By William Smith
The San Francisco Bay Chapter recently formed an Environmental Justice Team to focus chapter resources on the environmental disparities that lower-income and minority communities face every day. These environmental injustices often include unhealthy pollution, crowded and substandard housing, and time-consuming transit.
Climate change impacts, from severe heat waves to higher food costs, disproportionately affect our most vulnerable populations — a reality that will only exacerbate inequality. Sea level rise and storms threaten low-lying coastal areas that are home to predominantly low-income and minority communities, including areas in East and West Oakland and San Leandro.
Many chapter projects have improved the environment for vulnerable communities. For example:
- Our Transportation and Compact Growth Committee has long advocated for better transit in underserved communities, especially free fares for students.
- Club members lead a program to plant street trees that cool Oakland neighborhoods (see page 3).
- Earlier this year in the City of Alameda the Sierra Club supported a successful election campaign to permit a wellness center for homeless and vulnerable seniors (see the article below for more details).
- The Climate Literacy Subcommittee of our Energy Committee works with local teachers and students to ensure that climate literacy is part of schools' curricula.
The new Environmental Justice Team will support all chapter groups, committees, sections, and other entities to build on and develop new shared goals and working partnerships with under-resourced and front-line communities.
Come join us! Please contact committee chair Elizabeth Lam at elamberkeley@gmail.com or William (Bill) Smith at WJASmith@AOL.com or 510-522-0390 to get involved. If you know any communities we should partner with to promote environmental justice, please let us know that as well.
Illustration by: Ricardo Levins Morales