The Poor Are Canaries in Our Climate Change Coal Mine
Susan Norris's 2010 "Coal Miner's Canary" statue, placed by the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Trinidad, Colorado. Canaries in cages were brought into mines after an explosion or fire. If they lived, the mine was deemed safe to re-enter. From the Library of Congress.
Humans are great hunters, gatherers and inventors of lots of stuff, but left to our own devices, we don’t seem to excel when it comes to cleaning up. A cursory glance around the perimeter of almost any highway rest stop drives that message home.
The more polluted an area, the less it is valued. And it is across these environmentally degraded acres that inexpensive housing and proximity to some of society’s nastiest residential and employment opportunities exist. These are the places where the world’s poor can afford to live and where the effects of climate change are being felt first—in flood zones, near polluted waterways, close to landfills, pipelines, industrial plants or trucking depots.
City neighborhoods like West Baltimore in Maryland are heat islands, densely populated urban areas with few green spaces. Here, people, buildings, pavement and engines of all sorts trap and then radiate heat long after the sun has set. Often these areas are home to low-income residents. Many are people of color, recent immigrants and refugees. When prolonged heat waves settle in, all residents have trouble cooling off, but the poorest, already under duress, feel it most. You can check out NPR’s recent investigative series, Heat and Health in American Cities, here.
Miami
From the Carol M. Highsmith collection at the Library of Congress.
Flooding from severe storms can disproportionately affect communities located on cheap land unsuitable for development. If local governments repossess flood-ravaged neighborhoods to implement mitigation efforts, where will low-income residents find affordable alternatives? In Florida, sea-level rise is giving fresh appeal to higher ground away from the ocean front, which, in turn, is increasingly being occupied by poorer residents. You can read about this unfolding inequity drama in the Scientific American article, High Ground Is Becoming Hot Property as Sea Level Rises.
The impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and unsafe dumping practices contribute to and intensify the effects of climate change. Combined with long-term housing discrimination and residential segregation, poor communities bear the brunt first. There will always be economic advantages for would-be polluters to dodge environmental clean-up in favor of convenience and profit. But businesses that degrade the air, land and water jeopardize everyone’s health and well-being—just some before others.
A refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi, at dusk (2016)
Carol M. Highsmith collection, Library of Congress
Fifty years ago on December 2, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established, officially conferring value to clean land, air and water. A cursory glance at the “history timeline” on the EPA website highlights the scope of human-made miseries that the agency has addressed thus far.
Rich or poor, be a climate voter: defend the integrity of the EPA and insist that our officials make beneficial decisions for our entire community.
Splash photo of the Keystone Generating Station, a 1.71-gigawatt (1,711 MW) coal-powered plant in Plumcreek Township, near Crooked Creek, just west of Shelocta, Pennsylvania, from the Carol M. Highsmith collection at the Library of Congress.
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This blog is written by LWVDC’s Climate Team. If you receive blog posts by email, our system automatically inserts “by Brook Soltvedt.” Brook is the webmaster, not the author of the blog.