Climate change has become a major topic when it comes to politics and activism. We have a president who believes climate change is a hoax and is actively slashing the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget that’s necessary for them to carry out research and procedures to protect the environment. Now, as more presidential candidates for 2020 put their name in the race, many of their platforms and ideals are based around addressing climate change.
However, we can’t talk about climate change without also mentioning the communities and people it’s affecting daily. The topic of environmental justice is brought up a lot, especially in terms of low-income, minority communities.
I recently did an exercise in class concerning a plant being built in a low-income community. In this example, the community faced a multitude of health issues with the amount of pollution in the environment. There were different sides to this exercise and each group had to argue their point as to why the plant should or shouldn’t be built. No surprise, the plant was approved and construction was to begin.
Although this was simply a class exercise, it happens every day in small communities that don’t garner as much attention as they should. In Uniontown, Alabama, residents claim that they are being poisoned by the air and water due to a local dump disposing coal ash into antiquated sewage systems. They’ve had no help from neither the state or local government. This community, which is predominately African-American, is facing environmental injustice. Even after millions of dollars were given to the community in 2012 to rebuild to avoid any further environmental issues, they still face sewage leaks which spill over into their water.
Flint, Michigan has been without clean water for about five years now and no changes have been made. Researchers consider Flint one of the most important examples of environmental injustice. Residents constantly speak of the health issues they face and yet their concerns are ignored. Again, this is a low-income community where it’s main residents are minorities. The amount of lead poisoning and sick children should want to make any official make changes but here they are five years later and still have to depend on bottled water for their everyday tasks. Jaden Smith recently put out water filtration system into the Flint community that removes lead and other contaminants and provides the residents with clean water.
Water is a basic human right and no one should have to fight in order to have clean drinking water.
What Jaden Smith did for the community was amazing. Mari Copeny, or Little Miss Flint as we all know her, is doing great things for her community. But it shouldn’t be celebrities and children providing and helping their communities have access to something as simple as clean water. Local, state, and federal governments need to do a better job of taking care of their citizens.
It’s about time we stop letting money get in the way of human health.