Tag: Environmental and Racial Justice

Connecting Latino communities to climate change action: One woman’s story

This article/video discusses connecting Latino communities to climate change action: One woman’s story. Linda Escalante is linking lawmakers to people on the front lines of environmental problems.

As a child, Linda Escalante moved from Bogota, Colombia to Burbank, California. There, she and her mom lived in a neighborhood stuck between a freeway, an airport, and a toxic waste cleanup site.

Escalante: “This is kind of the story about a lot of folks in my community. You have to live close to the sources of pollution in order to afford housing, and of course nowadays it’s just gotten worse and worse.”

What the Believers Are Denying

This article discusses the similarities between climate change and racism. The denial of climate change and the denial of racism rest on the same foundation: an attack on observable reality.

For two years, they formed a community of experts, about 1,000 in all, including 300 leading climate scientists inside and outside 13 federal agencies. For two years, they volunteered their time and expertise to produce the Fourth National Climate Assessment.

The first volume of their Fourth National Climate Assessment, released last year, concluded that there is “no convincing alternative explanation” for global warming other than “human activities, especially emissions of greenhouses gases.”

Climate gentrification: Is sea rise turning Miami high ground into a hot commodity?

This article discusses the impact on Miami residents from sea level rise.

Many inner city Miami residents of say they are feeling the pressure to abandon their community to developers in the race to get rich in Miami’s historically black and minority neighborhoods, some of the last cheap land left in the booming coastal city.

Gentrification isn’t new in Miami, where developers routinely turn poor neighborhoods into the newest real estate hot commodity. But some neighborhood advocates believe there is a new accelerant at work in communities like Liberty City.

“We’re what you call prime real estate. We’re on high ground,” Richards said.

DeSmog Blog

This edition discusses the following:

  1. Bayou Bridge Charged $450 for Trespassing and Building Oil Pipeline Without Permission on Louisiana Parcel
  2. ‘Shame on You’: Campaigners Disrupt US Fossil Fuel Event Attended by Climate Science Deniers
  3. The Koch Brothers’ Last Ditch Attempt to Kill the Electric Vehicle Tax Credit
  4. Inside the Tent: Big Polluters Work to Shape Paris Agreement Rules at the UN Climate Talks
  5. Permit Hearing for Taiwanese Plastic Plant in Louisiana Turns into a Referendum on Environmental Racism
  6. Rename Coal to Save It, Suggests UN Climate Talks Sponsor
  7. If Democrats Want a ‘Green New Deal,’ These Congressional Investigations Need to Happen
  8. ‘Gas is Not a Solution to Climate Change’: Activists Interrupt Fossil Fuel Lobby Group Event at UN Climate Talks
  9. Canadian Government Declares Oil Trains Safe and Plans to Get Into the Oil Train Business
  10. ‘We Cannot Accept an Unjust Energy Transition’: Future of Coal Communities Becomes Crucial Issue at Climate Talks
  11. The Dream of Capturing Coal’s Carbon Emissions Is Dead. Someone Should Tell Trump.
  12. What a New Governor Means for Renewable Energy in Maine
  13. From the Climate Disinformation Database: The Manhattan Institute

DeSmog Blog

This blog discusses multiple items this week including exploding PA pipelines; Trump’s attempt to export fracking technology to Argentina; fracking’s water problems; the Atkin Charitable Foundation’s pulling funding from the climate-denying organization, Global Warming Policy Foundation; Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” efforts to push environmental justice; how many of the largest 200 industrial firms use trade associations to oppose climate change policies; how the North Sea may soon switch from O&G to renewables; attempts to revive coal power plant on Native American lands; and an expose about the Judicial Crisis Network, a climate change denier front group.

Atlantic Coast Pipeline Faces Civil Rights Complaint After Key Permit Is Blocked

This article discusses recent how the Atlantic Coast Pipeline has been temporarily stopped because of a court case about one of the permits issued. Opponents of the gas pipeline say state and federal agencies failed to assess the health impacts the project would have on minorities, as required under federal law.

A federal court has invalidated a key permit for the Atlantic Coast pipeline project, a step that could give civil rights advocates more time to build their environmental justice case against the $6 billion project to carry natural gas from West Virginia to North Carolina.

Opponents of the Atlantic Coast pipeline allege the Dominion Energy-led project would have a disproportionate impact on people of color living along its route.

A group of community and statewide advocacy groups in North Carolina, along with the national Friends of the Earth, filed a complaint with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s External Civil Rights Compliance Office on Tuesday asking the agency to overturn North Carolina state permits for the pipeline and for a new environmental justice analysis of it.

On the same day, a three-judge panel in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service permit for the pipeline, known as an “incidental take limit.” The judges ruled that that permit, designed to limit the number of threatened or endangered species that could be harmed or killed during the pipeline’s construction and operation, was too vague and could not be enforced.

How weakened U.S. fossil fuel regulations threaten environmental justice in Colorado

This article discusses how Colorado regulations are being weakened, at the expense of the poor.

From the start, President Donald Trump’s administration has made dismantling regulations, especially for the oil, gas and coal industries, a top priority.

And though his claims of rolling back more regulations than any other administration are exaggerated, Trump’s team has tried hard to erase many environmental and energy-related rules.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Trump have teamed up with the Republican-led Congress to get federal agencies on the case, by streamlining environmental permitting and attempting other sweeping changes.

As an environmental sociologist who has spent hundreds of hours researching communities directly affected by oil and gas production, I find that many people living in these places feel that fossil fuel industries already had the upper hand before Trump took office.

Even among people who support drilling, many believe these industries need to be more regulated. The residents I have interviewed report feeling uncertain and vulnerable. They tell researchers like me they consider themselves powerless to control their surroundings or to protect the environment, their health or their property. Reducing regulations even more will only intensify these problems.

 

Hotter, Drier, Hungrier: How Global Warming Punishes the World’s Poorest

This article discusses the impact that has happened, and which will continue to get worse, for the world’s poor because of global warming.

“people long hounded by poverty and strife has found itself on the frontline of a new crisis: climate change. More than 650,000 children under age 5 across vast stretches of Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia are severely malnourished. The risk of famine stalks people in all three countries; at least 12 million people rely on food aid, according to the United Nations.”