Earthbeat| Earthbeat

Last week, Loyola University Chicago’s conference about climate brought to light the ways in which pollution, health, climate and racism are interconnected.

The virtual event, which was held March 14-18, featured seven panel discussions that were spread over five days. They all focused on how increasing global temperatures affect people’s ability to live healthy, but sometimes in disproportionate ways.

“The pope clearly stated that certain forms of pollution are part people’s daily experience and that they’re continually being exposed to it. Pollution of the water, soil pollution, but it all yields these healthcare impacts,” stated Sylvia Hood Washington, an environmental epidemiologist, historian, and a reference to Pope Francis’ 2015 Encyclical Laudato Si’. “So that is the goal for fighting against environmental racism. Because these communities have discovered that they are not in a resilient environment. They don’t live in an environment where they are protected.

She said, “This issue is right-to-life.”

Loyola’s climate conference featured a variety of speakers, including scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Natural Resources Defense Council, as well as climate activists and environmental justice advocates, young Black entrepreneurs, and the governor of Illinois J.B. Pritzker.

Since 2014, Loyola Chicago hosts the climate change conference. The School for Environmental Sustainability hosts the climate change conference. Previous years have focused on themes such as youth activism and the economics of climate changes. Speakers like Gina McCarthy (ex-EPA administrator) are welcome to speak at the conference.

After the COVID-19 pandemic that wiped out the March 2020 conference, Loyola Chicago hosted the 2022 conference virtually for the second time.

The conference put the spotlight on this year’s theme. Environmental justicePublic health is affected by an unjust climate.

Disproportionate impact on health and well-being

According to the World Health Organization, there will be an additional 250,000 deaths from 2030-2050 due to climate change.

According to the CDC, climate change is causing warmer temperatures and more intense storms. This can also impact the transmission of certain vector-borne diseases. The number of cases in the United States of Lyme Disease and West Nile Virus infections from ticks, fleas and mosquitoes has doubled between 2004 and 2019, a period that includes the 10 hottest years on record.

However, the rise in rapidly spreading disease cannot be attributed to climate change alone, stated Ben Beard (deputy director of CDC’s vector-borne diseases section), during a panel March 14. Climate change is combined with other factors, such as deforestation and changing land use patterns. Global migration will also increase as temperatures continue rising.

“Climate change does not drive this in a vacuum, without all these other elements that are also going on simultaneously,” he stated.

Beard said that the CDC had created a climate-and-health taskforce under the direction of the Biden administration to develop surveillance and research tactics for diseases and address equity issues for those most at risk.

Beard stated, “Climate Change has wide-ranging effects on health. An integrated understanding climate, ecology, and epidemiology are critical for predicting epidemics of infectious diseases.”

Climate change is affecting health in many ways, not just through disease transmission. Heat is also a factor.

“It’s not a mere inconvenience. According to Kim Knowlton (a senior scientist with NRDC, and an environmental health sciences professor from Columbia University), heat can and does cause death. She has spent years connecting the dots of climate and health.

The extreme heat causes an estimated 5,600 deaths in the U.S. each year and 65,000 emergency department visits annually. These numbers are expected increase as record-breaking heat waves continue to last longer and record-breaking days increase. Due to the smoke causing decreases in air quality, wildfires are more common and more severe.

The health effects of climate change on the environment, including rising heat, increased air pollution, and increased flooding, are not felt equally in different states or communities.

“There are many communities in this country [and]Knowlton stated that people around the world will be more burdened and exposed to harm than others and will be differentially burdened.

Many panelists mentioned a recent study during the conference. Study that found historically redlined communities in the U.S. — where majorities of people of color and immigrants lived that were deemed high risk for loans and where polluting industries were regularly located — are far more likely today to breathe dirtier air, even 50 years after the practice was barred.

David Lammy, a Labour MP in the United Kingdom, stated during a March 15 panel that similar circumstances exist in London. The disparities in environmental injustice are illustrated by maps showing how the majority of greenhouse gas emission is generated by countries in northern Europe, while the most vulnerable nations to the effects of climate change are those in the southern hemisphere.

These are not random happenings, let’s just be clear. These communities feel the hardships of poverty because of decades of inequality in our society. This has left those at the margins exposed to the most difficult conditions and sealed their fates from birth. He stated that we are yet to see the worst.

“Ultimately, it is impossible to remain colorblind in our responses to the climate crisis. He said that if we do, we will fail billions of people on the planet who have done the most to deserve this fate.”

Altgeld Gardens, which is about 30 miles south of Loyola Chicago, is one such community. Cheryl Johnson, executive director of People for Community Recovery (PCR), spoke about the “toxic doughnut” — a term coined by her mother, Hazel, often referred to as the “mother of environmental justice” — that surrounds Altgeld with numerous chemical and industrial plants.

A webinar held March 18th highlighted the many years of work that PCR has done to combat environmental hazards in their south Chicago area neighborhood.

“The pollution that happens in my neighborhood, it just don’t stay here — it affects everybody. Is it going to be cleaner air or will we continue to breathe polluted air? Johnson stated, “We have to do it collectively as one group.”

Hood Washington stated that it is the right to life dimension that connects Catholic Church and environmental justice. She collaborated with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on the development of a film on environmental injustice to share with Black Catholics. Loyola’s Hank Center for Catholic Intellectual Heritage works to make the film even more widely accessible.

Chanelle Robinson, a Boston College theology doctoral student, said that Francis has reminded the entire world “how marginalized communities and especially the poor experience disenfranchisement along with the Earth.”

The interconnections between health, climate, and race were evident in the panel discussions as well as the institutions that hosted them. Other Loyola programs were also present at the School of Environmental Sustainability, including the Parkinson School of Health Sciences and Public Health as well as the Center for Urban Research and Learning and the School of Social Work.

Solutions for the community and government

The conference also examined how governments and communities are working together to address climate change, and the inequities that it causes.

The Climate and Equitable Jobs Act was one of the responses in Illinois. It was passed by the state legislature and signed into law by the governor in September. The legislation establishes goals for Illinois to use 100% of renewable energy by 2050 and to reach net-zero carbon emissions in its power industry five years earlier. It also provides funding to support low-income and disadvantaged communities to benefit from the clean energy economy.

Pritzker stated, “We took on the monumental battle to reduce carbon admissions and to remove harmful pollutants in the air, massively increase our investment in renewable energie, retrain workers to the green jobs of tomorrow, and anchor it all to the values of ethics, equity, and consumer protection.”

The legislation includes equity throughout and not as an add-on. It was the direct result of the involvement of communities, labor organizations and environmental advocates across Illinois in this process.

“We decided early that equity was going be at the centre of this bill, so it’s literally baked into throughout,” stated Delmar Gillus chief operating officer for Chicago-based Elevate Energy.

Jennifer Walling (executive director of the Illinois Environmental Council), said that it was a remarkable achievement for the state to pass such an important climate bill in the middle of a pandemic.

“All of these problems really brought out the power passion from our community leaders out of grassroots groups out of legislature and so we were in a position to use that passion, these challenges, not as a block but as an inspiration to us to work harder,” she stated.

Lammy said that the pandemic taught us a lot about the global community’s ability to mobilize in times of crisis. He also stressed that climate change can’t be addressed by one country or sector of society alone, and that it was crucial to include Indigenous peoples, Black and brown people and those at the frontlines in discussions about how the world can defeat them.

He stated, “Those closest the problem are so frequently also those closest the solution.” “And that is why we must listen to them. Listen and empower.