News from a Changing Planet -- This Week on Earth #30
Focusing on environmental and climate justice to mark Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day here in the United States, and while Dr. King died before the environmental movement began in earnest, his message about the universal harms of segregation and inequality applied (now and then) to the environment too. Here is an excellent piece about that by the always insightful Kendra Pierre-Louis from 2018 from The New York Times.
Climate change and environmental quality are both justice issues, and all conversations about these issues should have justice, equality and peace at their center. Otherwise, any such conversations are just dancing around the real harms and challenges we face, as local, national and global communities, and any solutions we devise will only be partial.
[Dr. King Said Segregation Harms Us All. Environmental Research Shows He Was Right.]
For today’s edition, I’m focusing on stories that highlight the issue of climate/environmental justice and equality. I try to write about this story all year long and I don’t want it to be something that I leave to this holiday or other specific moments, but I also feel like it’s worth using this day to remind myself of the work that needs to be done every other day of the year.
BILLIONS FOR BUSES: Biden announced $1 billion in grants for clean/low-emission school buses. (Washington Post)
The Environmental Protection Agency, through the bipartisan Infrastructure Act, is making nearly $1 billion available to school districts to convert polluting diesel school buses to electric or low-emission vehicles, a major win for environmental justice.
The children most dependent on school buses are students from low-income households and students of color. And school buses primarily run on diesel. Chronic exposure to diesel exhaust — which can get to extremely high levels inside and around school buses, which often idle for long periods of time — has been linked to higher rates of childhood asthma and cancer. It has also been tied to poorer performance in school.
The grant recipients are mainly composed — 86 percent — of school districts in low-income, rural, and tribal communities.
The main obstacles to transitioning to fleets of electric school buses has been the lack of charging infrastructure, also a problem for other electric vehicles. “The buses suck an enormous amount of power from the grid — a concern for districts that got enough federal funding to buy 20 to 25 buses but don’t have the infrastructure to deliver that much electricity.” In rural areas with even fewer charging stations, buses aren’t able to make it all the way from school to students’ homes.
School districts have found that this transition is more successful when they work with utilities in advance to determine their power needs and find adequate capacity for charging, and to have a plan for using the buses as storage batteries when they’re not in use.
HOW TO CREATE A JUST TRANSITION: A massive Minnesota coal plant is being replaced by solar power, but what about the coal communities left behind? (Inside Climate News)
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