The NC Black Alliance on challenges facing today’s environmental justice movement

While no one these days is safe from the destructive impacts of climate change and the pollution that plagues our fragile environment, poor people and people of color are disproportionately at-risk, as it’s their communities and neighborhoods that most frequently lie in flood plains, close to sources of toxic pollution, or in otherwise hazardous areas.

It’s this hard truth that gave rise several years ago to the environmental justice movement — a cause that seeks to shine a light on at-risk communities and spur public action to help them. Unfortunately, environmental justice is not something that’s popular with polluters or the Trump administration, and as NC Newsline’s Rob Schofield learned in recent conversation with Chad Martin and Karida Giddings of the North Carolina Black Alliance, this fact is leading to some very worrisome policy developments.