OUR FUTURE NOW! PODCAST EPISODE # 4
COVID-19’s Connection to Environmental Injustice is the title of the fourth episode of the recently launched Our Future: Now! A National Children’s Campaign Podcast. The show’s co-host Jonah Gottlieb and Natalie Mebane are joined by Mustafa Santiago Ali, who is Vice President of Environmental Justice, Climate, and Community Revitalization for the National Wildlife Federation.
To listen to the Podcast you can go here. It can also be heard on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts and at the National Children’s Campaign and Parentology website.
Ali has spent his entire career fighting for environmental justice, most of which was spent at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) until 2017 when he submitted a resignation letter faulting the agency’s direction under the Trump Administration. His journey and efforts are the focus of the interview. In addition, they discuss the intersectionality between the coronavirus and climate change.
For example, Gottlieb lives in Sanoma County, California which has endured intense wildfires that are supercharged by climate change. A lot of residents in the area have suffered lung damage from all the smoke that was in the air, which makes them especially vulnerable to the coronavirus – a disease that attacks the lungs. Clearly a more robust effort to fight climate change would prevent this type of scary scenario.
The Trump Administration propensity to give into the whims of corporate special interests has limited the EPA’s ability to protect vulnerable communities from the toxic pollutants that cause health problems like asthma, making those residents also more suspectable to the ravages of the coronavirus.
The National Children’s Campaign is a big supporter of The Resources for Workforce Investment (ReWind) Act, which are companion bills introduced by Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-Calif.) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) that would prevent the Trump Administration from bailing out the fossil fuel industry with Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) Act funds. These companies are the main drivers of climate change and are also big polluters. therefore giving them taxpayer funding during a pandemic is a recipe for exacerbating the health challenges we face and a misappropriation of resources that should be going to struggling small businesses, households that have taken an income hit, more personal protection equipment for frontline workers, greater testing capacity for the disease and for states suffering through an economic calamity that also have the pressure of balancing their budgets.
Something that happened after this podcast episode occurred offers further proof for why the ReWind Act is necessary. Bharat Ramamurti, who is a member of the Congressional Oversight Commission that is monitoring how the Trump Administration is dispersing CARES Act funds, tweeted:
Update: we now know that Trump Administration officials “worked very closely with the Federal Reserve” to make these changes so taxpayer-backed loans would be available to oil and gas firms. How do we know? The Energy Secretary went on TV and said so.
To be specific, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette went on Bloomberg TV and said President Trump told him and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin “to evaluate the programs that were passed by the Congress and ensure that there is access for these energy industries to those programs. And that’s what we’ve done,”
For activists like Ali, Gottlieb and Mebane there is no rest for the weary during these unprecedented times. But their works will make for safer and fairer planet.