Climate change is directly connected to human and civil rights, said Jacqui Patterson, director of the Climate Justice Initiative for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Patterson toured the campuses of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and the SIUE East St. Louis Center on Monday. Her visit was part of SIUE’s Earth Week activities.
SIUE Chancellor Julie Furst-Bowe touted some of SIUE’s strides and advances in the area of sustainability and introduced Patterson as the guest speaker at the Diversity and Sustainability presentation on the Quad.
“Sustainability is inherent in SIUE’s Values,” Furst-Bowe said, “which include environmental stewardship and social and civic responsibility. The University has been involved in activities that enhance sustainability for quite a while, even before the term ‘sustainability’ became popular. So, we are a trend setter.”
But communities like East St. Louis need to be part of the discussion of diversity and sustainability, Furst-Bowe continued. “East St. Louis has a longer path to go than many other communities,” said the SIUE chancellor, “but it also has resources that are unique to the area and could be utilized in ways that lift the community to greater levels of achievement.”
Patterson began her presentation by showing the inequities that exist for low-income people and African-American and Latino communities as it relates to climate change. It is these neighborhoods, Patterson said, who are disproportionately negatively impacted, and for whom the NAACP is working hard to help.
“We are doing this work for Latino and African American children from the Bronx to Biloxi who are already in food deserts,” Patterson intoned, “and will only suffer from less access to affordable nutritious foods as climate change drives shifts in agricultural yields.
“So in a land of abundance, we have whole communities whose rights to clean air and water, uncontaminated land and nutritious foods to eat are being violated on a daily basis.”
The NAACP director went on to point out some energy production processes that have devastating effects for some people. There are 378 coal fired power plants in crowded areas across the U.S., Patterson noted.
“These plants that are spewing mercury, arsenic, lead, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, as well as carbon dioxide,” she said, “are primarily in communities of color and low-income communities.
“With African-American families more likely to live next to a coal fired power plant, we have African American adults more likely to die from lung disease but less likely to smoke. We have African American children who are three times more likely to be admitted to the hospital for asthma attacks and twice as likely to die from asthma.”
But there are things that can be done, Patterson told her audience. The public can hold the government responsible for the commitments it has made such as advancing a clean energy standard of 80 percent of renewable energy by 2050 and developing a climate action plan by the end of 2013.
Some action items Patterson enumerated for those wanting to help in the quest for equality as it relates to the climate change:
• Education
• Make your voices heard at forums like the Environmental Protection Agency hearings on regulating air pollution
• Make sure community-based research is being prioritized so that those communities adversely affected can contribute to and help drive research and study
• Incorporate youth voices and leadership in such efforts
“There is an African proverb that says: ‘When spiders unite, we can tie up a lion!’ If we come together,” Patterson said, “we can advance living in harmony with Mother Earth as well as each other.”
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Jacqui Patterson, director of the Climate Justice Initiative for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), spoke Monday at a Diversity and Sustainability presentation at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.