“Climate change is an existential crisis.” The line is so true, but is said so often by Democratic politicians, that it might as well be, “The sky is blue.”
I am tired of the same kinds of candidates and politicians talking in the same, tired tropes about climate change without understanding the reality of climate inequality that persists today.
I say this with environmental bonafides: I am a longtime Sierra Club member and, last year, joined the fight to help preserve the Land and Wildlife Conservation Fund from Republican budget cuts. But we need to recognize an uncomfortable truth about the fight against climate change: it is predominantly white, and predominantly well-off.
It is hardly a surprise that climate change is a rallying cry now that white and wealthy communities are feeling its effects. But communities of color, indigenous peoples, and lower-income folks have felt it for generations.
According to the NAACP, “Race is the number one indicator for the placement of toxic facilities in this country.” 70% of contaminated waste sites are near low-income housing. 2 million people live within 1 mile of the remaining 327 Superfund sites in this country — overwhelmingly people of color. Those living in poverty are nearly twice as likely to develop asthma and other health problems due to increased exposure to particulate and pollution. Lead poisoning is one of the leading causes of health problems for children of color. And for indigenous peoples, whose cultures often revolve around the land, water, and air, climate change is the largest threat to their survival since colonialism and forced European settlement.
Climate change is an existential crisis — and so is ignoring the existence of the very people most threatened by the crisis right now, every day.
The solutions I have heard to climate change from others on the campaign trail are the same kinds of things that have been talked about for decades: renewables, the grid, electric vehicles.
But just like government, these solutions aren’t for “us” — they are for those with the privilege to access those solutions to this global crisis. When government is made up of the same kinds of people — those with access to wealth and family or political connections — its policy solutions inevitably lead to discrimination.
We got into this climate crisis because those with wealth and privilege broke or bought the rules. They took advantage of our environment because they could.
The solution isn’t to pat these same people politely on the back.
To solve climate change, we need climate justice.
In Congress, I will focus funding and action to combat climate change on equity — expanding housing, jobs, and infrastructure that is accessible to all and in an environment that is healthy for all.
This means ending legal limits that allow insurance companies to avoid compensating victims of climate change from vulnerable communities. It means reexamining the planning of our roads, highways, and housing to minimize impact on the healthy development of black and brown children. It means building cities and communities that focus on the people who live there first, not fossil-fuel powered automobiles. It means providing free and regular health screenings for students at schools that predominantly serve communities of color and lower-income communities. It means integrating renewable energy sources into a modernized electrical grid that reaches communities of color first. And it means not just divesting but diverting fossil fuel subsidies to communities of color to invest in climate change solutions for black- and brown-owned small businesses, families, and schools.
I want to see the President appoint a person of color to head up the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy. I want to see job training programs that prepare workers in need from lower-income communities for the renewable economy — with actual jobs on the other side of those programs. I want to see public transit systems powered by renewable energy that connect workers to job opportunities that exist from our rural communities to our inner-city street corners.
When people are struggling just to get by — when they are dealing daily with centuries of oppression and the remnants of deliberately racist government policies — the struggle against climate change is not a fair fight. It is time for members of Congress with the guts to do the right thing and develop policy that actually levels the playing field.
I don’t care if big donors don’t want to hear this. After centuries of inequity, this is the right thing to do. And it’s the only way to responsibly combat climate change.
Roger Misso is a rural Democrat and candidate for Congress in New York’s 24th Congressional District (NY-24). He is a husband, father, and veteran — a former naval flight officer and victim advocate for military sexual assault survivors. He has advocated for veterans and small business in Central New York. He is running to become just the second rural Wayne County kid in history — and the first in 192 years — to represent New Yorkers in Congress.
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