Environmental Ethics

Record of the massive peaceful resistance led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to the Dakota Access Pipeline through their land and underneath the Missouri River.

A recent study from The New Republic which analyzed historical data from 1920 to 1997, found that the value of stolen Black farmland in that period equates to $326 Billion dollars today. But Black land has been, and remains a site of Black resistance. To learn more about the ways Black people and communities use land, farming, and food justice as tools of resistance against racial inequality, we speak with Monica White, professor of environmental justice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement. Then, we hear from one Black freedom farmer in North Carolina about his Black land reclamation project. Kamal Bell, is the founder of Sankofa Farms in Cedar Grove, North Carolina. There, he grows food on a 12-acre farm, and has an education program working with Black youth and teaching them about food deserts and ancestral history.

The Faces of Environmental Injustice in Cincinnati explores the adverse health and other effects felt by economically poor and minority communities that too often face the brunt of environmental pollution and poor land-use planning. Polluting industries, coupled with poor regulation and decision-making, can add up to a toxic mix of pollution that poisons entire neighborhoods. While this story takes place in Cincinnati, Ohio, the tale can be transposed to many other metropolitan areas across the United States, and the world.

A recent analysis by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that young people are more concerned than their elders about climate change and are more likely to contact a government official about global warming. They're inspired by people like Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg, who sailed across the ocean to the United States and this week testified in front of congress, and Isra Hirsi, the founder of US Youth Climate Strike, who has focused on environmental justice for communities of color. But climate activism has also found its way into the world of Instagram and TikTok memes through an unlikely group: VSCO girls. Bob talks to Intercept writer Kate Aronoff about what the aesthetic of VSCO girls tell us about how environmental activism is permeating youth culture. This is a segment from our September 20, 2019 program, Too Hot For School.

After hearing about efforts in Venezuela to develop a more equitable as well as sustainable food and agriculture system, filmmaker Simon Cunich heads to Venezuela to investigate what we might learn about food sovereignty from the country's various initiatives to reduce the price of food by opening up urban land to community farming. So they may become urban gardeners, the nation is providing citizens with free seeds, tools, and other materials needed to organically grow food.

Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency issued an emergency order to shut down a metal processing facility in Atlanta, Georgia. According to the EPA, the facility, which is run by TAV Holdings Inc., has generated lead and other pollutants that pose a quote “imminent and substantial” danger to the public and the environment. Experts say the facility might just be the state’s next Superfund site — a designation for the country’s most hazardous waste sites. Like many environmental threats, the TAV waste site is located in a predominantly Black community. In fact, a recent analysis from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that the neighborhoods surrounding the state’s 18 current Superfund sites are more likely to be Black. For decades, Black people in this country have felt the heavy toll of environmental racism. A study published by University of Michigan in 2016 shows that communities of color and low-income neighborhoods are targeted by polluting industries. At the same time, people of color are more likely to be exposed to high levels of fine particulate air pollution, which causes tens of thousands of deaths every year. For more on this, The Takeaway spoke with Christina Fuller, Associate Professor at Georgia State University School of Public Health, and Drew Kann, an enterprise reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution covering climate and environmental issues.

From the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana to the deep freeze in Texas during winter storm Uri, to the urban heat islands in California, we are facing the extreme effects of climate change and marginalized communities are the most impacted. We speak with Elizabeth Yeampierre, the executive director of Uprose, about the inequities of climate change and the need for climate justice.

This episode of The Green Interview features Maxine Burkett, a professor of law at the University of Hawaii and passionate advocate for climate justice, which essentially addresses how the most vulnerable human communities should be treated with dignity and fairness in the era of climate change. Through her work she explores the issue of climate-induced displacement and how already vulnerable communities in the US and globally-ironically those that have contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions-will disproportionately feel the impacts of climate change. In this exclusive Green Interview, Burkett speaks with Silver Donald Cameron about how she both studies and serves the vulnerable Pacific island nations, such as Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, and about how we as a society need to start addressing the daunting reality before us.

Bill Moyer speaks with Kelsey Juliana, an 18 year old environmental activist who is fighting against climate change in the courts and walking across the country to spread the word on global warming. She believes that "being green" is not enough and that laws need to be in place to limit emissions and promote renewable energy. In this interview, she highlights several reasons to care about global climate change, discusses the Great March for Action, and shares how individuals can make a difference.

In 2007, the Arrowhead landfill opened up next to Uniontown, Alabama. Two years later, trains began bringing in more than four million tons of toxic coal ash from Kingston, Tennessee, located roughly 330 miles from Uniontown. Locals blame a variety of health problems, including asthma, headaches, and rashes, on the landfill. Nearly 90 percent of Uniontown’s residents are African American, and in 2013, some of those residents filed a complaint with the Environmental Protection Agency. They argued that the Alabama Department of Environmental Management violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by permitting the landfill to be built so close to Uniontown. This week, the EPA dismissed that complaint, saying they’d found “insufficient evidence that the Alabama Department of Environmental Management violated Title VI and [the] EPA’s nondiscrimination regulation.” Esther Calhoun, a Uniontown resident and the president of Black Belt Citizens for Health and Justice, a grassroots group that has organized against the landfill, explains why residents disagree with the EPA's decision.

Armed only with facts and their illnesses, extraordinary citizens take on industry and government, risking arrest to protect clean water. From Flint, Michigan to the Navajo Nation, via Standing Rock, this is their story. Thirst For Justice follows Janene Yazzie as she searches for the source of contamination in her son's water in Sanders, Arizona. She suspects drinking uranium contaminated water from the Church Rock dam spill caused her ovarian cancer. Armed with a geiger counter, she begins investigating radioactive waste on the Navajo Nation and finds areas hotter than evacuation zones in Chernobyl. When the epic movement for water justice ignites in Standing Rock, Janene is compelled to join. There she meets Flint water activist Nayyirah Shariff, and their struggles converge. Janene travels to Flint, where she sees first hand the similarities between what's happening in this inner-city and the Navajo experience. The sacredness of water flows through the film, with water ceremonies and teachings from water carriers including Mary Lyons and other water protectors.