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Fossil Fuel Racism How Phasing out Oil, Gas, and Coal Can Protect Communities

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Fossil Fuel Racism How Phasing out Oil, Gas, and Coal Can Protect Communities © Les Stone / Greenpeace Fossil Fuel Racism How Phasing Out Oil, Gas, and Coal Can Protect Communities PUBLISHED: APRIL 13, 2021 www.greenpeace.org/usa/fossil-fuel-racism Contents Executive Summary . 1 Introduction . 5 1 . Environmental Justice . 7 2 . Fossil Fuels and Air Pollutants . 10 AUTHORS 3 . Fossil Fuel Phaseout . 12 Tim Donaghy, Ph.D. 4 . Extraction . 15 Charlie Jiang Oil and Gas Extraction . 15 Coal Mining . 18 CONTRIBUTORS Colette Pichon Battle, Esq. 5 . Processing & Transport . 19 Emma Collin Oil Refining, Natural Gas Processing & Petrochemical Manufacturing . 19 Janet Redman Pipelines & Terminals . 23 Ryan Schleeter 6 . Combustion . 24 General Exposure to Criteria Air Pollution . 24 SPECIAL THANKS TO Coal and Natural Gas Power Plants . 25 Noel Healy Aidan Farrow Mobile Sources and Traffic Exposure . 26 Anusha Narayanan 7 . Climate Impacts . 28 Ashley Thomson 8 . Policy Recommendations . 30 Caroline Henderson Charlie Cray 1. End fossil fuel racism and reverse the legacies of historical injustices . 30 Jonathan Butler 2. Phase out fossil fuel production . 31 Angela Mooney D’Arcy 3. Ensure no worker or community is left behind . 31 Michael Ash 4. Enact a green and just economic recovery . 31 EDITOR 5. Protect and expand our democracy to make it work for all people . 32 Charlie Jiang Acknowledgments . 33 Endnotes . 34 DESIGNED BY Kyle McKibbin Cover image by Les Stone © Robert Visser / Greenpeace This report is endorsed by: Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments ...and more. See the full list at: http://greenpeace.org/usa/fossil-fuel-racism FOSSIL FUEL RACISM | II Executive Summary Fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas — lie at the heart of the crises we face, including public health, racial injustice, and climate change. This report synthesizes existing research and provides new analysis that finds that the fossil fuel industry contributes to public health harms that kill hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. each year and disproportionately endanger Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor communities. President Joe Biden and the 117th Congress have a historic opportunity to improve public health, tackle the climate crisis, and confront systemic racism at the same time by phasing out fossil fuel production and use. Each stage of the life cycles of oil, gas, and coal — Tackling this fossil fuel racism would go a long way to extraction, processing, transport, and combustion address our present overlapping crises and correct the — generates toxic air and water pollution, as well as injustices that historically targeted communities have greenhouse gas emissions that drive the global climate faced. A fossil fuel phaseout — an immediate halt to new crisis. Exposure to fossil fuel pollution is linked to negative extraction and infrastructure build-out and managed health impacts for people living near these pollution wind-down of existing production that prioritizes the sources. The impacts of climate change are also strongly needs of affected workers and communities — is linked with rising health risks and threaten the ability necessary to end fossil fuel racism and fully address of humans to live in various regions of the planet. The the public health, racial injustice, and climate crises. public health hazards from air and water pollution, and risks associated with climate change, fall Research shows that phasing out fossil fuels will deliver disproportionately on Black, Latinx, Indigenous, immediate public health improvements to historically Asian, and poor communities. targeted communities. Furthermore, any serious policy to address the climate crisis will inevitably require rapid In addition to the accumulated negative impact on human reductions in fossil fuel consumption and production. But, health and the environment, fossil fuels depend on and policies that narrowly focus on carbon reductions without contribute to the legacy of systemic racism in the United considering the full effects of greenhouse gas-emitting States. Oil, gas, and coal activity in the United States takes sources could fail to reduce local air and water pollution place on the ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples, making and end up perpetuating the racially inequitable impacts the fossil fuel industry complicit beneficiaries of the forced of the fossil fuel economy. Poorly designed climate policies removal and genocide of Indigenous peoples. Racist could exacerbate pollution disparities and concentrate practices such as redlining and housing discrimination, pollution in community “hotspots” even as overall carbon longstanding social and racial inequalities, colonization, emissions decline. A fossil fuel phaseout would ensure air Indigenous genocide and removal, and elected officials and water pollution as well as greenhouse gas emissions who are beholden to corporate power all combine to create are reduced as part of a comprehensive response to the a system in which the most dangerous impacts of pollution climate crisis . fall most heavily on the most disadvantaged, particularly Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor communities. President Joe Biden, the 117th Congress, and the nation have a mandate to transform our economy to repair More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated past injustices and build a better future in which all the disproportionate burden shouldered by these communities can thrive. This decade will be crucial for historically targeted communities across the United putting our economy on a climate-safe trajectory, and States, including by magnifying the health risks of air the next year is a critical window for action to put us on pollution from fossil fuels. the right track. President Biden can fulfill his promises to FOSSIL FUEL RACISM | 1 confront systemic racism, tackle the climate crisis, and | Key sources for particulate pollution include coal-fired Build Back Better by initiating a fossil fuel phaseout. power plants4 and vehicle transportation,5 each of which disproportionately impacts Black, Brown, Indigenous, This report gives an overview of recent scientific studies and poor communities . and analyses of the harms due to fossil fuels and their disproportionate impact on Black, Brown, Indigenous, Oil and gas extraction releases hazardous air and poor communities in the United States. The report pollutants that disproportionately burden Black, also contributes new analysis of the disproportionate Brown, Indigenous, and poor communities: impacts of toxic pollution from petroleum refineries | The extraction and processing of oil and gas is and petrochemical facilities on Black, Brown, and poor associated with emissions of a wide range of hazardous communities. The report reviews impacts from each air pollutants, including carcinogens such as benzene phase of the fossil fuel life cycle — extraction, processing, and endocrine disruptors .6 transport, combustion — and climate change impacts. | Nationally, 17.6 million people live within one mile of Key findings include: an active oil or gas well7 — more than the populations Burning fossil fuels harms public health, of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston disproportionately impacting Black, Brown, combined. More than 6.1 million people live within Indigenous, and poor communities: three miles of an oil and gas refinery.8 | Harmful air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels | Emerging scientific studies have linked exposure to oil (especially particulate matter and ground-level ozone) is and gas activity with negative health impacts including 9 a well-established health threat associated with respiratory elevated cancer risk, pregnancy complications, and 10 and cardiovascular risks and premature mortality.1 respiratory and cardiovascular disease . | In 2018 in the United States, there were roughly 355,000 | New analysis of the Environmental Protection Agency’s premature deaths due to fossil fuel-linked air pollution,2 (EPA) Toxics Release Inventory finds that oil refineries carrying an economic cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. and petrochemical facilities (which provide key inputs for plastics production) are among the worst polluting | People of color, especially Black/African-American sectors of the economy, and that the toxic burden of people, and poor people are found to bear a those sectors falls disproportionately on Black, Brown, disproportionately high burden of fossil fuel pollution Indigenous, and poor communities.11 across the United States. Black/African-American people have 1 .54 times the exposure to particulate matter | Although findings vary by region, oil and gas extraction compared to the overall population .3 is also found to have disproportionate impacts on people of color, especially Black/African-American people.12 © Les Stone / Greenpeace Marshall Steam Station. Smoke billowing from the chimney at the Marshall Steam Station in Catawba County, North Carolina. Operating since 1965, this coal-fired power station has a 2,090-megawatt generating capacity and emitted 11.5 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2011. FOSSIL FUEL RACISM | 2 Phasing out fossil fuels would immediately improve Local and regional case studies of fossil fuel public health, tackle the climate crisis, and address production in highly impacted areas shed greater historical injustices. light on the dangers to nearby communities: | Many of the same communities dealing with the toxic | In south Texas, fracking wastewater wells16 and oil legacy of fossil fuels are also on the front lines of rising and gas flares17 disproportionately harm Latinx climate impacts.
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