As voters head to the polls Nov. 5, climate change has taken a long back seat to concerns over the economy and sustaining democracy.
The planet is at a tipping point, threatening climatological changes that are deeper and permanent, said renowned environmental activist Bill McKibben, founder of Third Act, at an Ethnic Media Services news briefing Nov. 1.
“The last 18 months on our planet have seen not the steady rise in temperature that we’ve been observing for decades, but a very dramatic spike in the temperature of the earth and the temperature of the oceans. This augers very badly for what’s happening in the next few years as the poles melt, as the seas rise,” he said.
The next ‘great extinction’
“Climate change is the biggest thing that humans have ever done by far. And if we don’t get it under control very soon, biologists say we will be kicking off, among other things, the sixth great extinction in the history of this planet. We can see all those extinctions in the geological record.”
“And that’s what future worlds will know of our time, that we were unable to bring ourselves to do what needed to be done, even though we had the tools close to hand. That would be a terrible epitaph to write for our time,” said McKibben.
He noted that the results of the 2024 presidential election would likely reverberate for the next 1 million years.
Gallup Poll
But presidential candidates and voters have largely ignored climate change as a priority. In a Gallup poll released Oct. 9, 52% of those surveyed ranked the economy as “extremely important” in their choice for a presidential candidate. Democracy, terrorism and national security, and the types of Supreme Court justices the candidates would pick also ranked high in voters’ concerns.
By contrast, climate change appeared as the second to last issue in the poll, with just 21% of voters saying it was “extremely important.”
Hurricane Helene
Asheville, North Carolina resident Erik Bendix experienced the devastation of climate change first-hand as tornadoes following Hurricane Helene ripped through his hometown in late September. Six weeks later, Bendix and his community are still dealing with the unprecedented ravages.
It took 19 days for the community to get power back. Old growth forests, with trees dating back 200 years, were decimated. The North Carolina Arboretum, one of Asheville’s main tourist attractions, has lost over 20,000 trees. “It’s like a moonscape here,” said Bendix at the EMS briefing.
Hurricane Helene has claimed 227 lives, and caused an estimated $95 billion in property and agricultural damages. (On the day of the briefing, an equally destructive and unprecedented downpour claimed hundreds of lives in Spain.)
Lower income communities tend to bear the disproportionate brunt of climate change. President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act attempts to correct that imbalance, with a $152 million grant for the Community Change Grants Program, which represents the largest investment in environmental and climate justice in history.
Cancer Alley
For Sharon Lavigne, those funds will be a starting point for what’s needed to clean up her community, known as Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.” Lavigne, a retired special education teacher and winner of the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize, is the founder of Rise St. James, which has embarked on a multiyear fight to keep a new petrochemical plant out of their already polluted community.
Cancer Alley refers to an approximately 85-mile stretch of communities along the banks of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Residents live alongside 200 fossil fuel and petrochemical operations, and face hugely-elevated risks of cancer, asthma, maternal deaths, and a multitude of respiratory ailments.
Rise St. James is currently fighting against Formosa Plastics, which is scheduled to build a multi-billion factory on the graves of Lavigne’s ancestors.
Corrupt Politicians?
“Our community literally is dying. We go to these meetings, we talk about it, and nothing is being done. These people, politicians and industry have the power over the people,” said Lavigne, who this April was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry has sided with Formosa Plastics. He filed a lawsuit against the EPA last December in an attempt to stop them from intervening in the building of the Formosa Plastics factory.
“If these industries come in, we will not live,” said Lavigne through tears. She has organized a massive rally scheduled for Nov. 22, to confront Landry. “We want to talk to our governor and ask him to stop polluting us because we want to live,” said Lavigne.
Landry’s office had not responded to EMS’s calls for comment by press time Nov. 5.
Reclaiming the River
Sissy Trinh, executive director at the Southeast Asian Community Alliance, based in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, believes the conversation about climate change needs to change to make the impacts real for people most affected by them.
Trinh’s community is low income. Many residents there routinely skip meals to pay their rent. Many older people work in sweat shops or restaurants which pay far below minimum wage.
“And so when you talk about climate change, it feels very far away, not just physically, but also psychologically,” said Trinh. “They have more immediate needs. They’re facing the threat of homelessness. And so to talk about climate change seems almost dismissive to the threat that’s right there in front of them.”
Gentrification
The neighborhood, which sits along the banks of the Los Angeles River, is facing the threat of gentrification. Plans to clean up the river and green the area also make it more attractive to property developers. The existing residents face the threat of being thrown out. “We have had to explain how these climate investments were having a destabilizing impact for our communities,” she said.
“How do we create policies to minimize developer speculation, and then also direct investments to support low income residents and small businesses so that we uplift people out of poverty?”
Trinh added, “So that’s how I kind of see climate change: an opportunity to address these other issues that feel separate, but really aren’t.”
