Celebrating Black Climate Week

It’s Black Climate Week!

This is a week to celebrate the work of Black advocates, organizers, and agitators within the climate action space, and how Black people have been at the forefront of coming together to find creative and innovative solutions to protect our lands, waters, and homes from climate impacts. 

The reality of environmental injustice is one that’s largely well-known by now: Black, Indigenous, and Latine neighborhoods are being targeted by polluting industries. And this is true regardless of income level. Across the country, Black households in the $50,000 to $60,000 income bracket live in neighborhoods plagued by dangerous pollution more than white households with incomes below $10,000. Black Americans are 79% more likely than white Americans to live in neighborhoods with the greatest health impacts from pollution.

These statistics are obviously horrifying. But what they don’t highlight is the fact that, because Black communities have been unfairly targeted by polluters for years, Black communities have been at the forefront of bringing about radical and creative change, and leading the way into a livable future of our communal imagining. 

Another way we see Black leadership at the forefront of our movements is in learning to live and act within the reality of existential threat. While climate change is the biggest existential threat most people of any race will ever experience, for Black people (and many other people of color), it is by no means the first. Black people in this country have been taking action within the reality of existential threat for hundreds of years, and there’s much to be learned from the example of Black leaders of social justice movements over the years and now - of how to remain obstinately courageous, how to deal with our grief without letting it overwhelm us, how to remain honest about the reality of the situation and the scale of the changes we need, how to dream the worlds we want into being, and how to be so bold as to bring joy into our movements, even in the face of existential threat. 

For more information on Black Climate Week and what we can do to support the work of Black movement leaders, head over to The Solutions Project.