Facing effects of climate change, SC communities lead way to protect environment
BY CHIEF PETE PARR AND REV. LEO WOODBERRY
When facing an existential crisis like climate change, would you rather live in a society where power rests with the wealthy and well-connected or where power rests with neighborhoods and communities?
One of us leads South Carolina’s Pee Dee Indian Tribe, and one of us is a pastor at a predominantly Black church in Florence, South Carolina.
Our communities firmly believe in a vision of democracy that puts power in the hands of everyday people. But based on our experience speaking out against an industry that grinds forests into little wood pellets that are shipped to Europe to be burned, the love of money is calling the tune, and politicians and bureaucrats are dancing to it.
The love of our communities for our forests, our health, and our planet doesn’t seem to count, but if we are to curb the worst effects of climate change, our voices must be heeded.
Both of us have watched our communities suffer, year after year after year, from worsening floods, more devastating tropical storms, and ever-heavier rainfall.
Like communities of color and poor communities across America, we are on the front lines of the climate crisis, suffering disproportionately from the damaging effects of climate change and from pollution caused by the dirty energy sources responsible for warming our planet.
Like countless frontline communities across the country, ours have responded with home-grown efforts to adapt.
The Pee Dee Indian Tribe is protecting wetland forests, which help with flood control while also absorbing carbon dioxide. Also being developed is a cultural center that will educate people about the Pee Dee people and the forest habitat they treasure.
New Alpha Community Development Corporation has installed solar-powered hydro panels — which pull water vapor from the air to create fresh, clean drinking water — on a church and in a nearby neighborhood that has suffered repeated flooding and water-quality problems.
These practical projects, led by communities on the front lines of the climate crisis, are rooted in justice and equity, and speak to a vision of a regenerative economy powered by clean energy. These ideas are at the heart of the Southern Communities for a Green New Deal (SC4GND) platform, which both of our organizations support, as do hundreds of other community-based groups throughout the South.
SC4GND calls for:
Ending fossil fuels subsidies and projects, and redirecting resources to community-controlled renewable energy
Investing in equitable water and sewer infrastructure so that everyone has access to safe, affordable drinking water
Eschewing industrial forestry and agriculture, restoring forests and soils, stopping expansion of the biomass- and wood-pellet-energy industries in environmental justice communities, protecting land, and investing in nature-based, locally owned businesses
Providing clean-economy job training for displaced workers and environmental justice communities, and boosting labor protections
Making it easier for people to participate in democracy, and divesting from corporate control of government — especially by corporations that harm communities.
While visiting New York recently to survey flash-flood damage and talk about climate change, President Joe Biden said “…listen to the scientists and the economists and the national security experts. They all tell us this is code red; the nation and the world are in peril.”
We’ll add this.
Listen to communities like ours that are on the front lines of the climate crisis.
We’ve been hit worst and first, and we’ve created solutions that can work in neighborhood after neighborhood to protect people and curb global warming.
Building a cleaner, more sustainable, more just society that truly works for all of its people starts with us.
Chief Pete Parr leads the Pee Dee Indian Tribe from its base in Marlboro County, South Carolina. The Rev. Leo Woodberry is pastor of Kingdom Living Temple in Florence, South Carolina, and executive director of the New Alpha Community Development Corporation, which helps lead the SC4GND campaign.
https://www.thestate.com/opinion/art...digest_opinion
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