The cost and health burdens of electricity production have long been higher for low-income communities of color than for wealthy white ones. But for many of those communities the fossil fuel industry is also a source of jobs, tax dollars, and cheap energy. “It makes it difficult for anyone to speak out against the hand that’s feeding them,” says Ivan Penn, Alternative Energy Reporter for the New York Times. “The NAACP would typically support the positions of the utility companies.” So is the industry an example of community leadership, manipulative greenwashing — or something in between?
Everyone uses fossil fuels every day. But for many communities of color, that industry is also a source of jobs, tax dollars, and cheap energy.
“Who's going to come to a public hearing and speak out against the utility or oil company that is basically funding their entire budget?” says Ivan Penn, Alternative Energy Reporter for The New York Times. Climate groups, by contrast, find it hard to have the same local influence.
“They’re saying these are things that are bad for your environment, they’re bad for your life and longevity,” says Vien Truong, Director of Climate Justice for the political action committee of former presidential candidate Tom Steyer, “and many people in their communities know that -- there just isn’t an alternative.”
Truong and others are working to make sure that jobs in the clean-energy economy are able to attract workers accustomed to salaries offered by oil and gas companies, especially when retraining is involved.
“How do you retrain a workforce who’s at the golden years almost to the end of retirement,” asks Derrick Hollie, President of Reaching America, a nonprofit he founded that addresses issues facing Black Americans. “Where does that money come from for them?”
To that end, the NAACP has started an initiative called the Black Labor Initiative on Just Transition in order to center the voices of people who stand to lose their livelihoods in the energy transition.
“What are the possibilities -- not just thinking of trading a job [in] coal or oil and gas for another energy job -- but what are the vast possibilities in the new economy that we're trying to transition to,” says Jackie Patterson Director of Environmental and Climate Justice at the NAACP. “How do we actually really meaningfully and systemically relieve energy poverty that really does put the power in both senses in the hands of the people?”
Tune-in Thursday, September 10, 2020 at 7 PM.
