In the season finale, host Rebecca Kling reflects on how the climate crisis disproportionately impacts frontline communities and why these communities should be at the center of our collective fight against the structural inequities that perpetuate the crisis.
In Massachusetts, decades-old gas infrastructure is leaking methane, a super pollutant that heats up the climate much faster than carbon. Audrey Schulman, co-executive director of the Home Energy Efficiency Team, a grassroots non-profit working on cutting emissions from buildings, is advocating for renewable geothermal heating systems, a climate-safe way to heat homes without the worry of leaks and explosions.
On the South Side of San Antonio, a majority-Latino community lives near a coal plant that accounts for half of the city's carbon emissions. DeeDee Belmares, a climate justice organizer with Public Citizen, is working to educate and mobilize the community to retire the plant after years of toxic air and water pollution.
Steel mills and coal-fueled industry created a dirty past for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Though the city has cleaned up its environmental act in the past few decades, there’s still work to be done. Resident Laura Jacko fights for her neighborhood’s future.
Bill Halter has worked in the White House, sat on boards of tech companies, and served as lieutenant governor of Arkansas. In all these pursuits, he says he tries to “do well by doing good.” This led him back to his hometown in Little Rock to become CEO of Scenic Hill Solar, where business is booming.
Christopher Basaldú lives in Brownsville, Texas, where the oil and gas industries dominate. But to Christopher, the danger of the status quo is clear. A proposed export terminal for fracked gas threatens to destroy his tribe’s connection to spiritual and cultural sites.
Flare stacks, refineries and other signs of extractive industry have taken over much of the Gulf Coast of South Texas. But one pristine stretch of the shoreline remains intact near Brownsville. Bekah Hinojosa and her community are fighting locally, nationally and internationally to keep it this way.
Check out Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition at bearsearscoalition.org or on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
For Mary Lyn Stoll, the damaging effects of dirty energy and injustices caused by climate change are abundantly clear. But as a professor of ethics in Evansville, Indiana, the heart of coal country, teaching climate ethics is a lot more complicated.
Víctor Guzmán nunca esperó encontrarse esposado. Siendo padre y miembro vocal de la comunidad de Salinas en Puerto Rico, Víctor quiso una comunidad segura y saludable para sus hijos y para todos los puertorriqueños. Pero cuando las plantas térmicas de carbón empezaron a descargar ceniza tóxica cerca de Salinas, Víctor organizó a su comunidad para oponerse al transporte de cenizas tóxicas y a la creciente influencia de la industria carbonera en Puerto Rico.
Víctor Guzmán never expected to find himself in handcuffs. As a father and vocal community member of Salinas, Puerto Rico, Víctor wanted a safe and healthy home for his children and all Puerto Ricans. But when coal plants started dumping toxic coal ash near Salinas, Víctor organized the community to resist the coal ash trucks and confront the growing influence of big coal in Puerto Rico.
Russell Schiermeier runs an 800-acre farm in Bruneau, Idaho. Like much of Idaho, Russ’s farm is in a very arid climate, so irrigation is a must. As a result, Russ says Idaho farmers “live or die by our power costs." To address that, Russ installed solar in the pivot corners of his fields to pump water at lower cost than the grid. Russ is now active in building awareness among other farmers of the benefits of installing solar. Russ doesn’t push solar for altruistic reasons, he advocates for farmers’ best interests. He speaks to how solar can increase the value of farmland, boost the competitiveness of Idaho agriculture, and improve the economic resiliency of farming. Now, Russ has the largest solar farm in Idaho Power’s net metering program.
Read more here: Kinder Morgan sued over drilling fluid spill in Blanco County
Lucy Molina was a born fighter. Her grandmother, father and mother all marched for the rights of migrant farm workers alongside Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez. Lucy continues that fight by advocating for her home of Commerce City, Colorado, which, according to Lucy, lives up to its name… placing commercial interest above public interests like fresh air and clean water.
Just a few miles from downtown Mobile, Alabama, Africatown has a deep history that informs its name. It's home to descendants of enslaved people who were brought to this country aboard the last slave ship to enter the United States. When the Civil War ended, they purchased the land and called it Africatown. Today, the community is rich in history and culture, but it also suffers from decades of harmful environmental conditions. But Joe Womack is seeking environmental justice for his community and ancestors. He runs the Mobile Environmental Justice Action Coalition (MEJAC - mejac.wordpress.com) and Clean, Healthy, Educated, Safe, and Sustainable Communities (CHESS - facebook.com/AfricatownCHESS) which are working to clean up the mess and keep industry out, for good.
Lucia Urreta is a junior in high school from Houston. Growing up on the Gulf Coast, she was used to big storms and hurricanes. But she noticed they were getting scarier and more frequent. Then in September 2019, Tropical Storm Imelda hit, and Lucia knew it was time to take action. She organized a climate strike in front of city hall, spoke in front of the city council about the need for action, and started a petition to create a youth climate council for Houston. Lucia has been vocal about helping her community fight the climate crisis ever since. Lucia also works with Climate Cardinals (climatecardinals.org), an organization that makes climate science accessible in over 100 languages.
Will Behm grew up in woodsy southwestern Pennsylvania where he hiked, camped, and caught crawfish in a local creek. Now the local coal plant is threatening the beloved creek that defined his youth.
Paul Wilson is the pastor of the Union Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Union Hill, Virginia a small, historically Black community. When he found out that Dominion Energy and Duke Energy wanted to build a compressor station for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline in the middle of his community, it felt all too familiar. After organizing around protecting their community’s health from air and well water pollution from the station, Union Hill residents won their legal battle against the pipeline, leading to its cancellation in July 2020.
Casey Camp-Horinek is a member of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma and a longtime Native rights and environmental activist. She remembers what it was like to travel to South Dakota to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline and protect the sacred drinking water of the Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. While there, she and other protestors were attacked and arrested by hundreds of militarized police with tear gas and percussion grenades.
In North Minneapolis, the city’s largest Black neighborhood, a garbage incinerator burns nearly half the county’s waste to generate energy for corporations and businesses. The pollution from all those tons of burned trash stays right in North Minneapolis. Kyra Brown grew up near the incinerator without ever knowing about its damaging health effects. Now, Kyra is working to raise awareness and shut down the incinerator that has been polluting their community for years.