A stretch of "Cancer Alley" along the lower Mississippi River in Louisiana - Photo by Jeffrey Dubinsky
The 10th anniversary commemoration of Hurricane Katrina gives me occasion to reflect on the early efforts by poor and working-class Americans and indigenous activists from throughout the Americas -- the people who were, by and large, most affected by the fossil fuel industry -- to lead the global conversation on climate justice principles to keep fossil fuels and carbon in the ground.
Three years prior to Katrina, representatives of the environmental justice movement in the U.S. met in Bali with leaders of indigenous nations and international NGOs to hammer out the core principles of climate justice in advance of the 2002 Earth Summit in South Africa. These leaders were among the first to sound the alarm over climate-related storm events then pounding Southeast Asia, and what such events would bode for the United States. Within three years of that first international People of Color Environmental Justice Leadership Summit in Bali, the United States and the world would see clearly that Mother Nature is the great equalizer, and witness how domestic politics and mankind's inaction would prove the most disheartening threats of all.
Then as now, poor minority communities in the United States had become a dumping ground for the carbon-based industry, waste disposal, and chemical manufacturing industries that make the U.S. one of the dominant capitalist market economies. Then as now, racially and economically marginalized fence-line communities bore the brunt of ecological devastation, as well as serious public health disparities due to toxic exposure. Likewise, communities of color and nations of color around the world bore the brunt of resource exploitation at the expense of national sovereignty and cultural dependence upon their indigenous lands.
In Bali, NGOs, indigenous leaders, and American environmental justice leaders drafted principles that recognized our shared risk as communities and nations of color to the immediate threats posed by the carbon and petrochemical industries in particular, and toxic manufacturing processes in general. The world’s poorest and marginalized communities anticipated early on the impacts of climate change, which were then already being felt. On the domestic front, the Sierra Club and environmental justice activists specifically highlighted the impacts of the carbon and petrochemical industries on the state of Louisiana, where communities of color -- especially African American communities along the lower Mississippi River -- were beset to the extent that the area had become known as Cancer Alley (pictured atop this blog post and below).
Chemical flares from industry along Louisiana's "Cancer Alley" - Photo by Jeffrey Dubinsky
In 2002, that 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi from Baton Rouge to New Orleans had the second-highest death rate from cancer in the U.S. Most of this illness was due to the carbon-based petrochemical industry. The climate justice movement recognized that minority communities like New Orleans and St. Gabriel, Louisiana, where the term Cancer Alley was coined, disproportionately felt the impacts of fossil fuel production, yet had no voice in the decisions that sited these facilities or regulated the toxic emissions that had a direct impact on their health.
I recall with horror the slow-motion impact of Hurricane Katrina upon the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans, and the shock of realizing that this storm was a possible symptom of the very carbon industry that was already poisoning the Gulf and African American communities along the lower Mississippi River. While many are quick to classify Katrina as a natural meteorological event, scientific evidence now shows that it was just the tip of the ecological iceberg that we call global warming and climate change.
It was tragic how ill-prepared our nation was in 2005 to deal with a disaster like Katrina, and excruciating to witness how our state of denial and appallingly poor reaction to this climate catastrophe resulted in more than 1,500 deaths and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Louisiana residents. Insult was added to the loss of life and environmental injury 10 years ago by Louisiana 6th District Congressman Richard Hugh Baker's statement that, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." The view that Katrina was an act of God to wipe away the poor and working-class residents, rather than a result of anthropogenic climate change contributed to by our national dependence on fossil fuels, is unfortunately shared by all-too-many congressional leaders.
It is chilling that on the eve of this commemoration in New Orleans, the sentiments of former congressman Baker are again brought back to the public square by the Chicago Tribune's Kristen McQueary, who myopically wished for a Katrina-class storm in Chicago that would bring "an unpredictable, haughty, devastating swirl of fury. A dramatic levee break. Geysers bursting through manhole covers. A sleeping city, forced onto the rooftops. That's what it took to hit the reset button in New Orleans. Chaos. Tragedy. Heartbreak…. Hurricane Katrina gave a great American city a rebirth." Sadly, it did not occur to McQueary that advancing clean energy policy, investment, and green jobs that do not rob the poor of their health would be a better solution.
It is sad to think that a green jobs Marshall Plan to rebuild and green-grid cities like New Orleans and Chicago are not being called for by entities like the National Black Chamber of Commerce or venerable organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which openly support the planet-killing carbon industry. These business associations and civil rights leaders still have an opportunity to reflect on Katrina and work with the climate justice movement for a more sustainable green industry sector that will provide affordable energy and green jobs to economically challenged communities of color.
The world can see that when it comes to climate-related disaster response or dislocation, in the eyes of the carbon industry and those they finance to speak on their behalf, black lives don't matter. Super storms like Hurricane Katrina have been -- and continue to be -- used in a conservative "culture war" that erects a soot screen to divert our nation’s focus away from the carbon industry's contribution to climate change, and cites divine intervention as the reason climate-related catastrophes exact such a heavy toll on America's poor and vulnerable underclasses.
In contrast to Sandy in 2012, or the June 2015 super-storm floods that hit central Texas, it is now clear that in 2005 the national cost of how to respond overshadowed the moral and human imperative to respond when the race and social status of America's low-income population are factored in. In the aftermath of Katrina, people of color in New Orleans were put in FEMA trailers and had to face humiliating income tests to move back into what was left of their communities. By contrast, residents of New York's Fire Island or the Jersey Shore received swift national attention and investment to rebuild their communities without long-term dislocation. When climate change is framed in the intentional distracting political lens of race, jobs, taxes, and social class, the carbon-based energy sector will never be held accountable, and liberating green energy solutions will be delayed or never sought.
Clearly, Mother Earth and the climate make no distinction based on race, creed, or politics. But when it came to Texas, New York, New Jersey, and Louisiana, politicians (not nature) determined that black communities and white communities were unequal, and an inescapable message was sent that black lives did not matter when it comes to climate change.
Today, ten years after Katrina, the residents of New Orleans are still fighting to prove that their lives and their communities do matter, and our congress is still largely in the pocket of the oil, gas, and coal industries that finance the domestic climate change denial agenda.
Climate justice affirms and demands that governments be held responsible for addressing the effects of climate change, and that they are both democratically and economically accountable to their people, regardless of race or social standing. It also requires that we reimagine our domestic carbon-based economy and shift to solar, wind, water, and geothermal technologies to meet our 21st-century energy needs. We need to make the transition from a corporate-dominated carbon energy model to a public TVA-type clean energy model that shifts us to green power that will provide living-wage jobs, lower energy costs, and reduced public health impacts.
President Obama's Clean Power Plan is a small start to a larger re-visioning of how we repower America and become a global leader in clean power production. But the carbon industry has a vested interest in maintaining planet-killing carbon production.
We came together in Bali in 2002 to combat the petrochemical and carbon industry and call upon industrialized nations to take the lead and make shifts from unsustainable carbon production and consumption-based lifestyles. Now, on this 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the American people must resist the attempts by the carbon industry to perpetuate the climate-killing, fossil fuel-based economy and the policies that enable them to expand.
Let the public conversation not be about all-of-the-above continued production of carbon, but about keeping carbon in the ground. Let it not be about "Drill, baby, drill!" Let it be about solar, wind, and "Blow, baby, blow!"
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Watch the Sierra Club's new video, Lower 9th Ward: Rightfully Returned