Climate Point: Environmental justice for all
Welcome to Climate Point, your guide to climate, energy and the environment. I'm Janet Wilson, writing to you from Palm Springs, Calif., with some news. We've got a great new environment reporter at The Desert Sun/USA Today network, Mark Olalde. Mark has covered energy and environment issues for the Center for Public Integrity, the Los Angeles Times, High Country News and more. He'll be taking the reins of Climate Point for a while, while I work with ProPublica and The Desert Sun. More to come on all fronts!
MUST-READ STORIES
Environmental justice for all. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead in Memphis after he flew there to support striking low-wage sanitation workers grappling with daily filth and job discrimination, as NPR's Debbie Elliott reminded us in 2018. That's got me thinking about racism, pollution and activism once again. Twelve years after King died, African Americans living next to a North Carolina landfill laid down in the road to protest, and the environmental justice movement was born, as Brentin Mock explained for Grist in 2014. One of the movement's founders, Dr. Robert Bullard, recalled more last April in The Revelator.
Bringing it home. Bottom line, researchers have shown for decades that one's race, even more than one's income level, determines how much pollution you'll live and breathe in your neighborhood, as Kendra Pierre Louis wrote for The New York Times a few years ago. Less known is data showing that segregated communities, including white ones, experience more pollution than integrated ones.
POLITICAL CLIMATE
Class dismissed. A federal court in Portland has dismissed a lawsuit by 21 young people who claimed federal climate policies harm their future and violate their constitutional rights. Our Children’s Trust wanted an injunction ordering the government to draw down fossil fuel emissions. The judges wrote that the youngsters made a compelling case that action is needed, per Gillian Flaccus with Associated Press, but said the proper venue for addressing national emissions policies is Congress or voters.
Federal fracking fallout. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Xavier Becerra and state air and water agencies have filed suit to stop the Trump Administration from opening more than a million acres in the state’s Central Valley to oil and gas extraction, as Gabrielle Canon reports for USA Today. Conservation groups have also sued to stop the plan.
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE
Rigs to Reefs. Should shuttered oil rigs off the California coast become artificial reefs? The oil industry and many conservationists, usually bitter foes, are in rare agreement that it would be a good idea, but say state law is lagging. The aforementioned Mark Olalde fills us in for The Desert Sun.
A river runs through us. The Ohio River, often cited as the nation's most polluted, flows from Pittsburgh to Cairo, Ill., with the main flow and its tributaries providing water for five million people. In a comprehensive series, seven nonprofit newsrooms dive into the environment, economy and culture of the Ohio River watershed, spanning five of the 15 watershed states. Worth a look.
Bills on tap. Arizona's legislature looks to address the rural water crisis.
AND ANOTHER THING
Resolute. Apache activist Wendsler Nosie Sr. is vowing to stay put in a national forest campground near a sacred site known as Chich’il Biłdagoteel, Oak Flat, about 65 miles due east of Phoenix. Oak Flat sits atop one of the planet's largest copper deposits, and Resolution Copper, a British-Australian mining company, wants to extract that copper, obliterating Oak Flat and creating toxic tailings. Using precepts practiced by Martin Luther King Jr. and others, Nosie is trying prayer, love and activism to stop the project, as profiled by the Arizona Republic's Debra Utacia Krol.
Scientists say to keep a livable planet, we need to reduce carbon emissions to 350 ppm. We're above that and rising. Here are the latest numbers:
That's all for this week. For more climate, energy and environment news, follow Mark on Twitter @MarkOlalde or me @janetwilson66. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox for free here. And if you are interested in California news, sign up for USA Today's new newsletter, In California.