America Is Already an Unequal Society. Climate Change Is Going to Make It Worse.

America has long been a country of societal contrasts. Rich and poor, black and white, haves and have nots. Economic, racial, and class inequities are essentially baked into the capitalist structure we have relied on for centuries. While the USA is richer and more technologically advanced than it has ever been, it might seem that the 21st century would be the prime time for these inequities to finally get course-corrected. But with a climate crisis bearing down on us, that’s unlikely to be easy. Let’s examine why.

"The impacts of climate change will not be borne equally or fairly, between rich and poor, women and men, and older and younger generation," reads the blog of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.

Set by the UN General Assembly in 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals are intended to guide the world to a more sustainable and equitable future for all by 2030. Goal #13 is to "take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts." As we have become more aware of the disproportionate effects of climate change on communities of color and low-income communities, especially in 2020, the notion of approaching the climate crisis through a framework of climate justice (or a human rights lens) has become more salient.

Climate justice, or environmental justice, is about correcting environmental injustice – which is present in underserved communities all over the world, but perhaps astonishingly prevalent in the United States, the richest country on the planet.

For example, in the U.S., it is communities of color that are much more likely to live in the shadow of coal-fired power plants or other toxic chemical manufacturers. When hurricanes and storms hit, they can devastate entire cities regardless of residents' prosperity, but it's typically poor and minority communities that have the most difficult time both surviving the storm and rebuilding after it. In food desert communities, it's usually easier to find processed food than fresh food.

An Alliant Energy coal plant in Sheboygan, WI, a city of almost 50,000 residents. Click image for original photo.

Flooding in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, a heavily Black area, following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

As you probably know, or at least can guess, storms and the ability to produce fresh produce are not going to get better in a continually warming climate, which will mean that the intensity of those latter two issues will increase as well. While coal plants are on the way out in the United States, regardless of how quickly we transition to clean energy, the communities living in their shadows have had their health impacted by them for so long that shuttering a coal plant won't just magically fix the situation.

A good example of this is the 5th & Hill neighborhood in Champaign, Illinois. (No, not in Wisconsin, but in the town of my undergraduate alma mater). The neighborhood used to be home to a manufactured gas plant, or a facility that produces energy by steaming coal, from 1887 to 1953. Though the plant is long gone, coal tar and other dangerous waste byproducts were left at the site and never cleaned up – impacting the health of those that have lived in the neighborhood, which is heavily Black, ever since.

So, what about environmental injustice in Wisconsin? I'm glad you asked.

In 2016, the Center for Effective Government graded each state based on "the dangers faced by people of color and residents with incomes below the poverty line living within one miles of dangerous facilities, compared to white and non-poor people."

Wisconsin was one of only two states to receive an F grade.

The report found that at the time, 600,000 Wisconsinites lived within a mile of a facility storing large quantities of toxic chemicals. About 22% of Latinx Wisconsinites and 17% of Black Wisconsinites were among them, compared to only 9% of white residents. Another key finding was that children of color under age 12 were twice as likely to live in such areas as white children. Read the report yourself to get a better idea of just how unequal the state of Wisconsin is in this regard — these are far from the only concerning statistics.

Of course, this isn't the only environmental injustice problem that Wisconsin faces. Just like in other big cities across the country, communities of color and poor communities in Wisconsin's cities also struggle from less access to green spaces, clean water, healthy food, good air quality, safe housing and more. In Milwaukee particularly, one of the most segregated big cities in the country, calls for environmental justice advocacy are growing.

Luckily, the massive amount of work it will take to appropriately address the scale of the climate crisis also presents a prime opportunity to work to correct the many historical and systematic environmental injustices so entrenched in American society. Because — if not now, when?