“Climate change is touching into every aspect of life’

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An article in The New Mexico Political Report on July 26 examines the impact of climate change on communities and families of color. Sister Joan Brown is quoted in the article.

Here are excerpts:

“According to a Yale Project on Climate Change and George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication report, communities of color are likely to disproportionately feel climate change more than white communities due to socioeconomic inequities. Communities of color are likely to be more vulnerable to heat waves, extreme weather events, environmental degradation and the resulting job opportunity dislocations, the report said.

Brown said she believes the first aspect of climate change to have the greatest impact on families of color in New Mexico will be the intensity of forest fires in the state.”

This week forest fire smoke from western states has affected skies and air pollution in the eastern part of the U.S. and the Bootleg Fire in Oregon is so intense it is causing its own weather.

“I think we’ve already seen some of that with fires that have drastically changed some of the areas where people live. Vegetation that won’t come back affects the watershed, affects irrigation, animals that live here. What we’ll see with exceptional drought, we see right now,” she said.

Families of color who live in Albuquerque are also feeling the effects of climate change and the ensuing severe drought, Brown said. Her organization has been involved in tree plantings, as part of the City of Albuquerque’s initiative to plant thousands of trees in city neighborhoods. Brown said New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light has focused its efforts in the International District in Albuquerque because the area acts as a “heat sink” due to a lack of vegetation and too much concrete, she said.

Heat sinks, which occur in urban settings, are more likely to affect low income and diverse communities such as the International District, Brown said.

“As it gets hotter, heat sinks will affect mental and emotional health. You get really depressed if there’s no shade, no beauty or coolness. It really impacts children and their well being. Trees are really important to children for that green and that beauty,” she said.

Read full article

Kayley Shoup’s Testimony at EPA Hearing

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Kayley Shoup is an organizer for Citizens Caring for the Future, an affiliate of New Mexico Interfaith Power & Light in Carlsbad.  Here is her testimony at the EPA hearing on June 15-16, in which the agency is collecting testimony to develop a proposed rule to reduce methane and other harmful pollutants from new and existing sources in the oil and natural gas industry.

I don’t need to tell all of you what climate goals stricter methane rules and stronger enforcement will help us achieve. You know why we must cut methane emissions…These rules could mean that a mother doesn’t have to watch her child go through leukemia. They could mean that a young  man doesn’t lose his hardworking father at a young age. They could mean that a grandmother can breathe easy into her old age. They could mean that a young couples dream of a family isn’t dashed by reproductive issues.

Just last week I was out in the oil fields of the Permian with Earthworks looking for emission events. It was upwards of 105 degrees every single day. Prior heat records were being broken. It was something else to quite literally be feeling the effects of climate change, while also seeing through a FLIR video camera the emissions that are significantly contributing to that climate change. It was memorable to say the least.

As I drove home from the oil fields each night last week, I thought about how scared I was that my community is breathing the emissions I had just seen into our lungs every single day. I thought about how so few people in my tiny hometown realize what danger our health is in. The risks are not communicated by industry or the agencies that are supposed to protect us. I thought about the oilfield workers who are directly exposed to this pollution every single day, and how their lives may be upended by disease in the future. I thought about how many emissions events I had seen in just one day, and then I would shudder remembering that there is only one air monitor in my town, and that there are no air inspectors in New Mexico that live in the Permian. I thought about how cancer runs in my family, and how the pollution I’m exposed to may assure that I die young. I thought about my 51 year old mother who has just finished treatment for ovarian cancer, and how terrified I am that pollution could contribute to the recurrence of her cancer. I thought about how everyday I am learning that my community is a sacrifice zone.

I naively thought that I was being protected by federal and state environmental agencies. I blindly trusted my government and I blindly trusted industry, but sometimes the truth slaps you in the face and wakes you up. I am involved today because living in a frontline community has woken me up to the fact that some communities, some families, some human beings really are seen as disposable. I’ve seen firsthand a culture that values the state of the economy more than a child’s life. I realized something was wrong when I pieced together that I knew more young people with rare and aggressive cancers than the total number of people my eighty year old grandmother has known throughout her life that had cancer. Since beginning. This is reality for young people on the front lines. Whether or not they realize that the devastation they face in their life could very well be attributed to pollution caused by emissions does not change the fact that the devastation exists.

I don’t need to tell all of you what climate goals stricter methane rules and stronger enforcement will help us achieve. You know why we must cut methane emissions. I don’t need to explain why we need to diversify our economy, or how cutting methane provides job creation. I do need to remind you of this though. These rules are more than just rules. These rules could mean that a mother doesn’t have to watch her child go through leukemia. They could mean that a young  man doesn’t lose his hardworking father at a young age. They could mean that a grandmother can breathe easy into her old age. They could mean that a young couples dream of a family isn’t dashed by reproductive issues.

Frontline communities suffer the most when common sense action isn’t taken, but because of climate change everyone in the world is essentially living in a sacrifice zone in one way or another. Whether their community is constantly threatened by natural disaster or riddled with disease. Methane emissions affect us all. I hope the EPA chooses to take bold and swift action to make methane rules that sustain life.

 

Sister Joan Brown’s Testimony at EPA Hearing

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When I was in an area East of Artesia called loco hills several weeks ago in 105 temperatures I put on a gas mask because the fumes were so bad. In Hobbs, where I met with faith leaders and ministers the air was still bad and I felt so terrible that the people who live there breathe this day in and day out. -Joan Brown, OSF

(The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking the first step to develop a proposed rule to reduce methane and other harmful pollutants from new and existing sources in the oil and natural gas industry, beginning with a broad public outreach effort to gather community and stakeholder input on June 15 and 16. 

These activities include opening a public docket for pre-proposal comments, previously held training sessions on the rulemaking process and how to participate in it, and these listening sessions for stakeholders.  These actions are a part of our response to a directive in Executive Order 13990, “Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis)”

Watch a video on the Listening Sessions

Here is the text of testimony from Joan Brown, OSF, executive director of New Mexico Interfaith Power & Light

The lessons of caring for our Common Earth are rooted in me from my Kansas farm background. I also have had personal family experience with the oil and gas industry when my niece married an oil worker in southern Kansas. Unfortunately, he was killed in a truck accident while working.

I know how difficult it is to balance economics, care of creation and human health, but we have a moral and ethical imperative as human beings to do so. A quote by former Pope Benedict nudges me in my ministry.

“The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast. Therefore the earth’s treasures no longer serve to build God’s garden for all to live in, but they have been made to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction.”

Pope Francis, in a meeting with oil executives stated that climate change is a challenge of “epochal proportions.” And before the UN climate meeting in 2015 he mourned that we are on a suicidal path.

Just 2 weeks ago I was in the Permian Basin in New Mexico on one of many trips to meet with faith leaders and community people and to see the methane pollution with special flr cameras. As usual the air was acrid, the stories of people very sad. Again I cried at the incredible devastation of ranchland, farmland and wild land into vast patches of rampant oil and gas production. Looking into the future I could not imagine this area ever being without oil equipment, pipes and pollution. Another sacrifice zone in our state.

When I was in an area East of Artesia called loco hills several weeks ago in 105 temperatures I put on a gas mask because the fumes were so bad. In Hobbs, where I met with faith leaders and ministers the air was still bad and I felt so terrible that the people who live there breathe this day in and day out. I felt guilty that I could go back to Albuquerque. I cried as I heard one woman share that there is so much unusual cancer and asthma in the economically poor Hispanic community there. My memory is still haunted by an encounter several years ago where an African-American woman invited me into her home because she was concerned about a strong odor that was even stronger when the relentless wind blew in one direction. She did not  realize the problem was methane from a nearby well, that to this day is still polluting. She had a nephew die of a rare cancer. I still hear stories in my ears from native brothers and sisters in the Four Corners region, another methane hotspot. So much environmental and economic injustices plagues our state and yet financially we are one of the poorest states in the nation.