A Climate Ride to Remember

The most glaring omission as we rode across the southeastern US was the evident impact of hurricanes, tropical storms and intense rainfall. And in that same region, the multiple injustices that remain to be addressed for communities of color.

To close out this series, here is a highly pertinent conclusion about regional climate action from Savannah Now, published in the city where we ended our ride.

“A challenge with regional climate action is that not all people experience climate impacts the same, and not all interventions provide uniform benefits. Rising heat waves exact a much heavier toll on the homeless than on people who never worry about how they’ll pay their electric bill. Sea-level rise presents a much more immediate threat to those living in low-lying coastal areas than to those on higher ground. And historically marginalized communities of color face many more barriers to relocating than those who have benefited from accumulating generational wealth and systemic privilege.”

Savannah Now: Climate Change Offers Opportunity for Cooperation, Innovation and Leadership

#ccan #rockspringucc #climateride #solarvillageproject

Georgia probably has above the national average of “climate deniers”, but in practice it is moving in the direction of renewable energy. Google “environment Crisp County, GA” where Cordele is, and you will find information about coal-fired power. Although local utilities stopped using coal several years ago, effects rumble on for many years.  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/24/climate/how-electricity-generation-changed-in-your-state.html

More broadly, coal provided the majority of Georgia’s power generation through the 2000s but declined as natural gas power increased. In recent years, coal’s share has dropped sharply as several aging coal-fired plants have been retired.

Utilities in the state are in the process of building two new nuclear reactors, the only new nuclear projects under construction in the country. That is a whole other debate.

#ccan #rockspringucc #climateride #solarvillageproject

Environmental racism is a big deal. Black communities frequently face environmental issues much more urgent for their own safety than climate change.

We passed quite close to Uniontown AL. Here are some excertps from an article by the Equal Justice Initiative.

“At the end of 2008, after coal ash spilled in a mostly white neighborhood in Tennessee, the Arrowhead Landfill located next to a historic Black cemetery in Uniontown [Alabama] began taking in roughly a hundred railcars a day of coal ash, laden with arsenic, lead, and radioactive elements, for the next two years. 

The landfill sits only 100 feet from the front porches of some residents, who have experienced frequent foul odors, upset appetite, respiratory problems, headaches, dizziness, nausea and vomiting. …………..

Eighty-four percent of Uniontown’s 2300 residents are Black………….

In 2012, residents filed a civil rights complaint against Alabama’s Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) with the Environmental Protection Agency…………

In March 2018, after six years, EPA denied the complaint, citing “insufficient evidence.”

I wonder if this will be appealed and if it would be any different under the Biden administration.

Climate change can be seen as an elitist issue, for those with the luxury of living in unpolluted areas. What would you focus on: rising sea levels in the next few decades, or the pile of toxic waste dumped 100 feet from your front door?

Into Mississippi state and across the Mississippi River. The river was docile the day we crossed. But it is not always so. The river floods. That is nature. But centuries of trying to contain nature, trying to control the flooding, to protect farmlands and homesteads, have resulted in immense levee systems. Yet still the river floods, massively and increasingly and frequently.

This is another result of interaction between climate change and other human-created environmental problems. Now at least some of those most affected, farmers with land in the flood plain, are supportive of a new strategy, along the way showing how solutions can be regional—national.

Upstream in Missouri and Tennessee, farmers are willing to give up their land so that the flood plain can be restored, by re-building breached levees way back from the current lines. More room for the flood waters to expand, less flooding down stream. But it needs money to compensate the farmers. Where will that come from?

#ccan #rockspringucc #climateride #solarvillageproject