After COVID-19, Can We Go Back to Business as Usual?

Some say this is not the time to fight climate change and environmental degradation, as we must prioritize economic recovery. In fact, this is exactly the right time to fight even harder.

The primary cause of climate change—the extraction and use of fossil fuels—is also one of the major contributors to the chronic health conditions that have contributed to disproportionately high COVID-19 fatality rates among persons of color and historically underserved populations.

Low-income communities and communities of color are much more likely to live in areas with higher exposure to environmental hazards such as air-born particulates from coal power plants and highways, toxic waste sites, and other sources of pollution—all of which increase the incidence of respiratory diseases, cancer, negative birth outcomes, and shorter life expectancy.

As we recover from this devastating pandemic, we have the opportunity to rebuild our society in the right way, with a plan that will eliminate the longstanding, underlying social and environmental vulnerabilities that undermine health. We can also mitigate the catastrophic impacts of climate change that threaten the future of every American.

 

Systemic Inequality Has Consequences

Only part of an individual's health status depends on behavior and choice. The conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age—the social determinants of health—have major impacts on our health. Poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods lead to major health inequities.

Systemic inequities leading to disproportionate suffering in communities of color have been devastating. African Americans make up nearly 70 percent of Americans living under the worst air quality. The exploitation and occupational segregation of people of color, reinforced by government policies and institutional practices, institutionalize racial disparities in wages and benefits and in almost every other measure of economic well-being.

People of color disproportionately serve in chronically undervalued ‘essential jobs’ and are risking their lives carrying out those jobs. The resulting economic disparities are well documented: black households earn 59% of the white median income.

And, health and longevity are directly connected to income, so these most vulnerable populations also have the greatest disparities in health and health care. African Americans have higher rates and earlier onset of chronic conditions than white Americans. Negative impacts have intensified over generations, putting African Americans at higher risk for asthma, heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes, which weaken lungs and immune systems. Black men have the lowest life expectancy of any group, at 67.7 years7.1 years less than white men. Currently, African Americans, 13% of the U.S. population, comprise almost 35% of the COVID-19 cases and 24.3% of its deaths.

 

Good Laws Need to Be Made More Effective

The Clean Air Act (CAA) and other environmental laws direct the EPA to promote public health through national standards based on the latest science. State and local governments are responsible for air pollution prevention and control. But while great strides in air quality have been made, inconsistencies in state enforcement and oversight, and recent EPA actions to undermine standards, have worsened air quality, making people more vulnerable to COVID-19.

More than half of the U.S. population lives within three miles of a hazardous waste site. Inadequate federal Superfund funding and failure to reauthorize the petroleum and chemical industries tax used to fund cleanups have left over 18,000 contaminated sites. Extreme weather events, made more likely as climate change intensifies, regularly highlight the longstanding exposure of vulnerable communities to these toxic waste dumps that put their health at risk.

Communities near Superfund sites are disproportionately inhabited by people of color and the working poor. This is no coincidence. In 1983, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) determined the correlation between the location of hazardous waste landfills and the racial and economic status of the surrounding communities in eight southeastern states.

Forced to take action, many communities have set up “bucket brigades” that document daily toxic emissions collected in EPA-approved air sample "buckets." One such group, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, is fighting for the health of Louisianans in the region between Baton Rouge and New Orleans known as Cancer Alley due to its clusters of poverty and sickness.

While stricter laws and community activism have reduced emissions over the years, the push for more refineries and fossil-fuel intensive factories, like plastics manufacturers, continues. And the petrochemical industry and EPA are using the pandemic to call for easing limitations on the release of toxic air and other pollution regulations.

All of us will suffer as the Administration continues to decimate the Clean Air Act standards, which have improved the physical and economic welfare of Americans. The Act cost $523 billion over its first 20 years, but produced $22.2 trillion in benefits. Current estimates are costs of $500 million to $2 billion a year, and yearly benefits of $59 to $116 billion. But unless we act to protect those standards and properly fund and staff its enforcement, all of us, and particularly poverty-stricken communities, will remain vulnerable to devastating health and climate consequences.

 

Have We Learned Anything?

Everyone on this planet is threatened by continued use of petroleum. And it should be no surprise that Americans of color are threatened at a greater rate than others. Unfortunately, it has taken the COVID virus to get this broadly established, public health fact to the general public.

We will not recover from the ongoing pandemic by moving backwards and undermining what progress has been made in health and climate mitigation. This is the right time to fight even harder. By mitigating underlying social and environmental vulnerabilities that undermine health, we can reduce the likelihood of another tragedy at the scale of COVID-19. This time, let’s do things differently, and invest in systemic changes that green the economy, the environment and human health.

 

 Author: Jonathan Herz, Senior Policy Fellow