{"id":493687,"date":"2022-02-01T11:45:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-01T11:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grist.org\/?p=559975"},"modified":"2022-02-01T11:45:00","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T11:45:00","slug":"what-voting-rights-mean-for-the-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/02\/01\/what-voting-rights-mean-for-the-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"What voting rights mean for the planet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
As studies increasingly tally the death toll of climate change, the recent stalemate <\/a>over voting rights legislation in the Senate puts the United States at a grave crossroads. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Republican Party that is rolling back voter protections in the states and blocking them on Capitol Hill _ enabled by conservative Democrats _ is the same party blocking, watering down, and gutting environmental protections at every opportunity. That means that as long as voting rights hang in the balance, so does environmental justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last year, a study<\/a> by Harvard University and British researchers found that nearly 9 million people around the world died in 2018 from inhaling the particulate matter of fossil fuel pollution. That includes 350,000 premature deaths across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Illinois, New Jersey, and Wisconsin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In another ground-breaking 2021 study<\/a> published in the Lancet, nearly 70 researchers found that more than 5 million people a year are dying from extreme cold or heat, with heat deaths expected to increase. That includes<\/a> 173,600 deaths a year in the U.S. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There were no racial breakouts for those studies, but there is plenty of evidence that the very people most in need of voting rights are also in need of environmental protection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In New York City, Black people comprise<\/a> 24 percent of the population but accounted<\/a> for 49 percent of heat-related deaths from 2000 to 2012, according to city data. Chicago is 29.6 percent Black but in its historic 1995 heat wave, 49 percent of fatalities<\/a> were Black. In California, emergency visits for heat-related illness from 2005 to 2015 rose<\/a> by 27 percent for White victims, but they soared a respective 67, 63, and 53 percent among Black, Latino, and Asian victims. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the South, the disproportionate proximity of people of color to coal ash dumps, refineries, oil and gas fracking sites, and \u201ccancer alleys\u201d hyper-concentrated with petro-chemical plants is well documented. In the predominantly Black town of Reserve, Louisiana, chemical plants give residents a cancer risk 50 times the national average. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The alarm is because Black and Latino households disproportionately breathe in<\/a> the particulate pollution from our consumption of goods and services \u2013 disproportionately caused by White households. Black and Latino households are more likely to be in \u201cfenceline communities,\u201d a term used for neighborhoods in close proximity<\/a> to, or literally\u00a0 abutting, industrial facilities and traffic corridors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Black and other families of color are also more likely to live in neighborhoods that become potentially fatal summer heat islands<\/a> for lack of tree shade and less ability to afford air conditioning. Flood risks<\/a> under climate change are expected to dramatically shift <\/a>disproportionately to predominantly Black census tracts, in a country where families of color are less able<\/a> to access federal aid.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of these environmental injustices, which result in chronically compromised health, are tragically being exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two years into the pandemic Black, Latino, and Indigenous people still have<\/a> double the chance of dying from an infection than a White person.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI<\/s>t thus should be no surprise that voters of color are also environmental voters. In a 2020 Yale University and George Mason University poll,<\/a> 69 percent of Latinos and 57 percent of Black respondents said they were \u201calarmed\u201d about climate change. That compares to just 49 percent of White respondents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n