HOUSTON — On a recent Sunday afternoon, tears welled in Sharon Becnel’s eyes as she heard her now 34-year-old daughter reminisce about the scrapbook she lost to Hurricane Katrina. Inside the pages were Ronisha Johnson’s childhood dreams of becoming an actress and winning a big case as a lawyer. She had only packed for a […]
Environmental Justice
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Housing, Land Pollution
Black Women Fight for Life in Houston’s Most Toxic — and Gentrifying — Neighborhood
When Carolyn Rivera moved to Settegast, a majority-Black neighborhood in northeast Houston, 45 years ago, horses roamed the streets and nearly every homestead had a backyard farm where chickens and speckled feather guinea hens darted between rows of corn and greens. Rivera, who turns 83 next month, remembers those early days with a kind of […]
Posted inClimate Change, Environmental Justice, Extreme Weather, Partner Content
30 Years After Chicago’s Deadliest Heat Wave, Systemic Racism Is Still the Root Problem
Originally published by Inside Climate News CHICAGO — Cheryl Johnson was watching the news during the worst heat wave in her city’s history when she learned that a man she’d known since she was a child had been found dead on the steps of a church downtown. She’ll never forget the moment. Her friend — […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Extreme Weather
A Flood Crisis Is Escalating. Southern Black Communities Face Double The Risk.
One month before the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Black residents across southern Louisiana braced for their first tropical disturbance of hurricane season. The storm threatened to bring flash flooding across the coast from Mississippi to the center of Louisiana. Thousands of residents stocked up with drinking water and sandbags in preparation for imminent power […]
Posted inClimate Change, Extreme Weather, Housing
After LA Fires, Black Altadena Faces Foreclosure and Displacement
Six months after California’s Eaton Fire, Black residents of Altadena find themselves at the epicenter of a mounting national crisis as state and federal foreclosure moratoriums expire. A Capital B analysis of public records found that roughly three dozen fire-ravaged properties have been added to pre-foreclosure lists — a public record of homes where owners […]
Posted inClimate Change, News, Partner Content
How to Use Clean Energy Tax Credits Before Congress Kills Them
This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. The “one big beautiful bill” that President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4 is set to upend many aspects of American life, including climate policy. The law, which Republicans backed en masse, not only derails the nation’s efforts to […]
Posted inClimate Change, Culture, Social Welfare, Sports
Black Kids Are 2x More Likely To Drown. This Organization is Offering Free Swim Lessons.
Across the country, Black children and youth are twice as likely as the general population to die by drowning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And this crisis is compounded by the fact that their parents are 20% more likely to be non-swimmers, creating a cycle that perpetuates the problem across generations, […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Extreme Weather, Mental Health, Partner Content
Extreme Heat Is Causing a Black Suicide Crisis in Phoenix. Urban Farms Offer a Lifeline
LIKE THOUSANDS OF OTHER BLACK AMERICANS, Tiffany Hawkins’ grandparents, Earnest and Mattie Lee Johnson, left the Jim Crow South in the 1950s to pick cotton in Arizona’s desert. Many sought opportunities in cities like Chicago and Detroit, but the Johnsons chose Arizona, where their lives and those of their children — including Hawkins’ mother, Arlene […]
Posted inAir Pollution, Environmental Justice, Politics & Policy
A Historic Black Community Takes On the World’s Richest Man Over Environmental Racism
Last summer, Elon Musk quietly transformed a portion of a South Memphis, Tennessee, community established by a group of formerly enslaved people in 1863 into what the world’s wealthiest man called “Colossus” — the planet’s most powerful supercomputer. The artificial intelligence venture turned an old manufacturing plant into a powerful 550-acre supercomputer designed to train […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Extreme Weather
FEMA Cuts Hit as 2025 Hurricane Forecast Predicts Brutal Storm Season
As the temperatures rose across Louisiana during Memorial Day weekend, the heat index, a measure of air temperature and humidity, approached triple digits. Bayou State residents seeking relief from the extreme temperatures turned up their fans and air conditioners, pushing an aging electrical grid to the breaking point. And by nightfall, more than 100,000 people […]