effort.
Upon entering office, Obama declared that his administration would “respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.” Despite his determination, the president faced opposition in Congress, suffering the defeat of his Clean Energy and Security Act – the “cap-and-trade” bill of 2010.
Following these failures to pass climate legislation, Obama released his Climate Action Plan during his June 2013 Georgetown speech. In his plan, the president outlined steps he would take to decrease pollution from global warming agents such as carbon dioxide and also transition to clean energy sources. He said he could do this, operating largely outside of the realm of Congress.
But as pieces of Obama’s Climate Action Plan come out, White Newsome said, “we continue to see environmental justice left out of the conversation. The plan did not address the fact that you have certain communities suffering more.”
The climate gap was first identified in a 2009 report by the University of Southern California.
“When climate change mitigation policies are deployed, people of lower economic status and people of color tend to be disproportionately impacted,” said Seth Shonkoff, who worked on the study and is now the executive director of the energy science organization, PSE Healthy Energy. “With climate change itself, the poorest people in the world are the ones who bear the biggest brunt of climate impacts.”
According to the USC study, the changing climate may seriously affect the health of communities that are “least likely to cope with, resist, and recover” from the impacts of extreme weather events and air pollution. Increases in food, cooling or medical costs from the impacts of rising temperatures are more damaging to low income communities with already limited means.
“Decades of underinvestment in the housing and infrastructure of poverty-stricken areas, coupled with risky environmental conditions and economic instability, make low-income families particularly vulnerable to the costly damages and health risks of flooding, extreme heat, and other climate change threats,” according to a Center for American Progress report released last month.
In his State of the Union address last month, Obama said “14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century.”
Those in low income communities would feel this heat more powerfully, as urban communities are dominated by asphalt, concrete and dark-colored buildings that absorb heat, intensely warming small communities. According to the USC study there is a correlation between minority communities and the amount of “concrete, heat-trapping surfaces” in low income neighborhoods.
Meanwhile in Washington, White-Newsome hopes that the “president could implement some type of system of accountability for our federal agencies to keep environmental justice at the forefront when they are crafting policies. That would be a great legacy to leave.”
