Oil and gas companies are targeting the Gulf of Mexico to build a new generation of polluting infrastructure and carbon emissions. If successful, these facilities would lock us into decades of fossil fuels.
Though the consequences of a fossil fuel buildout in the Gulf will be global, the people fighting against it are mostly local residents. These communities will face the harshest impacts from sea level rise, intensified hurricanes, toxic pollution, and oil spills.
These new oil and gas projects are layering a new injustice on top of an old one. Many Black communities that are situated near industrial sites in the Gulf are descended from formerly enslaved people who planted roots in the area after emancipation. Additionally, early redlining practices by the federal government and co-signed by the banking industry restricted Black and Brown homeownership to undesirable areas zoned…
Read the full article originally published at earthjustice.org.