Roishetta Ozane
Written by Roishetta Ozane, Southwest Louisiana Organizing Director with Healthy Gulf
This year, I had the amazing opportunity to attend the 27th Conference of Parties, or COP27, the largest international conference on climate action, in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Traveling across the world to join other global environmental justice leaders and represent Gulf Coast frontline communities was a dream come true.
But it was also a nightmare—riddled by the same bureaucratic bullying I have become accustomed to in the United States.
It was as if I never left the US I encountered many of the same elected officials that I travel to DC to meet, and who I have invited to my community in Southwest Louisiana - such as those from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
The conversations abroad with FERC were the same as they are here: full of excuses disguised as progressive policy, used to gaslight communities impacted by their actions and convince those outside of our community that we are worth sacrificing. It often goes like this:
“These decisions are tough. We [the decision makers] are in the minority when we vote down these polluting facilities.”
I’m tired of FERC’s bureaucratic theater used to delay justice for us indefinitely. Our lives should not be “tough decisions.”
Meeting room at COP27
FERC, it’s time that you read the room, and not just take up space in it.
We - the communities that you offer up to pollution - are in the minority when we wake up in the morning. The decisions you make daily are choices.
We don’t get to choose the color of our skin. But the color of our skin carries the burden of centuries of racism, which has got us here: in industrialized, polluted neighborhoods that we, for some reason, have to convince you are killing us, no matter how much research or data or basic health and environmental science we give you, no matter the history or experiences that we tell you directly.
I made the same pleas for you to consider Black, Brown and Indigenous people when making their decisions. I begged you to stop killing us. I urged you to put an end to the oil and gas buildout and to phase out fossil fuels.
But your ears are selective-hearing. Because as I begged and pleaded for our lives, FERC was rubber stamping Commonwealth LNG to export fracked gas from my backyard in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
As I begged and pleaded, more oil and gas drilling leases were being handed out in the Gulf of Mexico like “Bless Yous” in a pepper factory — a requirement of the largest so-called “climate bill” the United States. has ever passed, a bill pushed by coal-baron Senator Joe Manchin.
Once again, the powers that be failed me and the BIPOC communities I represent this time they did it at a “climate conference” thousands of miles away on the opposite side of the world.
While I’m truly grateful for all the new connections made, the coalitions built, and the solidarity shown, I’m heartbroken for my people and my community.
Roishetta and Colette Pichon-Battle, Vision and Initiaves Partner with Taproot Earth
We came together calling for climate reparations, fossil fuel nonproliferation and demilitarization, yet we left knowing that we will continue asking for those same things from agencies that pretend to care about us, who call our lives “tough decisions.”
I celebrate the small strides made, such as establishing a loss and damage structure for developing nations across the globe. My question is: when will the United States of America, the richest, most developed nation in the world, stop permitting the poisoning of Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities for the sake of profit?
My community in the US has suffered immeasurable loss and damage at the hands of extractive industries and from the federal government permitting pollution in communities of color.
When will it stop? We are dying.
Black, brown, Indigenous people of color are dying because we have been made a sacrifice for the benefit of the all-mighty dollar.
The saying goes: “give us the tools and watch us fly.” We can save our own communities, but first we must get the poison out. It’s hard to fight when you can’t breathe. It’s hard to fight when there isn’t clean water to drink.
More research will not save us. More wasteful visits from federal agencies and their useless statements on equity action will not save us. Declaring a climate emergency, halting the LNG export buildout, and prohibiting any new oil and gas leases in the Gulf will do more for us than any conversation we had at COP27.
President Joe Biden must declare a climate emergency. The US must lead the way in asking all parties to move from “climate action” to climate justice, because our lives depend on it.