By Sonali Kolhatkar for YES! Media.
Broadcast version by Roz Brown for New Mexico News Connection reporting for the YES! Media-Public News Service Collaboration

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- The Conference of the Profiteers" is how some Black, Brown, and Indigenous environmental justice activists have described the 26th Conference of the Parties, or COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference. The conference, which convened in Glasgow, Scotland, earlier this month, has an ambitious-sounding goal of achieving "net-zero" emissions by 2030.

In a Nov. 1 speech in Glasgow, President Joe Biden explicitly cited net-zero emissions as a centerpiece of his approach to climate change, saying, "Our administration has been hard at work unlocking clean energy breakthroughs to drive down the cost of technologies that will require us ... to achieve net-zero emissions, and working with the private sector on the next generation of technologies that will power a clean economy of the future."

But several Black, Brown, and Indigenous activists who attended COP26 say the net-zero framework-and other "market-based solutions" that rely on technological fixes-is no panacea for the disproportionate harm being done to mostly Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, known as front-line communities.

"What's being negotiated at COP26 is the making of another carbon market," says Ananda Lee Tan, strategy advisor to the Just Transition Alliance in San Diego, California.

"Grassroots movements and movements representing the voices of front-line communities have to take an oppositional stance to COP26 and its frameworks of net-zero emissions, its framework of carbon capture and storage, carbon trading and offsets, and the myriad subsidies they're hoping to provide dirty energy," Tan said frankly in a Zoom call from Glasgow.

Jonathan Alingu, co-director of Central Florida Jobs with Justice, who also attended COP26, agrees.

"Untested technologies brought up at COP26, they're all going to be placed in these Black, Brown, [and] Indigenous communities," says Alingu. "The picture looks really grand when you see it on TV, but the results of that will be at the expense of Black people's health, Brown people's health, Indigenous people's health."

Tan, Alingu, and their colleagues see racial justice as a central tenet of climate justice and offer solutions that are quite different from net-zero emissions, carbon capture, and other similar ideas championed by political and corporate elites at COP26. Those solutions include phasing out fossil fuels and following the lead of front-line communities.

Why Technological Fixes to Climate Change Could Harm People of Color

The idea behind net-zero is that if enough greenhouse-gas emissions are removed from the environment to balance out those emissions being generated to power the global economy, the net effect on the atmosphere will be effectively neutral.

But Alejandría Lyons, environmental justice organizer with the SouthWest Organizing Project, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, says, "It's not a real solution, it's a false solution, and it's going to continue to affect our communities because we're the ones that these offsets are always put towards."

José Bravo, executive director of the Just Transition Alliance, concurs, and explains that "for communities of color in the United States and in the environmental justice movement, what 'net-zero' means is that in aggregate pollution, carbon emissions for much of the population will go down." But for communities at the "fenceline" of these industries, "carbon emissions will go up."

Such concerns are based on decades of disproportionately deadly impacts of extractive and polluting industries placed in low-income communities of color. A recent investigation on pollution in the U.S. by ProPublica concluded that areas "where the majority of residents are people of color experience about 40% more cancer-causing industrial air pollution on average than tracts where the residents are mostly white." Additionally, "In predominantly Black census tracts, the estimated cancer risk from toxic air pollution is more than double that of majority-white tracts."

If and when innovations such as carbon-capture plants become viable, there is a consensus among activists of color at COP26 that their communities will bear the disproportionate brunt of the technology's potential negative impact, as stated above by Alingu, who marched in the streets of Glasgow alongside Lyons and Bravo.

"In our communities, there is much of the production of carbon emissions and little of the reductions, because companies can buy pollution credits," says Bravo.

Conference of the Profiteers?

While offsetting greenhouse gases so the net result is zero emissions sounds like an elegant theoretical solution to climate change, the technology to achieve it-such as carbon capture-is, according to the BBC, "still emerging, very expensive and as yet unproven." Climate scientists are increasingly skeptical of the viability of such an approach.

But the world's largest private asset management firm, BlackRock, which climate activists have dubbed "the world's top investor in climate destruction," has backed the idea of net-zero emissions to address climate change, as have about 20% of the top multinational firms in the world. One reason may be that there are trillions of dollars in technology financing up for grabs.

Tan says a net-zero approach privileges "the industries that are most responsible for causing this crisis, the most carbon-intensive, the most polluting industries," and provides them "loopholes and ways in which they can continue to profiteer off causing harm."

A recent analysis of COP26 attendees by numerous watchdog groups concluded, "Fossil fuel lobbyists as a bloc outnumber the biggest country delegation." Echoing what has become a common refrain among activists, Bravo said the Conference of the Parties really represents a "Conference of the Profiteers."

What Would Real Climate Solutions Centered on Racial Justice Look Like?

Alingu, Bravo, Lyons, and Tan traveled to Glasgow for COP26 as part of It Takes Roots, a delegation of climate justice activists of color from the U.S. and Canada. Lyons says it is important for activists like her to be present at global climate meetings because historically the voices of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people have been "completely left out."

"And our communities are always the last at the table," Lyon says.

According to Tan, the COP26 negotiations are taking place within a "colonial framework," meaning wealthy nations are exercising their privilege to protect their own interests.

In response, Indigenous activists led a series of actions over a period of five days in late October in Washington, D.C., in preparation for the Glasgow convening. They dubbed the protests "People vs. Fossil Fuels" and demanded President Biden "Build Back Fossil Free," an obvious reference to the president's landmark Build Back Better legislation.

Then, in Glasgow on Nov. 6, many of those same activists marched alongside an estimated 100,000 people denouncing net-zero as a "smoke screen," and demanding that fossil fuels remain in the ground. Over the course of the global meeting, activists, including delegates from It Takes Roots, continued carrying out smaller-scale actions to bring attention to the false solutions of net-zero.

"We seek real solutions, not net-zero nonsense," says Tan.

The baseline demand many climate justice activists are making is the elimination of fossil fuels altogether, which they say would directly address the source of the problem. The fact that the phasing out of a fossil fuel such as coal was explicitly mentioned in a draft agreement circulating at COP26 for the first time was, according to the Washington Post, "a welcome breakthrough for most activists," and is likely the result of relentless pressure from grassroots groups that have demanded such language be inserted into COP agreements for years.

They posit that if industries continue to extract and burn fossil fuels, humanity will not survive, and no amount of technological fixes will suffice.

But even phasing out fossil fuels by keeping them in the ground is insufficient.

In order to not repeat the environmental racial injustices of the past, "There needs to be actual power for these communities to come to the table," says Lyons, "[because] historically folks that come from traditional and Indigenous communities, they have solutions and have learned to work with the land."

Tan agrees, saying that what is needed is a "just transition" away from fossil fuels. That transition must "center the voices of those most impacted," he adds. "[And it must include] deepening democracy and ... turning to the voices and the knowledge who have the longest living relationships with the land."

Sonali Kolhatkar wrote this article for YES! Magazine.

School buses are getting cleaner in Washington state after this year's legislative session.

Lawmakers in Olympia passed House Bill 1368, which will fund the purchase of zero emission school buses.

Rep. Tana Senn, D-Mercer Island, said the program is getting off the ground quickly.

"As we work towards that long-term goal of all new school buses being zero emission, we're kick-starting this year with $40 million in grants to school districts in overburdened communities," Senn explained.

Going forward, Senn noted school districts will have to purchase zero-emission vehicles once the total cost of ownership is equal to or lower than the cost of diesel vehicles. The state is leveraging the state's Climate Commitment Act resources to fund the transition of its 10,000 school buses.

Devin Denney, director of transportation for Highline Public Schools in King County, which already has electric school buses in its fleet, said he has driven the electric buses and talked about some of their benefits from a driver's perspective.

"You're not competing against that engine noise, the kids aren't competing against the engine noise," Denney observed. "It's a much quieter bus all the way around. The major advantage, of course, is that there's no tailpipe emissions with an electric bus, so our kids' health is better protected."

Senn emphasized health studies have shown there are negative health effects from diesel vehicles for kids, and it is easy to understand why.

"If you think about kids waiting to get on their bus in front of an elementary school and you have this line of buses idling, letting out diesel fumes right at the height of a little child, it becomes obvious that this is probably not the most healthy thing for our children," Senn added.


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Today, in honor of Earth Day, climate advocates are asking California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom to rally around a plan to put a $15 billion bond measure on the November ballot.

If passed, the bond measure would fund a range of climate resiliency measures.

Sam Hodder, president and CEO of the Save the Redwoods League, said March was the tenth month in a row to break monthly heat records.

"I think Earth Day is a terrific opportunity for the broader public to recognize how nature is critical for resilience, for our quality of life, for our mental and physical health, and for our communities more broadly," Hodder outlined.

Two similar bills to put a bond measure on the ballot are under consideration in Sacramento, Assembly Bill 1567 and Senate Bill 867, but they have been stalled since last summer. The bond would finance many programs, including some to restore wetlands that guard against sea-level rise, and to remove dead wood in forests to guard against mega-fires, which Hodder noted have killed 20% of the giant sequoias in recent years.

Opponents pointed out the state already faces a budget deficit and cannot afford to take on more debt. But only 5% of California's old-growth coastal redwoods remain, mostly due to aggressive logging many decades ago.

Hodder argued the giant trees can be critical ingredients in the fight against climate change because they trap so much carbon.

"Redwood forests sequester more carbon per acre than any other forest system in the world," Hodder emphasized. "We have the opportunity to transition the redwood forest from something that is vulnerable to climate change to something that is helping to solve and address the climate crisis."

Experts blame climate change for California's wild weather over the past few years, which has been marked by extreme drought, devastating fires and flooding rain.

A new report from the National Wildlife Federation warns that the effects of climate change in the Quad Cities, along the Iowa-Illinois border, will be severe.

But researchers got the public involved in studying to find ways to head off some of the most pressing concerns.

The report says climate change means a warmer, wetter future for the Quad Cities, which straddle the Mississippi River in Iowa and Illinois.

But rather than repeat what experts have already been saying about drastic flooding along the Big Muddy, Prairie Rivers Network River Health and Resiliency Organizer Nina Struss said researchers and Quad Cities residents brainstormed solutions to tackle the effects of climate change.

"Flooding and flash flooding were the top concerns," said Struss. "Extreme heat was also a big concern, as well as drought and other extreme weather events."

Researchers combined that information with hard science at the University of Illinois to create 3D models depicting what climate-induced flooding along the Mississippi could look like in the future.

The survey also asked people to identify which geographical areas and populations are most at risk from the effects of climate change, and worked with the community on solutions to mitigate some of them.

Struss said this research proposes what are known as nature-based solutions to combat the effects of climate change - restoring, preserving and even expanding existing ecosystems, like wetlands and tree canopies. But creating more eco-friendly infrastructure, too.

"Can we work to maybe have our pavements that we're putting in be more permeable, so that they can absorb that water and have that higher water-holding capacity?" said Struss. "Can we focus on areas to plant more native plants that have stronger root systems, versus ones that have shorter root systems, to help with that water-holding capacity?"

Struss said this research isn't a one-off. It will continue to change, she said, as the climate changes, the needs become more clear, and the effects more drastic.

She said progress in addressing climate change relies on more research, education and funding.




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