Growing up was confusing and sometimes difficult for me. I went through all of the typical ‘growing up’ things- puberty, first crushes, college apps. But it wasn’t just that.  I was one of the only Malaysians in my international school (located in Malaysia). I was told that studying environmental studies was a ‘Western’ thing for me to do, and that I was betraying my Asian lawyer side in pursuing it. I was told that because I was a woman and Chinese, I would never be able to make large scale changes for Malaysian environmental policy.

My identities were fluid, with the different aspects of my life— race, gender, privilege— seeming to both conflict and connect with one another, sometimes against society’s problems and sometimes not.  And I couldn’t wrap my head around that.

Then I came across the term ‘intersectional environmentalism’ (IE), coined by Black environmental activist Leah Thomas. IE recognises the conflicting and connected identities in people across all kinds of injustice. It recognises how climate change is experienced  by people facing different social injustices in different ways. It is feminism, not because it centers women, but because it aims for equity and justice, especially for people most affected by climate change. When I came across IE for the first time, I felt like I had something to describe my conflicting experiences that were not solely about my womanhood, or my Asian-ness, or the fact that I don’t always identify first with ‘woman’ or ‘Asian’, but person/competitor, and Southeast Asian.

The IE movement, inspired by Leah Thomas’ definition, has gained momentum in  recent years. Younger generations particularly love it, because of its focus on environmental justice and intersectionality. It allows people to understand the many discriminated-against  identities that they have– Black, queer, poor, woman, and more. It also makes green/environmental spaces a more welcoming place for people with these identities.

I’m excited to learn about other peoples’ intersectional experiences— about how they relate to IE, and their relationship with the climate crisis. I’ll explore topics like: what intersectional environmentalism looks like for people of color in traditionally white outdoor spaces, how intersectional environmentalism succeeds where feminism fails, intersectional environmentalism as a growing area of academic inquiry , and examine intersectional environmental  movements around the world.

In the northeastern corner of Oklahoma, an hour and a half outside Tulsa, there is a ghost town. Vines and spray paint cover the houses and the grey of pavement is giving way to patches of the native grass. A water tower overlooks it all. The town’s name, “Picher”, is painted in large red letters on its side, right above “Gorillas Since 1918.” 

[Source: formulanone on Flickr ]

Picher’s most unique feature is something you won’t find in any other ghost town—massive hills of white. This part of the landscape, however, is manmade—the result of decades of mining. While visually shocking, they also give insight into why the town is now abandoned. They are piles of mine waste. Acid mine drainage discharges from the old mines and contaminates public waterways. The hills that contain lead and zinc get blown by the wind, coating the surrounding area and, most worryingly, entering the lungs of local residents. Whether by air or by water, this mine waste is the cause of a public health emergency. As lead entered the bodies of those who once lived in Picher and continues to enter those who live in the surrounding communities, numerous health problems have occurred, from kidney disease to reproductive issues. 

[Source: Alice Dricker]

Picher is part of the Tar Creek Superfund site, named after the river which runs through it. It is one of nearly two thousand different locations in the United States that have been identified by the federal government as areas of intense contamination due to hazardous waste. These locations are called Superfund sites after the Superfund program, which allows the Environmental Protection Agency to secure funds and resources to clean contaminated areas. In 2004, those funds were used to buyout Picher’s homeowners, turning it into the abandoned town it is today. 

Communities near Superfund sites face many hazards. Almost all Superfund sites, including Tar Creek, were once bustling industrial towns. But the practices which brought them wealth are the same that contaminated the environment. In addition to the destruction of the land, communities near Superfund sites are often negatively impacted financially, and, perhaps most urgently, they face a range of life-threatening health consequences. While communities near the Tar Creek Superfund site face lead poisoning, communities near other Superfund sites may face respiratory illnesses or heart diseases.

Humans are, and always will be, deeply connected to the land on which they live. Pretending otherwise does a grave disservice to the communities living near Superfund sites. Action needs to be taken to address the public health emergencies occurring in these areas. In Picher a major action happened in the form of a buyout, resulting in the residents moving away. That being said, the public health consequences of the Tar Creek Superfund site continue to this day, as the contaminated water and soil has spread beyond Picher’s town boundaries. Superfund sites require continued efforts to remove their hazards and to work towards restoring the communities around them. By first defining what resources are lacking and then finding ways to remove gaps in access, communities that have been harmed for decades by environmental pollution can finally move forward in healing.

From insufficient air conditioning to flooded roads, from inconvenient weather to catastrophic droughts, the consequences of the climate crisis are increasingly apparent. Scientists warn that the future could be bleak without immediate action.  How will the world survive?

The immediate answer may just lie below our feet or over our heads. How cities are built are opportunities for innovation that can create sustainable, safe places to live. Recent injuries in Arizona from residents tripping and burning themselves on sidewalks could have been prevented by making use of ‘cool pavement’ technologies. Hurricane Idalia made headlines after flooding Florida’s coast, but that damage could have been minimized by new innovations in flood barrier technology. 

Exploring these types of environmental engineering projects means digging into the root of more structural issues. Looking at hot sidewalks, cool pavement technology may be a promising solution—but it is important to wonder why sidewalks are so hot in the first place. The heat island effect, in which urban areas absorb more heat than rural areas can help explain this phenomenon. Urban areas feature not just more heat-absorbing pavement and buildings, but fewer trees and green spaces to help cool the area down.

It seems though that such problems arising from climate change are even more complicated when considered in historical context. Distinctions in climate preparedness between neighborhoods are associated with decades of intentional racist housing practices. Simple band-aid solutions won’t solve these injustices. Sometimes well intentioned strategies can make things worse. For instance, a neighborhood’s new green developments can outprice current residents from their own homes in the process of green gentrification.

This multifaceted examination of sustainable innovation will consider what environmental technology has to offer. Innovation, new policy standards, and careful implementation are crucial to face a world projected to be 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) hotter by 2050. Looking towards environmental innovation is not just a tool for understanding the current status of the world, but for finding hope for a sustainable, just, and comfortable future.

Louisiana has one of the highest cancer incidence rates in the country. It’s not because Louisianans are genetically predisposed to cancer. The high level of cancer rates in Louisiana is due to “Cancer Alley”, a region dotted with petrochemical plants along the Mississippi River. In LaPlace, Louisiana, a town in Cancer Alley, residents have been exposed to elevated levels of chloroprene, a carcinogen, since the opening of the Denka Performance Elastomer plant 40 years ago. In 1988 alone, the Denka facility emitted 479 tonnes of chloroprene. 

In February, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) filed a complaint  against Denka citing the Clean Air Act. As a result, Denka needed to substantially cut its chloroprene emissions to protect LaPlace residents. However, after Denka counter-sued, the EPA dropped the complaint, claiming little chance of resolution by the July deadline. The EPA stepping away has left the community with a high health burden and little hope for legal recourse beyond a class action lawsuit. Today, our legal system is ill-equipped to hold corporations fully and consistently responsible for poor health outcomes. Reform is needed. 

As corporations pollute, surrounding communities face adverse health impacts. When people are exposed to dangerous levels of pollution, as in the case of LaPlace, the risk of adverse health effects increases. What if an individual diagnosed with cancer due to Denka’s action wanted to take legal action? After all, a doctor who didn’t do everything in their power to save a patient’s life would face legal action. Why not encourage that same accountability for polluting corporations? 

For plaintiffs, the biggest hurdle is proving a direct link between environmental exposures and health outcomes. This is due to the complex web created out of environmental pollutants and individual health determinants. Additionally, causation is confounded with the time lag between exposure and health effects, making the polluter at fault hard to pinpoint. That means individuals in LaPlace have few legal recourse options. 

Reforming our legal system could happen in a variety of ways. It might include rethinking traditional legal norms, increasing government funding to subsidize legal costs, or changing the laws around polluting entirely to place the legal burden on companies. 

There is hope for people facing environmental justice issues. Just last year, a court in Louisiana reversed the decision to issue air permits to Formosa Plastics in a community adjacent to LaPlace. Additionally, the EPA and the Department of Justice are taking additional action against Formosa. 

By reforming old legal norms and policies to the 21st century, environmental justice is possible. I’m going to explore what reform is needed in the legal system to ensure that individuals have accessible and reliable legal resources to pursue environmental justice.

I think I heard “ChatGPT” more than I heard my own name this summer. People are both intrigued and concerned regarding artificial intelligence’s (AI) capabilities, but what many people haven’t thought about is how AI will affect our environment.

To me, AI’s application to our environment should read like a medical commercial. The first half of the commercial details amazing benefits, such as how AI can optimize renewable energy systems, improve monitoring of severe weather events, and even generate new ideas to make our environment more sustainable.

That all sounds great! Look at my renewable energy internship– I could use AI to scan through hundreds of pages of dense documentation, help debug sections of code, and work towards improving models of safety measures and renewable energy generation efficiency. This would allow me to maximize my productivity and think bigger.

Exciting, right? Then comes that pesky second half of the commercial that distracts you with an adorable puppy while the narrator speeds through the risks: AI can be prejudiced due to biased data, present incorrect information, and overlook important risks. What they probably wouldn’t mention, but is also significant, is that it takes an incredible amount of energy to train AI models. If I took all of AI’s instructions for face value, I could be stuck in an infinite loop of fixing errors. Sometimes AI simply provides incorrect code that it cannot correct, and I’ve had to actually call a real person to get the example code I needed. I guess AI won’t be taking her job….

So do the side effects mean you shouldn’t take the medication? It depends– sometimes taking a calculated risk makes sense. The truth is that AI is here to stay, which means we must be proactive in managing the “side effects” of AI. Technology is actually pretty dumb, AI included. It can’t truly think for itself. It still has to be told what to do! Because of this, we need to examine factors like how the data we use may be biased, where the energy to train AI models comes from, and what are components of an environmental problem or solution that an artificially intelligent system may have overlooked. This semester, I will critically examine how artificial intelligence can be thoughtfully utilized to better our environment.

Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons, Flikr

This year Arizona witnessed an unprecedented summer of heat waves. In Phoenix, the thermometer climbed above 110 degrees 54 times, and 31 of those days came back to back. As heat waves grow in intensity and consistency, the resilience of the homes that Arizonians inhabit becomes critical. As one of the few states without a statewide building code, Arizona leaves the requirements up to local jurisdictions. Lower-income communities like Gila Bend in Maricopa County and Kayenta on the Navajo Nation still operate according to standards that haven’t been updated since 2006. These outdated building bodes are putting people in life-threatening situations. 

But this crisis is a two-sided problem: these older houses also use more energy.  Keeping rooms at a comfortable temperature, illuminating spaces, and heating water for bathing uses more energy and costs more money. In fact, households with low incomes spend more than 13 percent of their total income on energy, which is nearly five times more than other, more well-off, households. 

The climate crisis and housing are unavoidably intertwined. In a world of rising energy prices and concerns about resource depletion, the financial and physical costs of older housing become an urgent topic, especially when considering how it disproportionately affects lower-income families. 

Investing in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and climate protection programs are important ways for the government to provide low-income communities with healthier and more resilient homes. Homes that use energy and water efficiently, aren’t just more environmentally sustainable, they can also reduce expenses for lower-income households. 

A key piece of the Biden administration’s climate policy is the Weatherization Assistance Program, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while lowering energy costs for 700,000 low-income U.S. households over the next five years. Weatherization assistance is meant to address the whole house by “installing insulation, updating heating and cooling systems, upgrading electrical appliances, and taking other common-sense actions that will make homes warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer with less energy usage.”

However, this program is still leaving behind the homes that need the most help.  Homes that inspectors decide need too significant of repairs or have too high repair costs are deferred. Ultimately, the homes in the worst conditions and those living in them are left behind.

For my beat this semester, I will be focusing on U.S. climate change policies related to extreme weather and affordable housing. I will write about policies like the Weatherization Assistance Program and evaluate their promises to mitigate the effects of environmental issues. Ensuring the availability of safe, affordable housing while mitigating and building resilience to climate change is more crucial now than ever.