Posted on 03/07/2021 4:39:22 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
Activists in the Pacific Northwest have warned for years that communities of color and other marginalized groups are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change, and less well-positioned to take advantage of jobs and other benefits likely to result as the region’s economy moves away from fossil fuels.
For evidence, look no further than the fire that ripped through southern Oregon last September. People in the relatively affluent town of Ashland received faster and clearer warnings to evacuate than people in less-well-off towns nearby, say grassroots-organizing groups in the area.
“People were clueless and our Spanish-speaking community was left out,” said climate activist Niria Garcia, of Talent, Oregon. Damage would ultimately prove more extensive in Talent than in Ashland. Fortunately for Garcia, she took off when she saw smoke in the distance.
Or take the example of rooftop solar-power panels. An interactive tool created at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that combines federal data on solar deployment and census data shows that for Washington and Oregon, the upper half of households by income account over 80% of those states' residential solar systems.
Recently Oregon’s Department of Energy also documented how state tax credits to incentivize solar installations have historically flowed disproportionately to areas with more white residents.
“The benefits for clean energy were not evenly distributed among Oregonians,” said Janine Benner, director of the energy department.
Now, though, some activists on the issue of climate and equity say the powers that be are starting to hear them, they told InvestigateWest as part of the news organization’s ongoing project, “Getting To Zero: Decarbonizing Cascadia.”
“One day I woke up and everyone was finally listening to what I had to say,” said Adrienne Hampton of Seattle’s Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition.
The Duwamish Coalition is one of many groups across the Pacific Northwest fighting to move the economy away from fossil fuels to renewables without burdening already-marginalized communities, or leaving those communities without benefits. For example, they want to protect low-income people from rising transportation and energy bills that could result from climate policies. And they want all communities to have affordable access to cleaner options such as public transit and home retrofits, as well as new jobs in the renewable energy sector.
Despite progress, activists from small rural towns like Talent to the diverse urban landscape of South Seattle say governments still are learning how to consult with the long-marginalized communities that are feeling the biggest effects of climate change.
Example: When the city of Seattle set out several years ago to discover what residents of southern Seattle wanted from the transition to a low-carbon economy, some signals got crossed, said Yolanda Matthews, climate justice organizer with Puget Sound Sage, a Seattle-based group advocating for social justice.
Puget Sound Sage was hearing that the community wanted an expansion of public transit, better access to weatherization programs for homes and to build energy-efficient affordable housing. Community members were primarily interested in “having lower energy bills, having energy-efficient appliances, and keeping a roof over their heads,” Matthews said. However, the city thought that the South Seattle community wanted solar panels and incentives on electric vehicles, Matthews said.
“We constantly needed data to back up everything we said,” Matthews said.
Puget Sound Sage surveyed the community to try to understand what residents thought an equitable transition to renewable energy would look like. The resulting report sought to speak the mind of the community.
“The city tends to think that what works for one community will work for the other,” said Matthews. “That’s why we needed the report, to really prove what our community was thinking and needing.”
The most significant example to date of the movement to decarbonize the Pacific Northwest economy running headlong into aspirations for people of color to be part of the so-called “just transition” to a carbon-free future came in two Washington ballot initiatives.
Here’s how that happened: Progressives in Washington splintered their organizing efforts in two ballot initiatives in 2016 and 2018 designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by taxing the emissions. At the heart of the disagreement was whether tax revenues raised from levies on, for example, carbon dioxide emissions from an asphalt plant should be returned to taxpayers, as happens with British Columbia’s carbon tax, or whether those revenues should instead be used to invest in clean-energy jobs and other community benefits.
Both measures failed by substantial margins. And now the split is happening again, as progressives clash over Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s latest effort to pass so-called “cap-and-trade” legislation — another mechanism to put a price on carbon emissions — in the Washington Legislature. Grassroots community groups working on climate change and racial-justice issues are fighting the bill, saying it would go too easy on carbon polluters and offer too little to help marginalized communities. Under the cap-and-trade system, polluters can purchase the right to keep releasing pollution — not just greenhouse gases but also soot and other pollutants that sicken neighboring communities. The grassroots activists say the pollution needs to be ended instead.
Although the activists aren’t convinced, Inslee says he is taking other measures to “put environmental justice and equity at the center of climate policy,” and provide green jobs.
Despite their differences with Inslee, grassroots groups continue to spotlight the possibilities for the transition to a low-carbon economy to benefit previously marginalized groups. For instance, there are solar panels to install. Wind turbines to be erected. Energy efficiency retrofits to be put in.
“We’re really interested in getting to a regenerative economy,” said Hampton, of the Duwamish Coalition.
While this story doesn’t have a happy ending yet, there are signs of hope. For example, remember the rooftop solar incentives? After discovering how their distribution was weighted toward white and relatively wealthy Oregonians, that state’s energy department is making changes, said Benner, the department director.
Oregon’s long-standing tax credits did achieve their primary goal helping transform solar panels into a cost-effective energy source. Providing equity was not an explicit program goal, and it is not surprising that the credits came up short on that measurement. As Benner put it: “People with low incomes don’t have a lot of tax equity, and so credits don’t really work for them.”
That is no longer acceptable in 2021, the state and climate justice activists agree. Benner said the state is now designing programs with equity in mind from the start, as directed by Oregon Gov. Kate Brown last year and guided by an Environmental Justice Task Force. Solar and home energy storage incentives offered last year in a $1.5-million program provided rebates that help everyone and reserved a quarter of the funds for low- and moderate-income households and installers.
Benner called it “a modest step toward equitable distribution.”
And what about our German-speaking community?!
Man hat uns völlig vernachlässigt!
I hear that the Uigurs and Estonians were also peeved.
Regards,
“Oregon’s long-standing tax credits did achieve their primary goal helping transform solar panels into a cost-effective energy source.”
They say things like this with a straight face.
Globalist control will separate the haves from the have Nots in the Pacific Northwest. Just ask Bill Gates who has more than just about anybody else.
No mention of the fact the renewable energy is about 3 times as expensive as natural gas , and poor people can’t buy Teslas, and the rich spend a tiny percent of their money on energy so they don’t care
That stuff doesn’t fit their narrative.
Have you been to the Northwest? I live in Oregon. It’s probably the whitest state in the Union.
The statistics given for those in poverty would be poor rural white folk. Many who lost livelihoods as the forests have been “protected” by environmentalists to stop climate change.
Race, race, race. Everything’s about race.
So sick of it.
The range of confusion in that verbose article is breathtaking.
Just 2 points of many:
Non-English speaking communities not as informed in an emergency? “Speak [common national language]” isn’t some bigoted platitude, it’s a necessity for a functioning society. Fire isn’t going to wait around for someone to find a translator.
“Solar and home energy storage incentives offered last year in a $1.5-million program provided rebates that help everyone and reserved a quarter of the funds for low- and moderate-income households and installers.” $2500 gets you a portable 100W solar panel and matching 1.5kWh battery ... leaving the lauded program, with no consideration of bureaucratic overhead etc, able to fund bare minimum solar capacity for just 600 homes.
When a society becomes luxurious enough, idiocracy takes hold and the only way to eradicate is cycle back thru the pain of its consequences.
That’s exactly what it’s supposed to do and not just in the PNW. They people with multiple 10 million dollar homes and their own private jet want the rest of us to live in tiny homes & have bicycles for transportation.
to save the planet
But they will continue to fly over us on their way from mansion #1 to mansion #2
Paging Leonardo DiCaprio
Paging Bill Gates
They say things like this with a straight face.
All the while ignoring reality. Is their plan effective against bad weather, winter, prolonged cold spells, below zero temperatures, and the opposite?
Not to mention we the people having to accept the lies, propaganda, and premise that carbon is actually a pollutant, and so called renewable sources are the solution much less a solution.
Could it be we find ourselves at war with very expensive people who aren’t well educated? Speaking of population control.
Well, my point was that they claim that tax credits and other subsidies supposedly make something “cost-effective” when it really isn’t. The subsidies may make residential solar cost-effective from the point of view of the user, but only by shifting part of the cost to other people.
“Will climate change widen the gap between haves and have-nots in the Northwest?”
Will climate change widen the gap between haves and have-nots in the USA?
There, fixed it
My first thought, also....Re...minorities in Oregon, BUT they (dems) have made sure they imported minorities (mexicans, etc.) So they can whine...
The ‘rubes’ outside the city have the means to produce food. And the arms to defend themselves.
The cities have the means to consume.
Oy vey.
Imateclay angechay.
I live in a rural part of Eastern Linn County, OR. I go weeks without seeing a “person of color”, and most of us are under informed and under served by government.
Unlike most, even my own family, I look for information on the inter webs and am not afraid to use the telephone.
I suspect that most of the hill folk living around me are too proud to take charity, even if offered by the state or feds. I know my own family is.
Will climate change widen the gap between haves and have-nots in the Northwest?
___________________________________________________
Not if you tax (or sue) the wealthy and just transfer their wealth down. It’s a tried and tested formula. The more I watch these entertainer and Big Tech/Big Bank pukes, the more I start to simply not care if they get financially raped.
Northwest Climate Change = Cities On Fire
LMAO
The PNW is 95% white
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