The consequences of climate and environmental policy unleashed

Remember the movie “Elysium”? Though the dystopian, science-fiction vision of a future Earth didn’t cause much of a stir when it was released in 2013, its premise deserves another look in 2024, when climate and environmental crises are disrupting countries across the globe. Even the average person can’t help but notice unseasonable fall weather, with T-shirts replacing puffy jackets, and deduce something is a little off.

The film’s “Elysium” was a space station floating outside the Earth’s atmosphere, a privileged habitat for the rich and powerful escaping a polluted and overpopulated world, where the poor toiled throughout shortened and diseased lifetimes unless they devised a way out and into that promised land in the sky.

Not exactly upbeat, but too close to reality in an America where residents in the majority-Black city of Flint, Mich., remain devastated from the effects of a water supply poisoned a decade ago by leaders who were supposed to be looking out for them. While officials assure them the water now meets federal standards, lead pipes still need to be replaced, and children who consumed and bathed in that water continue to suffer seizures and developmental setbacks.

Equal Time: What’s at stake for communities of color in the global climate crisis?

Dr. Beverly Wright has been a leading voice on the impact of the global climate crisis for decades, spreading awareness, working on solutions and educating the next generations. As executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, an organization she founded 30 years ago, and a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, she is the heart of the environmental justice movement.

With the Biden administration’s rollout of billions to help communities combat the effects of climate change, and the United Nations Climate Change Conference convening in the United Arab Emirates through Dec. 12, the spotlight is on the issue and efforts to help vulnerable countries cope with the crisis.

At COP28, Dr. Wright is sharing her organization’s work and amplifying the voices of those most affected: communities of color and indigenous people, particularly those in the Global South. She joins Equal Time to discuss her mission and her message.

It’s Hot as Hell. Why Are Pools Closed?

The temperature is going up, but the number of open, public pools isn’t. It’s not just a summer bummer; it’s turning into a public health crisis.

Guest: Mara Gay, member of the New York Times editorial board, focused on New York State and local affairs.

The Red States Punishing Green Businesses

State treasurers in red states have been banding together to punish companies that are trying to divest themselves from the fossil fuel industry. But it isn’t clear if, say, BlackRock needs West Virginia more than West Virginia needs BlackRock. And this new front in the culture war may come with a bill that taxpayers have to pay.

Guest: David Gelles, correspondent on the Climate desk at The New York Times, covering the intersection of public policy and the private sector.

When it’s staring you in the face, it just might be the truth

“Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

The phrase has morphed from hackneyed joke to cliche to words to live by.

When I saw the street scene from the familiar city of Tucson, Ariz., it looked like a creation of Claes Oldenburg. But this tableau of a port-a-potty sliding into a plastic heap in the Southwestern heat was reality, not art object, something I doubt the artist, who recently died at 93 after a career of creativity, could ever have imagined.

When I lived in Tucson 30-plus years ago, we certainly had our hot days, ones where the sun seemed to be sitting on your shoulders with no relief in the weather report. But I don’t remember witnessing anything like that.

Yet, that image and so many more — wildfires all over the world, buckling airport runways and Texas roadways “bleeding” the binder that holds them together — have resulted in solutions that could only be described as temporary. Wrapping London’s Hammersmith Bridge in foil or coating Phoenix streets with a gray emulsion might work, but for how long?

And what’s to become of the iconic Tour de France? The first yellow jersey donned by the bicycle race leader in 1919 was made of wool, the thought of which is more than scary in 2022, when riders and spectators risked their lives while navigating twisty routes throughout that broiling country.

What are leaders doing about a long-term threat we feel in our cities, our homes and our bodies?

Hedging, dissembling and putting it off on our children and grandchildren, who must be thrilled at yet another problem left by the grown-ups.

You don’t notice climate change, until you do

Though you’d hardly call me a skier, a skiing fan or a more than casual follower of the sport, even I have heard of American champion and Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn. So, I paused to listen when she plugged her new memoir on NPR. What kept my attention were her reflections on how climate change has shifted her sport in — when you think about it — predictable ways.

“It’s been so difficult the last few years to hold the entire World Cup schedule. A lot of the races that we have are a bit lower in altitude, and those races have been canceled more often than not,” she said. “The glaciers that I grew up skiing on in Austria and places like that are essentially gone. It’s incredibly sad, and global warming is something that’s very real for the world. And I feel like in the grand scheme of things, our sport doesn’t really matter in that way, but we see it firsthand.”

From fires out West that destroy cities in the blink of an eye to a record number of deadly tornadoes in the last month of last year, few areas of the globe have been spared. According to research released last year in the journal Nature Climate Change, at least 85 percent of the global population has experienced weather events made worse by climate change. And climate effects in other places can reach America’s shores.

However, as with most issues, including those based on science, there is a partisan divide when it comes to belief in the seriousness of the problem and what, if anything, needs to be done about it.

‘It’s always urgent when it’s about vote, voice and power’

Climate change, a major concern of this week’s United Nations General Assembly, affects people across the globe through immigration, food production and the economy, to name a few. But as Ashley K. Shelton tells Mary C. Curtis, climate change is also spurring voter suppression. Shelton, who leads the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice and is a founding member of the Black Southern Women’s Collective, is turning her attention to policies that need to be in place to ensure that Americans disproportionately affected by devastating weather events can fully participate in democracy.

Dysfunction in America is no longer just knocking on the door

My college roommate has been much in demand in the last few years. (In truth, the presidency of Donald Trump marked a definite uptick in her mainstream media popularity.) You see, her academic specialty is Sinclair Lewis. And if his 1935 novel, “It Can’t Happen Here,” was once seen as dystopian political fantasy, it became — in some circles — a plausible blueprint for the state of the United States of America. What, exactly, is happening here?

It’s human nature not to take crises too seriously until they come knocking at your front door. But we’ve passed that point on a host of issues, with too many citizens either in denial or using the dysfunction as a partisan tool rather than an all-hands-on-deck call to action.

Joe Biden, in his first address to the United Nations as president, asked questions the world hasn’t yet answered: “Will we meet the threat of challenging climate — the challenging climate we’re all feeling already ravaging every part of our world with extreme weather? Or will we suffer the merciless march of ever-worsening droughts and floods, more intense fires and hurricanes, longer heat waves and rising seas?”

It wasn’t that long ago, in 2015, in fact, that Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe toted a snowball onto the Senate floor to prove that the globe was not warming. And while that demonstration stands out for its absurdity and rejection of science, there are still leaders who downplay the importance of the effects of global warming, despite the reality of ever-more-destructive hurricanes in the South, never-ending fires in the West and scenes of New York subway stations awash in flood waters.

The U.S. has rejoined the Paris climate agreement that the Trump administration backed the country out of. But the size and scope of provisions in the congressional budget package to deal with the effects of climate change, a major part of the Biden agenda, are still being debated, including within the Democratic Party that barely controls the House and Senate.

That won’t stop climate from touching almost every other issue, from housing to food production to immigration. Certainly, those seeking refuge in the U.S. from places such as Central America and Haiti, ravaged by developments they may have had nothing to do with, won’t be stopped by walls or agents on horseback.

Seeking environmental justice: the impact of climate change on communities of color

The recent extreme climate event in Texas slammed many cities and towns throughout the state, but — as is the case in many natural disasters — communities of color were most affected. This has been a trend in the country, with many of these communities still feeling the effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Harvey – as well as man-made disasters such as the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. What is the cause of the disproportionate impact, and what policies can reverse this pattern?

Chrishelle Palay and Justin Onwenu join this episode of Equal Time. Palay runs the HOME Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for equitable recovery from natural disasters, while Onwenu is an environmental justice organizer for the Sierra Club and an appointee to the DNC’s Environment and Climate Crisis Council. With host Mary C. Curtis, each discusses the issue of environmental injustice not only in Texas, but across the country, and why long-standing inequities demand grassroots activism and change in local, state and federal policies.

POLITICAL WRAP: U.S. COVID Deaths Nearing 500,000; Texas Power Grid

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Another grim milestone nearing, as the U.S. prepares to reach 500,000 COVID deaths.

The latest as health officials stress the battle is far from over and remind the public to remain vigilant.

And a week of no power for many in the Lone Star State.

While Texas is the only state to have its own power grid, what are the vulnerabilities for North Carolina and the rest of the country?

Our political contributor Mary C. Curtis gives us her take in the video above.