Stop Saving the Planet?

A growing economy creates the resources necessary for environmental protection.

You can have a strong economy in a cleaner, safer, more balanced environment.

We need to protect our environment.

We need to grow our economy.

We often hear industry and political leaders talk about how we .. -Balance the economy and the environment.

--balance the economy and the environment.

A strong growing economy and a healthy environment.

The thinking goes something like this.

A healthy economy requires environmental sacrifices.

We need to mine coal from mountains to power our homes and emit greenhouse gases to deliver our packages.

Environmental destruction is necessary to earn a living and make the things we need.

It has been developed to exploit the ecosystem without taking into account its continued existence.

The logic goes, when governments and institutions try to curb environmental destruction, it interferes with the potential for businesses to succeed and provide jobs.

Adding to our troubles is a mass of regulations imposed on major industries.

We're watching the expansion of government regulation that kills jobs and economic growth.

I'll cut red tape to help states get those factories built and put folks to work.

Essentially, protecting the environment is at odds with a thriving economy, but there's a problem with this thinking.

It treats the economy and the environment as if they were separate from each other.

The economy, like everything else in our lives, is foundationally environmental, and it's not set in stone.

We can restructure the economy to change environments in a better way, more sustainably, and more equitably, so it can provide for everyone's needs.

Economists define the economy as the way we use and distribute resources to make, sell, and buy goods and services.

Those resources come from how we change our environments, what we mine, what we grow, what we build, the energy we use, and how we transport all of it.

The economy is currently set up to maximize what we take from the environment as fast and as cheaply as possible, regardless of the impacts, with most of the profits going to a select few.

If we want to reduce prices, we need to increase supply.

It is essential to modern life and underpins economic and social progress around the world.

Industries and institutions with the most power determine where to extract resources and dump pollution.

In Southwest Louisiana's estates, industries, mostly petrochemical, are freed from the local property taxes that fund services like police, parks, and public schools.

California has issued more than 20,000 new oil drilling permits here on land.

The worst impacts end up concentrated in areas predominantly populated by lower-income people and communities of color, known as sacrifice zones.

These are places where regulations, or lack thereof, allow for displacement, toxic waste, and high air pollution, affecting the health of local people.

These communities often work in the same industries that pollute their neighborhoods.

Let's take a look at Wilmington, California.

This area, south of Los Angeles, has the largest trading port in the country, the third largest oil field, and five refineries.

The shipping and oil industries here generate tons of economic activity and thousands of local jobs, many of which are low-pay, but the only jobs around.

Here's the catch.

These industries emit some of the highest levels of cancer-causing particulate matter in the state.

Of Wilmington's 50,000 residents, over 93% are people of color.

They suffer from the highest rates of asthma, cancer, and other pulmonary diseases in California.

Southern California residents say they've been having trouble breathing because of exhaust fume.

The amount of pollutants are frequently reaching dangerous levels in the LA neighborhood of Wilmington.

Data from the city of Long Beach highlights how certain communities have the highest risk of cancer regionally.

The communities of West Long Beach, Wilmington, and San Pedro experience up to eight years lower life expectancy than the Los Angeles County average.

In Wilmington and across the entire Southern Californian basin, air pollution causes more deaths every year than traffic accidents and crime combined.

Efforts have been made to regulate these industries, but businesses, politicians, and some unions argue these would overburden them, affecting costs, profits, and wages.

We also see regulations around truck driving, certainly in California, and they're choosing not to go into California for that reason because of the laws that exist there.

There shouldn't be a choice between our jobs and our environments.

In this current economy, many jobs are in industries that pollute the environment and harm people's health.

The economy didn't emerge out of some unavoidable process.

The economy is built out of deliberate policies and decisions.

We can create new economies that are sustainable and green.

To do that, we need to understand that a sustainable green economy is dependent on fairness and equity.

To transition out of high-polluting industries, the economy can be structured to provide new green jobs for workers.

Fewer than 400 Moapa Paiutes taking on NV Energy, trying to shut down the Reid Gardner coal plant.

Studies have shown that in a number of cases, unions representing workers in coal fired power plants supported the plant closing of their highly polluting workplaces.

That was because environmentalists and government officials worked with them to ensure a smooth transition.

They replaced fossil-fuel-dependent jobs with better-paying and more abundant solar and wind jobs.

Under the compromised clean energy bill, Illinois's electricity will come completely from renewable energy sources by the year 2050.

There are programs that would help train people in disadvantaged communities for clean energy jobs, and help to incubate and grow clean energy businesses.

In communities around the world, these transitions have involved minimum wage increases, healthcare benefits, and investments in infrastructure and job training.

This new law provides support for the transition to renewable energy, and for workers and regions whose livelihoods are dependent on coal.

We know that healthy environments are good for communities, but we also have to understand that healthy communities are good for our environments.

For example, when sacrifice zones are banned to protect people, industries aren't able to pursue their most toxic and environmentally destructive practices.

A major step tonight to make the City of Angels greener.

The city council voted today to ban new oil and gas drilling sites and find ways to close down existing ones as soon as possible.

The city of Los Angeles, a city built on oil and stolen land, is now going to end oil drilling and treat communities with respect.

We also want to make sure some people in industries don't have all the power and wealth to steamroll vulnerable groups and excessively exploit environments.

The current economy may seem like the law of the land, but we can change it just like we created it.

It'll take massive federal investment, changing policies and laws, and listening to the most impacted communities.

Understanding the connection between equity and our environments, and seeing that the economy can change to support both is a big first step in the right direction.

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