First Cohort of Silicon Valley Accelerator for Black Owned Businesses Announced prweb.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from prweb.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Steve Sanchez/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
For a long time, the face of the climate movement was white. But with growing public awareness of climate change came the recognition that its impacts are disproportionately experienced by Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color.
The problem, according to many Black climate advocates, is that awareness is not enough.
Tamara Toles O’Laughlin is one of the best-known advocates for what she calls the “Black climate agenda”: a movement that seeks to correct the failures of the climate movement to include Black people and that wants to see racial justice at the center of climate policy conversations.
A 2020 study found that a quarter of low-income households here spent more than 21.7% of their 2017 income on energy, which is more than seven times higher than the median energy burden. Kristal Hansley is working to change that.
Let the Sunshine In, for the Benefit of All
Proven strategies can make solar power available to lower income people.
Low- and moderate-income households bear heavy housing and energy cost burdens. In the United States, people with low incomes spend about three times more of their income on energy than those with higher incomes.
Moreover, these households are much less likely to reap the benefits of converting to solar power. But now, a study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has identified three approaches that effectively expand the availability of rooftop solar to people in lower income brackets.
Energy, housing, health, and education systems; and âsystems that encourage or discourage environmental degradationâ all âtouch racial justice. So in order to start breaking down racial disparities in solar, I think we need to broaden our lens.â