Communities of color are using this year's Black History Month to advocate for health and wellness, including calling attention to environmental justice and equity.

Those who live in predominantly Black or African American communities suffer greater risk of premature death from particle air pollution than those who live in predominantly white communities.

Cathryn McGill, executive director of the New Mexico Black Leadership Council, said when states craft policies related to environmental issues, Black and brown communities need to be at the table, especially as they relate to health.

"If we start to say, what are the underlying themes and conditions and why Black children are being diagnosed with autism more often, or that we have infant mortality issues in certain areas," McGill outlined.

A new study from Nature Climate Change found in less than 30 years, U.S. flood risk will increase by 26%, a risk projected to disproportionately impact Black communities, particularly along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

McGill argued climate change needs to be a "big tent" conversation to ensure all people, regardless of race and ethnicity, get equal protection.

"One thing that we can do right now in the Black communities is to create infrastructure," McGill emphasized. "So that when issues come up we have the ability to address them, and we have the ability to mobilize our communities."

President Joe Biden's more than one trillion-dollar Build Back Better spending package is cited as a step toward reducing health disparities in communities of color. The package includes new funding for improving energy efficiency in affordable housing and boosting tax credits for renewable-energy generation serving low-income communities.

Three environmental nonprofits filed suit Wednesday against the California Air Resources Board to oppose the expansion of a program allowing oil and gas companies to offset their pollution by buying credits from huge farms producing natural gas from animal waste.

Last month, the state amended the low carbon fuel standard to expand credits favoring biogas, arguing it removes methane from the waste stream and creates renewable power.

Tyler Lobdell, staff attorney for the nonprofit co-plaintiff Food and Water Watch, said the program is actually a perverse incentive for factory farms to get bigger.

"The biggest operators, the biggest polluters, are the most rewarded," Lobdell pointed out. "That is the incentive structure here. Go out and be as big and as polluting as possible, and you will see the largest reward from our program."

The low carbon fuel standard is intended to reduce carbon pollution by incentivizing the transition to clean cars. The lawsuit argued the credit program prioritizes pollution-heavy practices over sustainable solutions.

Lobdell noted manure only produces methane when large quantities are liquefied at concentrated animal feeding operations. He suggested the state require factory farms to manage their manure in ways which do not rely on anaerobic environments emitting methane.

"The real solution to addressing pollution is to reduce the pollution, not to monetize it and lock it in for generations," Lobdell contended. "We should be requiring these facilities to more sustainably manage their waste. That would have climate benefits, that would also have benefits to local air quality and to local water quality."

The lawsuit asks the court to require the California Air Resources Board to disclose, analyze and mitigate the environmental impact caused by the change to the low-carbon fuel standard. The other two plaintiffs include the nonprofits Defensores del Valle Central para el Aire y Agua Limpio, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund.


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Business leaders, clean transportation advocates and other experts say new technologies are helping to accelerate the transition to clean trucks and sustainable freight across Pennsylvania. Members of the Clean Trucks Pennsylvania Coalition are calling on federal and state leaders to back programs that support the deployment of clean-power trucks across the Commonwealth.

Jordan Stutt, senior director, northeast region with CALSTART, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing clean transportation solutions, said the goal is to get gas and diesel-powered trucks off the road.

"We are going to take one of the busiest freight corridors in the country, I-95, and turn it into one of the first zero-emission freight corridors in the U.S. That investment and the jobs that it will bring underscore that this transition to clean trucks is all about opportunity," he said.

The coalition is urging Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and state and local leaders to adopt the Advanced Clean Trucks Act. Advocates say the act would reduce emissions by 50% by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2050.

Brooke Petry, field organizer with Moms Clean Air Force of Pennsylvania, said zero-emission trucks are the key to cleaning up the air Pennsylvania families breathe. When residents of South Philadelphia step outside in the morning, the air often has a distinct toxic smell, and she added that toxic air pollution doesn't harm everyone equally.

"Here in Philadelphia, children of color are hospitalized for asthma complications at five times the rate of their white peers. Reducing harmful diesel pollution from trucks is a key component to address climate justice in our city and beyond," she explained.

Erin Johnson, Registered Nurse with the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, said diesel exhaust is responsible for multiple types of respiratory illnesses and cancers in the region.

"The trucks, buses, trains and port operations that keep goods and services moving through our region also contribute to deadly air pollution. Diesel exhaust contains more than 40 known cancer-causing organic substances. The good news is that we have solutions to this diesel pollution problem," she said.


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Members of the environmental nonprofit GreenLatinos are involved in a push to get more Latinos across Texas involved in the fight against methane gas. Texas is one of the largest producers of the hazardous chemical.

Rogelio Meixueiro, Texas community advocate with GreenLatinos, said a large part of the campaign is educating the community.

"They tell me all the problems that they're experiencing, and the moment I connect with them the fact that there's a fracking site less than a mile away, they start seeing how, 'yeah ever since we moved to this area, we started having breathing problems.' The one that hurts me the most is really the birth defects. Learning that Latino women are some of the most impacted with birth defects is heartening," he explained.

He added that meetings will be held across the state over the next six months, culminating with a final day of action in Austin before the state Legislature.

The organization is forming what they call the Latino Methane Table, to make sure everyone has a seat at the table. Meixueiro said elected officials are passing laws that directly impact the immigrant population, and they hope to give them a voice before the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

"We're seeing how Latinos are constantly affected the most in the agriculture fields, construction. It's so hot, often we don't associate 'oh, methane' - the thing that we are getting out of the Permian - is actually the one that is creating some of the conditions," he explained.

He added the state has a history of being unfair to minorities.

"For Dallas and Fort Worth, what we're noticing is that there's a long history that is tied with redlining. And we notice how often the communities with the most amount of permits approved for fracking - fracking near day-care centers, fracking near homes - it's usually areas where particularly Latino and Black communities live," he continued.