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environmental justice
Bluelining Is the New Redlining
Bluelining occurs when insurers raise their prices or pull out of areas that they perceive to be at greater environmental risk. These tend to be minority or low-income areas made vulnerable by historic discrimination.
Aug 24, 2024
On July 21, the world experienced the hottest global temperature on record, only to surpass that record the next day. However, not everyone experiences the impacts of this heat and other climate-exacerbated disasters equally. As summer intensifies, the impacts of climate change—especially extreme heat—are becoming more severe, disproportionately affecting low-income and minority populations.
In the U.S., a history of racial discrimination in finance and housing policies has left Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities more susceptible to the impacts of climate change and less equipped to recover from extreme weather disasters. Today, home insurers are pulling out of areas they perceive as risky to climate hazards, once again leaving BIPOC communities behind.
From Redlining to Bluelining
The disparate impact of climate change on property and infrastructure in U.S. minority communities is the result of nearly a century of discriminatory home lending and insurance policies.
In the 1930s, the U.S. federal government used a rating system in its low-cost home loan program to assess lending risk. Assessors created maps ranking the perceived risk of lending in certain neighborhoods, with race often used as the determining factor in assessing a community’s risk level. Black and immigrant neighborhoods were typically rated as ‘hazardous’ and outlined in red, warning lenders that the area was a perilous place to lend money. This practice became known as redlining, and the term is often used today to refer to racial discrimination in any government or corporate financial policies.
In many U.S. cities, maps from the 1930s showing redlined neighborhoods could be used as modern flood risk maps.
Redlining and other discriminatory practices, such as racial profiling in the provision of home insurance, led to a lack of investment in minority and vulnerable communities. This lack of financial access resulted in shoddy construction and poor infrastructure that has made minority neighborhoods less resilient to climate change.
Though redlining is now illegal, its legacy endures. These neighborhoods’ growing exposure to climate-related damage has left them vulnerable to other financial risks. Not only are homes in these areas more likely to be damaged by climate hazards, but insurers are more likely to increase insurance rates if they determine that properties are more likely to suffer environmental damage. This new financial practice is known as bluelining, and it occurs when insurers raise their prices or pull out of areas that they perceive to be at greater environmental risk.
While not illegal, bluelining disproportionately impacts minority and lower-income residents. Bluelining—the ‘new’ redlining—is now placing both the physical and financial burden of climate change on those least equipped to deal with its impacts.
How Past Redlining Created Climate Vulnerable Communities
In many U.S. cities, maps from the 1930s showing redlined neighborhoods could be used as modern flood risk maps. A Redfin study reveals that $107 billion worth of homes in formerly redlined neighborhoods face high flood risks—25% more than in non-redlined, predominantly white neighborhoods. Other studies have found that formerly redlined neighborhoods are more vulnerable to extreme heat and more likely to experience prolonged power outages during a storm. These disparities are a direct result of nearly a century of divestment and restricted access to capital, which deprived these neighborhoods of critical climate resilience infrastructure such as sewers and levees to capture flood waters and green spaces to absorb rising heat.
As a result of this lack of infrastructure, minority and vulnerable communities in the U.S. face the most severe and direct effects of climate change. In a 2021 study, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) confirmed that “racial and ethnic minority communities are particularly vulnerable to the greatest impacts of climate change.”
As climate change exacerbates natural hazards like hurricanes and wildfires, widespread access to insurance will be necessary to help vulnerable communities survive.
This vulnerability and racial disparities are evident when climate disasters strike. For example, when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, 4 out of 7 zip codes that faced the costliest flood damage were at least 75% Black. Similarly, Hurricane Harvey in 2017 hit historically Black neighborhoods in Houston the hardest, and many residents there lacked a safety net to recover. Winter Storm Uri, in February 2021, brought persistent subfreezing temperatures to the southeastern U.S., resulting in electricity and water outages, substantial personal property damage, and increased mortality rates. The impact of the winter storm was likewise “disproportionately concentrated among low-income communities and communities of color.” Communities that are mostly Black, Latino, or Native American also experience 50% greater vulnerability to wildfires compared with other communities.
Despite these patterns, many cities have done little to bolster climate resilience in minority-dominated neighborhoods. For instance, Black communities from “Texas through Florida to Virginia” are projected to see at least a 20% increase in flood risk over the next 30 years.
This increased vulnerability not only exposes minority communities to damage from climate hazards, but also to bluelining from insurers. When a disaster strikes in a neighborhood, rates are likely to go up the following year. This affects both homeowners and renters, who often bear the costs of a landlord’s rising insurance costs.
Access to Insurance Is a Key Factor in Climate Change Resilience
Discrimination in the insurance sector extends beyond bluelining. Studies suggest that insurance claims following a disaster in areas with a higher Black population are less likely to be paid and, if they are paid, are likely to settle for less than other claims. A New York Times article supports these findings, presenting evidence of race discrimination in insurance company payout decisions for homeowners following disasters.
This racial discrimination, combined with bluelining, limits access to property insurance for vulnerable communities—a critical tool for climate resilience. Studies show that households with insurance are more likely to rebuild, face less financial hardship, and recover more quickly than households without insurance. As climate change exacerbates natural hazards like hurricanes and wildfires, widespread access to insurance will be necessary to help vulnerable communities survive.
Insurers must end their hypocritical and unconscionable conduct of investing large portions of their increasing premium income in fossil fuel companies, the undisputed drivers of climate change.
The climate change-induced insurance crisis and bluelining seriously undermine the ability of minority and vulnerable communities to access affordable insurance. Without insurance, minority communities are less able to adapt to climate change and less resilient when confronting these climate change-induced severe weather events. More importantly, minorities are hindered in their efforts to rebuild, particularly in rebuilding climate-resilient structures.
The compounded effects of the insurance crisis, rooted in past discriminatory insurance practices, perpetuate systemic inequities. The cycle of divestment from redlining to bluelining will increase systemic inequities and embed the disproportionate impact of climate change on minority and vulnerable communities for generations.
A Call to Action
Insurers should financially support and actively engage in community efforts addressing climate risk, community impact, and creating equitable solutions. Simultaneously, insurers must end their hypocritical and unconscionable conduct of investing large portions of their increasing premium income in fossil fuel companies, the undisputed drivers of climate change, and underwriting new oil and gas projects while turning away homeowners in high-risk climate zones. Public funding or support from local, state, or national government for the insurance industry must be contingent on the industry reducing investments and insurance commitments in carbon emissions causing climate change.
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Federal Judge Gives Louisiana Polluters a 'Free Pass' to Harm Communities of Color
"Louisiana has given industrial polluters open license to poison Black and brown communities for generations," and the new ruling from a Trump-appointed judge will only magnify the problem, a campaigner said.
Aug 23, 2024
A right-wing federal judge in Louisiana on Thursday permanently blocked two federal agencies from enforcing civil rights legislation that could protect Black communities from disproportionate pollution in the state, drawing condemnation from environmental justice advocates.
The two-page ruling, issued by U.S. District Court Judge James Cain, who was appointed to the federal bench in 2019 by then-President Donald Trump, is a setback in the push for accountability for corporate polluters, most notably in "Cancer Alley," a roughly 85-mile stretch that runs along the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.
Cancer Alley is home to a disproportionate number of poor and working-class Black people who have highly escalated risks of cancer thanks to the long line of petrochemical plants in the corridor. A recent study showed that the air there is far worse than previously realized.
"Louisiana has given industrial polluters open license to poison Black and brown communities for generations, only to now have one court give it a permanent free pass to abandon its responsibilities," Patrice Simms, a vice president at Earthjustice, said in a statement.
The ruling forbids the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Justice from enforcing "disparate-impact requirements" under Title VI the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the state of Louisiana. The ruling affects permitting for industrial projects and could, according to Earthjustice, even be applied to "basic services such as sewage, drinking water, and health services." Cain opted not to make the ruling effective nationwide.
The main events leading up to Thursday's decision began in January 2022, when Earthjustice filed a complaint to the EPA on behalf of St. John the Baptist Parish, a majority-Black community in the heart of Cancer Alley. The EPA then opened an investigation into whether Louisiana state agencies had failed to protect the parish from environmental health threats. The agency was preparing to negotiate reforms with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. This was part of a nationwide EPA effort to tackle environmental racism.
However, Louisiana, like other states, fired back. In May 2023, then-Attorney General Jeff Landry, who is now governor, filed a lawsuit—the same lawsuit Cain ultimately ruled on—against the EPA to block the investigation. The next month, the EPA dropped its investigation, disappointing parish residents and human rights groups. The Intercept later reported that the agency dropped the investigation because of fear the state's case would reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
Cain could then have dropped Louisiana's suit, but, in a move that may have been aimed at preventing future such investigations, he moved forward with it, issuing a 77-page temporary injunction in January that laid the groundwork for today's far briefer decision, which made the ruling permanent.
In the temporary injunction, Cain put forth ahistorical and power-blind arguments about race that are common in right-wing circles.
"To be sure, if a decision-maker has to consider race, to decide, it has indeed participated in racism," the judge wrote. "Pollution does not discriminate."
Earthjustice warned that though Cain's ruling applies only in Louisiana, "it may embolden other states to seek similar exceptions and create a chilling effect on civil rights enforcement by other federal agencies."
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Gulf Coast Advocates: 2024 Election Is 'Inflection Point' for Climate Justice
One campaigner called November "a fork in the road for what type of political economy and climate future and racial justice future and public health future we want our federal government to create."
Aug 16, 2024
A second Trump presidency would be a "complete disaster" for the global climate and for Gulf Coast communities bearing the brunt of the buildout of liquefied natural gas terminals, frontline advocates and their allies warned.
The comments came during a press briefing on Thursday organized by Gas Exports Today, during which Vessel Project founder Roishetta Ozane, Better Brazoria director Melanie Oldham, and senior energy transition policy lead at Evergreen Action Mattea Mrkusic bore witness to the harm that the LNG export boom had already done to Texas and Louisiana, and called for a permanent ban.
"We are at this inflection point, and the election in November is a fork in the road for what type of political economy and climate future and racial justice future and public health future we want our federal government to create," Mrkusic told reporters.
'We Are Not a Sacrifice Zone'
The advocates began the briefing by detailing the harm that fossil fuels—in particular the recent ramping up of LNG export facilities—have already done to Gulf Coast communities. Currently, there are around 15 LNG terminals in operation or construction in Texas and Louisiana, and six more being reviewed.
Ozane, who was born in Louisiana and lost two homes to hurricanes Laura, Rita, and Delta, explained how oil and gas emissions polluted local air, water, and soil, threatening the health of residents including her own children. She recounted how her son, while driving down the aptly-named Sulphur Avenue in Louisiana, suddenly had a seizure for the first time in his life. He totaled the car and ended up in the hospital on life support, where he had several more seizures.
"The United States can no longer approve these projects in our community for the sake of the almighty dollar for oil and gas."
Looking for answers, Ozane spoke to several doctors before one in California told her that her son's seizure was due to "long-term industrial exposure." On the day of her son's fateful drive, there were major flares at the nearby Phillips 66 refinery and Bio-Lab. A few days earlier, there had also been an explosion at Calcasieu refinery.
"We are fighting on every front here, and we just want people to listen to us and to understand that we are dying. Our children are dying," Ozane said. "They are getting sick."
She continued: "This is not made up. This is not some type of scheme. This is not fake. We are real people. We are not a sacrifice zone. The United States can no longer approve these projects in our community for the sake of the almighty dollar for oil and gas."
Oldham, who lives in Freeport, Texas, discussed research she and Better Brazoria had done into a major 2022 explosion at Freeport LNG, a facility three to four miles from her home. One of the things they discovered was that, on the day of the explosion, the plant was operating 94 employees short. The excuse that Freeport LNG gave to regulators was that they could not find enough well-trained operators.
"That's frightening," Oldham said, noting that there are currently six LNG plants along the Texas coast. If those six plants "cannot find well-trained LNG operators, then why in the heck are they building and proposing more LNGs?" she asked.
When it comes to fossil fuel emissions, what happens in Texas and Louisiana does not stay there. Mrkusic focused on two recent world records "that never should have been broken."
The first is that July 2024 saw the hottest day on record; the second is that the U.S. has become in recent years the world's leading exporter of LNG.
That LNG expansion, the Sierra Club found in 2022, "thwarted" the stated U.S. climate goal of cutting its greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.
"In what world does it make sense to double down on this dirty buildout?" Mrkusic asked.
'We Have an Alternative'
Whether or not the U.S. will choose to double down is one major issue at stake in the contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the panelists said. That's because the election would likely determine the fate of the Biden administration's pause on the approval of new LNG exports.
The pause was put in place while the Department of Energy (DOE) updates the studies it uses to determine whether a given natural gas export request serves the public interest, as the last studies it relied on were conducted in 2018 and 2019 during the Trump administration. While a Louisiana-based, Trump-appointed judge blocked that pause in July, Mrkusic explained that no court order can stop the DOE from revising its public interest determination, something she expects it to finalize by the first quarter of 2025.
"We believe that if DOE fully accounts for... the cost of the LNG buildout in their studies, using the best available science, listening to frontline communities, measuring the cumulative public health impacts to those who live nearby, it'll be crystal clear that new export authorizations are not in the public interest," Mrkusic said.
"Under Trump, we could double down on even more dirty fossil fuel infrastructure that'll lock us into harmful pollution for decades to come."
However, the DOE deadline anticipated by Mrkusic and others falls after the election, and Trump has already pledged to approve pending LNG export terminals on day one of his administration. He also has a record of rolling back environmental protections and favoring the fossil fuel industry over climate concerns, and has promised fossil fuel CEOs to slash Biden administration climate regulations in exchange for $1 billion in campaign funds.
Oldham said that the "Trump administration set us back a decade or two when he was president regarding public health, environmental issues," and pointed to the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which is widely understood to be the blueprint for a second Trump administration.
"It's pretty scary what they want to do as far as the environmental issues," Oldham said.
Oldham, Ozane, and Mrkusic spoke the same week that a number of studies were released warning of the climate and public health risks of extending the LNG buildout and implementing other Project 25 agenda points.
A Greenpeace USA and Sierra Club report found that permitting more LNG would claim an extra 707 to 1,110 lives and cost an added $9.88 billion to $15.1 billion in health costs through 2050.
Another report from Energy Innovation calculated that Project 2025, if put in place, would cause more than 2,000 early air pollution deaths by 2030 and spew an extra 4,920 metric megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Finally, a third study from Evergreen Action outlined the impacts of an LNG buildout under a second Trump administration, concluding that if every pending project were approved, as is likely, this would quadruple U.S. LNG export capacity compared with 2023 levels and emit 3.9 gigatons of climate pollution annually, or 63% of the nation's total climate pollution in 2021.
"But," Mrkusic said, "we do have an alternative."
She continued: "Under Trump, we could double down on even more dirty fossil fuel infrastructure that'll lock us into harmful pollution for decades to come. Or under a potential Harris administration, we would have a much better shot of building a thriving clean energy economy. And, as one part of that, we could land the Department of Energy's updated studies so that they fully account for the cost of LNG exports."
'Climate Champions'
Beyond its potential to block Trump and Project 2025, the Gulf Coast advocates spoke with genuine enthusiasm of what a Harris-Walz administration could do for the climate and frontline communities.
Ozane pointed to Harris' record of holding fossil fuel and other polluting companies to account as attorney general of California, as well as actions she had taken in the Biden administration, such as casting the deciding vote for the infrastructure bill.
"We know that she is a leader in herself, and she has shown that even aside from the current administration, that she is not afraid of taking on oil and gas," Ozane said.
"I feel strongly that Harris will be the better candidate for our cause."
She added that Harris' choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who also has a strong climate record, as running mate signals that she is listening to the climate movement in making her decisions.
"Walz and Harris are both climate champions," Ozane said. "We know that this ticket is what would be best when it relates to environmental justice, climate justice, us meeting our climate target, and not only will that be beneficial for the United States, but it will be beneficial for the entire world."
Oldham said that she would vote for Harris, who she thought might be better than U.S. President Joe Biden on some climate issues.
"I feel strongly that Harris will be the better candidate for our cause," Oldham said, comparing her to Trump. She added, "I think she'll speak up even more than Biden."
Harris does have her own weaknesses on environmental issues. When asked about her retraction of a 2020 primary campaign promise to ban fracking, Ozane acknowledged, "We know that none of these candidates are absolutely perfect."
"But," she added, "that doesn't mean that this isn't the best ticket, that there isn't still avenues for communication for us to get to what we're trying to get for our community."
Ozane herself is working on communicating those needs. She and others have asked Harris to travel to Louisiana and see the impacts of the LNG buildout firsthand. Ozane herself is speaking at the Louisiana Breakfast at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week, and hopes to meet with Harris and Walz to articulate several asks from frontline Gulf advocates.
These include a commitment to make polluters pay for the damage they have already done in the region, a centering of frontline perspectives and solutions, continuing to fund initiatives like Justice40, revisiting the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that subsidize fossil fuels, reconsidering tax breaks for polluting companies operating in Louisiana, and not trialing experimental climate solutions like carbon capture and storage in already pollution-burdened communities.
"We no longer want to be sacrifices," Ozane said. "We no longer want things to be tried and tested in our communities."
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