Okay. So it's two minutes after six.
I'm going to go ahead and welcome everybody
to our event, justice and transformation,
Houston women on climate action.
So my name is Ashley.
I'm going to be the moderator today,
so I'll just be asking questions,
but mostly in the background along with Lisa and Julia.
We are hosting this event as part
of a grant that we received from
the American Library Association for climate resilience.
So we're really excited.
This is our first event of our grant series.
So thank you everybody for joining.
We want to welcome participants in our Owl Together, alumni.
Students, parents, as well as the broader Houston community.
And thank our co-sponsors
Rice Fondren Library's Green Team,
Rice's Center for Environmental Studies,
Citizens Environmental Coalition and Rice Environmental Society.
And next, we will have all of our panelists introduce
themselves and tell us how they came
to work in the environmental justice field.
So we'll start with Amy.
Hello, good evening. My name is Amy Dinn.
I am an attorney at Lone Star
Legal Aid and I manage
our environmental justice team on
behalf of our equitable development initiative.
I started working with Lone Star legal aid
just after the 2017 election.
I had been serving on the board and then doing pro bono work as
an attorney in private practice for many years.
And and just felt called that this is
the time to start working directly with communities
given the absence of the safety net that we will
likely see under the current administration.
And it has been one of the most rewarding things that
I've ever chosen to do in my life.
And I really enjoy working with
the communities and I can't wait to share a little bit
about that perspective that I've
gained from this position this evening.
Cymene.
I'm Cymene Howe. I'm a professor in
the Department of Anthropology at Rice.
And I've been doing quite a bit of research on
environments and environmental justice for
the last decade or so after moving to Houston.
And part of what happened in the to move to
Houston was this recognition that you
have this very paradoxical space in some ways because you have
obviously the petrochemical industry that's so
influential and so toxic in so many ways.
Then you also have the medical Industry, the medical center,
so prominent in the city, such an
important part of what the city is.
And so it creates this really weird juxtaposition where you have
something that's fairly toxic in its production and its.
and its contamination of the environment.
And then at the same time you have a community of caregivers and
an impulse to provide health and
well-being for people from all over the world,
kind of living in the same space.
So I think that Houston itself has been very,
very interesting place for me to think
through some of these questions of environmental justice.
And to really orient
my research now all around those kinds of questions.
You know, whether it's here in the United States or whether
it's outside of the United States in my field work.
So I found that really, really compelling.
And I've come to the recognition
over time that really environmental justice,
is the preeminent issue of our time because
all other social conditions kind of fall into this context and
and kind of meta category of environment, right?
There's no social interaction that
takes place outside of environments.
And so, if we think about the struggle for racial justice,
if we think about labor rights, for example,
if we think about sexism, gender discrimination,
sort of every kind of social issue
that we can imagine addressing that we're
committed to has to exist within this context of environments.
And so if we don't live in
an environment that's healthy and safe and and
and providing for the well-being of everyone,
then we can't really fully
pursue any of those other issues either.
So it's come to really inform
every single thing I do now from
my research to my teaching or my writing.
And I think it's a really exciting time and I'm glad to be able to
work in this space with such interesting and committed people.
Thank you. Next will go Denae.
Hi. I'm Denae King.
I'm an environmental justice researcher
at Texas Southern University.
I am originally trained as a molecular toxicologist
and worked for a little while with my wonderful cells,
you know, kind of treating them
and having things on perfectly schedule.
And the truth is I was bored.
So I began to kind of think about,
you know, how do I use my training?
to really impact communities with people that looked like me.
I grew up in one of the EJ communities.
And so a lot of what I do now and for
the last 15 years is really work with fence line communities.
So communities that are in
close proximity to industrial sources of
pollution to really help them
understand what the environmental exposure looks like.
What are they exposed to?
Oftentimes they are really the experts and they know exactly
what they are experiencing and what they're being exposed to.
And they just need a little help with trying to document
both exposures with help and with
some help with strategies for mitigating the exposures.
And really developing plans that what we,
what I like to call a place that are place-based.
So plans that really work in
their community that are implemented by them and
their leaders to make sure that they're
sustainable and that those programs will really work well.
And so I and I truly enjoy working with EJ communities.
I also have the pleasure of
working with several of the panelists tonight.
So I get to work with Amy and Iris on
some of the initiatives that are in some of our communities.
And so I'm excited to be here today.
And last Iris. Would you like to introduce yourself.
Hey everybody, good evening.
Thanks for being with us right now on this one.
This is my favorite temperature days,
so I'm in a happy place right now.
I know the native Houstonians are not happy.
My name is Iris Gonzalez and I
am the Founding Coalition Director of CEER,
the Coalition for environment equity and resilience.
And CEER is a collaborative that
came together shortly after Hurricane Harvey.
So we'll be celebrating our three-year anniversary next month.
And the group has really focused on advocacy work
and policy solutions that impacts nature and people.
And so really how I came to environmental justice work,
I think the first thing that comes to
mind is just thinking about my own family.
My own family. In Guadalajara Jalisco Mexico
which is where I was born
and seeing a lot of
the environmental racism that happens in this country,
but to just a magnified degree in a place like Mexico.
And so my uncle maybe not seeing himself as an organizer,
but really being out there and talking with
his neighbors and assembling, you know,
group of people to fight back and to
really stand up for flooding issues that were
happening in his community and getting cleanups
together and talking with decision-makers about investments.
And when residents were
notified about construction that was going to happen in
their adjacent park like literally
getting people together to stand in
line and block construction workers and vehicles from entering.
So I feel like it's in it's in my blood.
It's it's been a part of just being
a troublemaker as a part of my family history.
But really I think the to
kind of connect to the themes of tonight,
how I arrived at this particular role as
as the founding coalition Director of CEER.
really took a lot of of
of women around me and who really believed in me and
knew me to nudge me to pursue this position.
And I know we'll uncover some of that later in our discussion.
But I think that the women in this movement from
around the world play a really integral role in
In, you know, controlling and shaping the narrative.
And also offering up solutions and working
in solidarity to advance those solutions.
So I'm really pleased to be here with you all tonight. Thank you.
Thank you, everybody.
So our first question does touch on some
of what you guys just talked about in your own personal experiences.
And that is, what does environmental justice mean to you?
And what would it take to achieve environmental justice?
Does one of the panelists want to start with this?
We can move to Denae first, then.
Okay, so environmental justice means to me that communities.
oftentimes people of color and low income communities are
disproportionately exposed to environmental pollution.
And so we see this more,
I guess more and more in the Houston area and oftentimes along
the Gulf Coast because we have
this historical legacy of segregation.
And so a lot of the environmental justice and
exposures that we see in the South are really
directly correlated to segregation
and racism in terms of red lining and housing,
in terms of particularly in Houston,
in terms of us having no zoning.
I think that does not help us.
And so I don't know if most people on our on
our webinar tonight realized that in the city of Houston
we have no zoning.
And so that means that you often have an opportunity to
place an unwanted land use place in any any community.
So there are other than some of
the masterplan communities that have deed restrictions.
You can place a refinery,
you can place a paint shop.
You can place any of those kinds of places where
you might experience exposures to environmental pollution and in
in or near a neighborhood.
And oftentimes that happens and people of
color and low income vulnerable communities.
And so in order for us to
really work to achieve environmental justice
we have to really begin to think about how land,
how permitting works, how things are placed in communities.
And we also have to really focus on enforcement.
And so there is often a lack of enforcement in terms of
how communities can really respond if
pollution is happening in their in their areas.
There's a lack of enforcement in terms of
the big polluters and whether or not they're
going to be fined for commuting
for it for polluting communities.
And so if we really want to achieve environmental justice,
we have to first really think about how we're
how we're placing industrial pollution in communities.
and also how we're dealing with enforcement.
Also Cymene, Would you like to answer that question as well
as speaking from a broader perspective beyond Houston as well.
And I think it's a great Question, you know,
environmental justice it's
such a capacious and such a broad category.
And there are so many ways
to sort of fold justice into these projects.
So one thing I like
about environmental justice is the way
that it can bring in all these other
issues at the same time right under this broader category.
And so when I when I think about, like,
what is a definition of environmental justice,
at least for me, it really is a question of human rights.
I guess it's kinda human rights question
more than anything because it's about
providing the kinds of access to non-toxic,
Safe, comfortable spaces of well-being for everyone, right?
It's an it's a right and
a condition that all human beings should be able to have.
And then as I take it a little bit further.
I think it's kind of a non-human right too, right.
And by non-human, I mean
those other creatures that we share these ecosystems with,
those plants and other biotic beings that are so important to
our environmental sustainability on a global level.
So that's, you know, biomes
that are healthy and safe.
And so there's a relationship between
those two ideas of a kind of human rights
that environmental justice can exercising as well as things
non-human rights that all fold into
the same kind of ecosystemic pictures.
I think that's really important.
Just to follow up on what Denae
was saying which was right on
about how you sort of achieve this.
It's a big project. I think
I think it's sometimes it can feel really overwhelming because
because it is so huge,
it's so capacious and so global.
So how do we do it?
But clearly there are
policy and regulatory structures that still need
doing and need to happen.
But I think that we also need
some cultural and attitudinal changes, right?
That really have to do with how we relate to each other,
the kind of respect and recognition that we give to one another
as well as the rest of the natural world.
So that's for the kind of point of view of anthropology.
These big cultural changes need to happen.
Attitudinal changes need to happen in addition
to policy regulations that clearly need to happen as well.
And if I can add to that,
Yeah, I agree with everything that's been said.
I think, you know.
when we talk about environ
environmental justice or environmental injustice
and how to move forward.
That we also have to talk about power and
how the power of industry,
the power of our systems,
and the way that they had been set up in
those structures that we we accept, right?
We accept as the only way that we can
build things or plan cities or make streets.
Or think about where we placed schools,
or how many freeways or how big of a free way we need.
You know, I think that there's a lot of power
going back to this concept of, you know,
our systems don't center human rights and they don't center
humanity and they don't center community.
And yet they are managed and run it
are held by people, by humans, right?
And so, you know,
I think that in a place
especially like Houston where
we're in development and developers and industry.
And the things that really make our economy run
also hold a lot of power in other places and in other systems.
And I think if you look at movements
for environmental justice across
across the country, across the world,
it's really about community coming together and
organizing and building power and
activating their power and building coalition.
And of course, I work for a coalition.
I believe in the power of collaboratives.
But I do think that that, you know,
power structures don't yield power
just because they're asked to right it takes,
it takes pressure, it takes
Coordinated intentional strategic pressure
and a coalition of voices to really advance that.
And that's true of any
any significant policy change in any
any sector in the history of our country.
And so to that sort of cultural piece that Cymene is lifting up.
I think what we're
what we're seeing and what we what there are pockets
of that that had been going for a long time in Houston that,
you know, we're trying to connect and strengthen and amplify.
Especially as we think
about sort of how climate change is already at our front doorstep
and how it is amplifying all
of these environmental justice issues that we face.
Houston is unique in many different ways.
And I think that that uniqueness and things
like this moment of being in a global pandemic shows
us our connectivity and how we need to treat
issues at as intersectional issues and not in a silo.
And that the the actions
the individual actions of all of us together are very powerful.
And that that is how
that is how we will achieve environmental justice. Thank you.
Next question will go to Amy first.
what particular environmental and climate
problems does the Houston region face?
We have a lot of problems,
as wonderful as Houston is and as much as we love it,
we have a lot of problems.
I think today, kicked it off with no zoning is
number one for communities on fence lines.
We work directly with these communities to try to keep
unwanted environmental industrial nuisances
out of their communities.
But it can be anything from a truck yard that shows
up in a residential neighborhood that the city will
allow to go forward if there's
no deed restrictions to prevent that or a concrete batch plant.
And there are some communities that are living directly on
the fence line of refineries like
Manchester if you've ever been there.
There's I think I think some people
really took some tours of some neighborhoods.
I think there's a toxic tour.
I think Cym that you referenced earlier.
It will be really eye-opening as
far as how close people are living in
proximity to industry and
things that are potentially bad for their health.
I would also identify traffic as one of our biggest problems,
as a contributor to greenhouse gases,
as well as just our ability to
overcome some of
the climate change challenges we have on the horizon.
Flooding is obviously in a one that we're all very,
very familiar with now,
but it can't be overlooked the importance of
that as well as how much we need to
continue to work on that as we
continue to have hurricanes and in November.
I mean, data has just blown my mind.
And then we have heat islands.
I think all this concrete jungle,
if you're not looking at the temperature
lately it has been going up and up and up.
And thank goodness it's a cold day for Iris,
but it has been historically much hotter
in the last few years and Houston is
a heat island where we're going to continue to have
extreme temperatures in the core of
the city that we need to all be cognizant of.
I think the last thing I would add to the list
that maybe a lot of people aren't thinking about is
mosquitoes with are flooding and our heat,
we attract mosquitoes and as we
are all in a pandemic right now and very aware of covid,
there are a lot of diseases that mosquitoes
carry that can be very detrimental to human health.
And given certain conditions that if we don't do, uh.
Well, enforcing illegal dumping or tires in certain neighborhoods.
we are just asking for a proliferation
of mosquitoes in those areas and again,
creating a menace to human health
that we really need to focus on for our
our low income communities.
And that's kind of my top six list.
Feel free to add to it other panelists.
I'd like to hear what your thoughts are on those things.
So I don't know that I need to add to it, Amy.
But what I will say is that it's important to
point out that many of the communities
that are bombarded with the environmental issues are
also the same communities that are
really impacted by climate change.
So those are the communities that we see repeated flooding.
And so if you are
if you are experiencing environmental exposures.
if you have if you have flooding in that community,
then what happens to all of those toxins?
Where do they go into our water supply?
What really happens when it floods?
So Hurricane Harvey, we know,
was a great example of that where
we saw all of this toxic pollution that
ended up in water streams right
because of Hurricane Harvey and flooding.
I think the other thing is those communities that we talk
about with pollution exposures also experience heat islands.
And so if you're a low income and you don't have a lot of
funds and it's really hot outside. What do you do?
Open your windows. And so
that pollution then comes in and that exacerbates
your respiratory concerns like
asthma and bronchitis and things like that.
So I just wanted to kind of make sure we understood that
the environmental justice communities are severely
impacted by the climate change effects as well.
Yeah. If I could add to that real quick.
I would echo that we often talk about the climate crisis as
a multiplier of conditions that are already on the ground.
And so for a place like Houston.
All of the all of
the issues that the other panelists have lifted up.
If we don't prioritize those places,
that we don't prioritize those people if we don't talk
about those issues at the intersection that they exist and
and understand how they connect to
things like the legacy of institutional racism and
systemic racism in things and in policies like
the inherently discriminatory federal policy
of cost-benefit analysis.
As flood flood mitigation projects are prioritized,
that a municipality, a city or county
has to explain what the return on that investment,
that federal dollar is going to be and uses
property value to make that calculation and not
not the value of human life.
And so to put property over
people and to put politics over people.
These these are ways that
that our communities have been harmed for generations.
And so when we're talking about these issues
it's not new. We're
It kind of evolves and gets a different label.
And different books call it different things,
but it's the same
it's the same problem,
it's the same themes.
And so especially for for Houston,
a place where when
we do have those hurricanes we're we're in
immediate response and recovery mode.
And as those those lapses of time in between
each of those grows
grows smaller or overlaps consistently in every hurricane season,
it can be a lot to kind of manage and to get your head around.
You can't be planning and be future thinking when you're
always responding and in an emergency mode.
And so I think all of those conditions
have led to severe disinvestment in our communities.
So when you work with communities in Northeast
Houston who are fighting for drainage justice, right?
They just want to have drains that drain properly.
And they went capital improvement
money to be funneled to their their neighborhood,
to their front yard, to their backyard.
They want to see those investments in their communities.
And and we know that there's
a disparity in those investments and that that money.
both because of the federal policies like
the cost-benefit analysis I mentioned
and other practices at the local level.
We have we have watersheds that are much more protected than
than than lower income and black and
brown predominately black and brown watersheds.
And we have investments that are not
equally and equitably distributed across our city.
And so those are
those are particular problems that we need to,
that again, will only be amplified and only will be made
worse as climate change continues to impact us.
And so we need to address them and talk about them and understand
their connections and what those connections
then make us do in terms of actions to address them.
Cymene, what have you found in looking at
climate justice in other cultural contexts?
And how does Houston compared to other cultures?
What have you learned elsewhere that might be applied here?
Yeah, so this is a good question
and it's really hard to talk about a global context.
But I've I've been doing
research in Mexico primarily in the state of
Oaxaca for about ten years
now and in the last three to four years.
I've been working in the Arctic region.
And when I think about
these two very different places with very different histories.
different geo locations in the world.
And thinking about some other similarities
is one of the things that they share is that there's
a lot less skepticism about
climate science than we have here in the United States.
And I find that fascinating, right?
As I do research in different parts of
the world that there is an acknowledgement about
the empirical evidence scientists have brought to the question of
climate change and the anthropogenic or human
caused root of climate change,
of the climate crisis in many parts of the world.
And yet we're still struggling with that
here in the United States. And in Houston,
Yes, but I think it's broader than that, right?
It's at the national level
where there's still a lot of skepticism.
And and and I think that that's a really important distinction.
I it when we talk about climate change in the United States
this is something that's really fascinated me for
a long time and I talk to students about this.
Is we phrase it like this.
We say. Do you believe in climate change?
Right? Do you believe like
it's sort of like do you believe in Santa Claus or do you
believe that a lucky penny is going to bring you luck, right?
It's taken us this kind of article of
faith rather than something that
is something that has reached the scientific consensus,
that's understood in the scientific community and that
has an empirical backing to it.
So we have this weird way of thinking.
Not everyone but many People, united states,
still have the strange way of thinking
about the climate and the impacts as
some kind of article of faith,
like a kind of whether it's a belief structure rather than
something that can be
that is agreed upon by the scientific community.
So there's a kind of ideological issue there too.
And also, when I look at the work that I've been doing in Mexico.
many of the people there have,
they get environmental justice at
a really kind of a very clear way because they'd been
living with histories of dispossession and
crises around agriculture and particularly Oaxaca.
And so it may have a new name,
environmental justice, but it's a process
that's very familiar to people who had been living this for
many centuries and most recently with climate change,
the last couple of decades when they really
recognizes and get it on experiential level.
And in Iceland up an Arctic region.
This is a place that these are the first humans to
occupy that island 1200 years ago,
the first Icelanders showed up on the island.
And it was a very desolate and isolated place.
Now they're losing 11 billion tons of ice
every year because of climate change or global warming.
because the Arctic is heating at a very quick rate.
And so they're seeing these effects very immediately. Right. They're
They're living at their living it in their landscape.
So I I think there,
Again, there's these two different dimensions.
There's a sort of experiential dimension
and then there's this kind of
ideological or conceptual dimension
that we need to work through in a really concerted way.
And as we look around the world
we see different approaches.
And some of them are working better than others.
And so I hope in Houston and in Texas in the United States
we can start to adopt some of those.
There's attitudes, ideas and are there going to be
we can operationalize in a more productive and better way
to create a better sense of equality environmentally.
Thank you. Next, we will ask how
do environmental problems affect women in particular.
And we can start with Denae for that one if you'd like to
answer. Sure. So so I'm a mother mother of three.
And so as a mother for me
the environment is everything in terms of,
you know, how I take care of myself,
how I take care of myself in
terms of if I choose to be reproductive,
to participate in the reproductive process,
whether or not I want to breastfeed my baby.
There are so many phases in your life
as a woman that the environment can impact you.
And so is really important for us.
And I think that there's not a lot of work,
so we don't do a lot of work.
Truthfully when you think about it,
there's not a whole lot of literature
really looking at women in the different phases
of our lives and how various environmental contaminants
really impact that.
But they're certainly we you know.
there are some clear examples of
environmental contaminants that
impact our reproductive reproduction.
There are contaminants that we know can be transferred from
our during with our breast milk in terms of
being deposited in lipids.
And so there's a significant impact
on women in terms of what they're
exposed to and how they
then transfer those exposures to their children.
So those are just my thoughts.
How can a city like Houston
known as the energy capital of the world,
as well as a place identified with environmental injustice
reconcile economic and environmental needs? We'll start with Amy.
Ok. I've got a couple bullet points on this one.
I think first, you've gotta put people over profits.
We need industry and governments be part of that solution
And we've got to reallocate
resources starting with how we do permitting in
Houston and identify that
certain communities have less than and need more,
you know, as a start.
And I think industry should bear some of that burden of communities
that they are polluting and and
and making sure that those communities have investment and
and and are a better place to live.
I think that's a minimum industry can
do to be better neighbors to communities
that they are adjacent to. Health costs.
All of these health costs impact
everyone. They are one of the reasons why
we can't get to providing good health care for everyone.
And it is an extreme cost to
taxpayers to have to treat people on an emergency level.
And the fact that people are living in conditions that are
degrading their health on a daily basis
is something that cost us all as a society.
And we should all realize the universal good
that could come from taking better care of all of our health.
I think in the pandemic
maybe that's starting to hit home a little bit.
And I think we need to invest in
all communities in Houston. We have
our system, which reallocates dollars.
We have a gilded Galleria.
That's what I like to call it.
And we have other communities that don't even have
basic drainage that Iris mentioned earlier.
And that disparity is
it's heartbreaking when you
understand the impact that has on families.
as well as their pathway to success.
When you start out with a multitude of challenges that are just
basically related to your environment
and your trip to your elementary school.
And the challenges that are
associated with having childhood asthma
because you are living near a refinery and
it's hard to breathe and concentrate at school.
Much less other complications that are directly due
to being low income and
not having access to opportunities for better
jobs or education opportunities here in Houston,
which is a problem as we've recognized with HISD recently.
These are all things that we need to do better at.
And I think again
government and industry are part of
that problem, part of that solution.
And having the people have more say in this.
And that's one of the things our organization tries to do is work
with communities to get those community voices
included in permitting processes included in
planning processes, included in
things that are directly impacting their communities,
that they have a voice in the process
and they don't feel like things are happening to them.
They are taking control and having power.
Like Iris mentioned, that it's critical to have those voices
involved in the process because they're
the ones that know what's best for their neighborhoods.
Iris or Denae, would either if you like to add something to this.
Sure. I think the first thing
that we have to do is come to an agreement
that we must make
a decision to reduce emissions here in the city of Houston.
We can we can come up with all kinds of ideas and strategies.
But if we can't all agree that we have to
we have to come up with some plan to reduce emissions in Houston.
Then we where we're just kinda talking around the bullet.
And so once we come to an agreement on that,
I think it's easy to come up with some clean energy solutions.
There are ways to deal with the economic impacts of transitioning,
you know, taking the time to really transition to
cleaner energy options that reduce carbon. the carbon footprint.
Those options include ways to provide
solar jobs and other types of jobs that will work,
that will allow our environmental justice communities and
the people that are most harmed by pollution to have
good wages and a way to actually take
care of their families all while
making the city of Houston a safer and cleaner place to live.
I think that we just, we have to
come to an understanding as Amy said,
that people's lives should come
before the economic opportunities that we have here.
And if we can't agree that we
we need to reduce emissions.
I don't know that we'll ever get there.
Yeah, just one quick thing.
Just as Denae was saying, renewable
energy needs to be the new energy for Houston, period.
Full stop. That's it.
And we have so much capacity, right?
I mean, we already have good renewable companies
in the city that just needs to be expanded.
It needs to multiply,
and for better or worse,
we kinda live in the belly of the beast here
and have this proximity to industry
and so many people that we know
in our lives and professionally work with in the industry.
So there's ways to create that kind of pressure too
from the inside to different kinds campaigns, of lobbying also.
So I just want to second that
that really important note.
If you're interested, I'm also going to put it in the chat.
The bigger.
the larger environmental groups actually partner with some
of those smaller environmental justice groups to come up
with a national climate policy agenda.
And it's called the equitable and just climate
agenda. It's very detailed.
It's really easy to understand.
And it gives some really great suggestions
and solutions in terms of how to really
present an agenda that includes
everybody and really is focused on making sure we all,
as you said earlier, have an opportunity to live in a
healthy and a safe environment. I'll put it in the chat.
Yeah. I just wanted to maybe underscore,
especially because they are in our backyard and because we are in
the oil and gas and the energy capital to re-brand, right?
The energy capital of the world.
Just the and Amy touched on this,
but the important role that industry can play and should play.
Because the reality is that they knew about climate change for
a long time and spent a lot of money to to lie about it.
And those real costs of recovery,
those real costs of infrastructure investment,
those real costs of climate gentrification.
How folks are moving around and being pushed
around and forced out of their communities.
Those are those are real dollar amounts and those
those are dollar amounts that we're all paying for.
And so really this notion of having
polluters pay their fair share just as
as taxpayers are paying and and shouldering the burden of
of the real cost of the climate crisis.
I just wanted to highlight that as
one important part of the solution as we transition.
Really having transparency around that, right?
I think we do see that industry
invests in things like disaster recovery,
invests in things like the planning processes that our city has
has undergone in the last 12-18 months.
But I think that the community needs to be able to really
guide and decide and measure and
evaluate how those resources are used,
what impacts they will have,
and evaluate whether or not they're successful.
So I just wanted to underline that as
as an important part of the solution of how we
how we reconcile those economic and environmental needs
and the important role that industry can and should play in that.
Perfect. And I think you actually just
touched on one of our audience questions.
Which was, should polluting industries be responsible for paying
operations to adjacent community suffering
from the pollution that they emit?
We'll get back to the audience questions in just a second.
But before we continue with audience questions.
I would like for everybody to answer one last question, which is,
how do you see your work and the work of
other women contributing to environmental justice?
And how can members of the audience work
for environmental justice?
And in that, if we could focus on types
of climate action at local and in the Houston levels.
that would also be really helpful because it will
also touch on another audience question.
We can start with Iris and then continue from there.
Sure. So, you know,
as I think about the people that make up.
CEER, and the folks who are at meetings and who are doing the work,
it's like 98% women.
And so in most spaces where
where we're doing this work
it's a lot of women and I also just think of a lot of
of community champions and community
residents who I consider giants in this field
who who are women.
And I think that women are,
And I'll say that framing it this way
excludes people who don't fall into the gender binary.
And so I just want to name that as well.
But I think that women bring
bring a certain type of
shared leadership style and a really trust driven type of
of relationship building and
and and working together.
And I think that that's those those types of skills
that type of approach is really necessary
for what we're describing as
this really big, gnarly intersectional
long time ago started major issue that's
that's impacting all of us.
And so I think that the skills that women bring
cannot be understated to the conversation.
And so I'm I feel very inspired by the women on
on this panel and the women that I work with in
community and the women that that make up CEER.
I would say that for sort of a call to action,
how people can get involved no matter where you are,
is to really, to really pay
attention and to look for
the stories that you're not being told, right?
I think the other major function that women serve is that we're
great storytellers and that
we are the bearers of culture and history.
And so if you don't know about
the cancer clusters and what's
happening in fifth ward in Kashmir gardens
and if you don't know about the drainage
drainage justice issues that neighborhoods
like Lakewood are facing.
Research that Google those Words, get involved.
There are especially right now a number of
groups who are highlighting that work.
And I think that, you know,
as we think about the climate action plan that the city put
forth earlier this year that's now moving into implementation.
There are working groups,
there are ways for people to get
involved and kind of pay attention.
But what we need everyone to be asking for is that
those places that we consider
climate justice or environmental justice,
neighborhoods that they get prioritized,
that we make sure that they don't get left behind.
That a successful implementation of the climate action plan
means that we would achieve climate justice in those places,
in those neighborhoods and for those people.
And so that's the message that everyone,
no matter what your gender,
what your background, where you live,
needs to be asking the city for,
and we really need your help with them.
Amy, would you like to jump in next?
Sure. So I
I do community lawyering.
How I see my work as as a mentor for other young lawyers.
I have a great talented Staff, a lot of women.
I see that as a critical part of the success of
our group in the last three years as
far as reaching to communities,
building trust and understanding
what the particular issues are in communities,
and in figuring out legal solutions on
how to move forward for their benefit.
And one of the things we've done is
recognizing that we cannot
fight every single concrete batch permit.
We don't have enough resources to do that.
We've been very successful in that space.
But ultimately long-term we
have to put deed restriction protections back
in communities, which is a challenging thing because there are
racial stigmas associated with how those legal documents
were originally drafted and how a lot of
subdivisions in the area where originally founded
on deed restriction that
were discriminatory against racial minorities.
And we have to overcome that legacy
and realize that those are the only protection that may
exist in Houston for communities and explain to them
the importance of putting those in place to
make sure that their neighborhoods are protected.
And so we're really focused on community preservation as
a long-term solution that includes that
includes and this is where you can get involved,
getting involved in what's going on in your community,
joining your local civic club, finding out,
figuring out what your super neighborhood
is when they're meeting and finding out this,
plugging into this larger network
of information that is out there on how things
are impacting your community and what decisions are
being made about your community when you're not there.
This is the critical thing that we have to do,
particularly in a large city like Houston.
You have to get involved at
your neighborhood level and realize what is going on.
Network with your neighbors,
talk to your neighbors and share that information with them.
Because I think if people really
understood the impacts. like we've seen
the outpouring on the I 45 project
from lots of communities and push things to get better.
And so we need to keep
that energy up on these large infrastructure projects.
We needed to have that energy on a lot of
the decisions that are being made in
government on behalf of communities.
And so I would just really stress the best thing you can do
is go to your local club meeting and
and figure out what's going on that
directly impacts your neighborhood because you have
power in those groups to make change for your community.
Cymene and then Denae.
I'll just echo
What I think has already been said, and that is
you know, we need to collectively embrace this carried imperative.
And Denae I thought you brought it up really
nicely when you were talking about mothering. Right?
And again, this doesn't have to be
gendered and it doesn't have to be a kind of
an essential lines or reductive position
but prioritizing relationships is the place to begin.
And it turns out that women are fairly good at doing that.
And so that's something that I think we should collectively
embrace from a non binary point
of view or from a woman's point of view,
is that this is a really important place for us to come together,
but also embrace that
that kind of inclination or orientation.
And you know, when I think about
the female leadership that we've seen through Covid, right,
on a global level,
we'll look at a place like New Zealand
with Jacinda Ardern and they
a really good job. Her leadership was
phenomenal and they had no cases when we're blowing up here in Houston.
Where I've been doing research in Iceland,
that Prime Minister there,
did also phenomenal job and in Germany with Angela Merkel.
So when I look around and look at these examples of
leadership that have to do obviously with health
but also with a kind of prioritization
of relationships and caring for one's population right?
The evidence is there. And I think again
we just need to find good examples like that and
try and reproduce them as much as
we can here at all levels, right?
Not just at the national level,
but at community levels as well,
which is the work that you all are doing too day in and day out.
So I have the
I have the pleasure of actually
being mentored by some of the women
who have historically been major forces and the EJ movement
such as Dr. Beverly Wright out of New Orleans with
the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice. Peggy Shepard,
WE ACT in New York.
These are women who have been working in
the environmental justice movement for over 40 years.
They have great instincts on what works, what doesn't work.
And they are women who lead with passion and compassion.
And I think that that is
very critical when you work with communities.
So as Amy said,
most of our leaders that we work with,
our female leaders, they are often volunteers,
so they are not paid to do this work.
They do it because they have a passion for it,
because they are committed to the communities that they represent.
And so one of the
I feel like one of the ways that you can get involved
is to donate to some of these organizations.
So some of the small organizations that
we get to work with have very little funding.
And so most of this work is really done by
residents and it's done with limited funds.
And so being able to provide some funding
for the leaders to maybe do this work full time would be awesome.
Providing them with funds for
their organizations to have infrastructure to really function.
And so I think that's a great way to get involved.
I think the other thing too is as as fellow citizens
we need to really think about how funds are spent,
how policies are made both on a local and a national level.
And really consider how historical,
you know, racial segregation
and injustice might play a part in that.
So oftentimes we, you know,
a policy is put in place and we never think about how it
might actually impact a minority community.
And so thinking about who has the power in terms of,
you know, who's making those decisions?
Are there people of color and
low-income people really at the table?
Are they able to really participate and give
their input on how those funds are being spent.
And Iris can speak to how funds are being
spent in terms of recovery with Hurricane Harvey.
These are really important things. And
elect people that are like-minded,
people that are really going to be compassionate
and think about other people in
terms of how policies impact communities.
I think those are all really important things.
And I am continue to be motivated by
phenomenal female leaders for the women on this panel.
A great example and Iris
I hope she won't get upset with me sharing it.
So I'm also a part a CEER.
Iris sent out an email today to letting us know
she was applying for a grant on
behalf of the organization. She shared
every part of what was going to happen with the grant.
So shared leadership and being
very transparent is not something we see a lot.
And so I'm really
I'm really motivated by
the female leaders that we get to work with in this movement.
Oh, and actually we didn't say the obvious. Everyone should go
vote because these issues are on the ballot right now.
And you can early vote through
Friday and you can vote on the day of on Tuesday,
so you should vote.
That is one very powerful way
that you can take an action right now.
I think because voting got brought up something that might
be good to have somebody answer, could be,
what advice would you give to a political leader at the national,
state or local level about how to address climate justice.
Maybe what kind of policies do you look for when
you look for climate policy in a candidate.
I think one of the basic things they can do is go see
the Environmental Justice Communities in their district and
understand the challenge. See
the challenges that the people are living
under as far as drainage conditions, access to
A lot of our communities are food deserts.
They don't have access to
good grocery stores, don't have access to banks.
There's there's a number of things
that I guess handicap these communities for
lack of resources and investment in
them that have nothing to do with the people that live there.
It's just the environment as
built is not conducive to having healthy people.
And we need to make those changes.
And I think if people understood how close
some of these refineries are to homes and they would be like
I don't want to live there.
And I think if people would just take a step back and try to
put themselves have some empathy and
understanding and compassion for circumstances,
that some people have no control over as far as
what environment they're being brought up in because
there's not a way to address that,
particularly in Houston when there's no zoning.
And if people started to understand
the real economic impact on
these families, these circumstances that they're in.
I think that would be one of the most eye opening
and effective ways to get people to
to put the people first,
like I mentioned, I just want to
underscore something that has come up a few
times than the discussion which is really about,
you know, good good
policy that is really going to make a difference.
I think needs to be Intersectional, right?
So people who who understand how
housing justice is climate justice
and environmental justice is climate justice,
and you know that all of these things are connected.
And that to be talking about things
like environmental equity and achieving
achieving equity across our systems. We have to.
It doesn't mean that a climate plan or
climate policy needs to take on all of that.
But it needs to understand how
that problem fits within that context,
that broader context and how a solution,
if it's going to work, needs to actually
address all of those intersections.
And so I think that's a really important one.
Something else that I've heard from
our discussion today that I think is worth emphasizing.
It's just how community has
has a meaningful and authentic and real seat at the table, right?
We've seen a lot of task forces,
a lot of advisory bodies,
a lot of working groups,
And I think that, you know,
what happens when you bring together
the different types of expertise.
Because we consider community members experts.
They know what they need, they know what they want.
They are closest to the problem,
they have the best solutions.
And so, yes, we need the folks who
are trained in different fields of study and
who have all the letters after their names and have
the title and have the technical expertise.
And we also need the lived experience,
the lived expertise of community members.
And and when you combine those two things,
you get really amazing results.
And so I think being able to really test and ask and
analyze how is community involved in the designing of that policy?
How how is community involved from
start to finish in crafting that policy,
in vetting that policy and implementing
that policy and evaluating the success of that policy.
That's not something that we see very often and that's
that's really what we need is that partnership
between community and decision makers.
I think those would be good questions to
ask. It's about two minutes until seven.
So if there any attendees who do have a question,
feel free to drop into the chat, the Q&A, or raise your hand
and I can unmute you.
One of the questions in the Q&A currently
is about action at the Houston level.
And I think we've done a pretty good job addressing that,
especially in terms of voting.
I think there was another question in
the chat that was asking about
whether the recording will be distributed after the event.
Yes. It will be made available and we will be able
to will most likely be made available through the Fondren website.
And then we will advertise that.
I'm plugging this book.
Sorry. I didn't, I feel like it is an important book.
I have not had a chance to read it yet,
but I know this is one of the motivations for this panel,
so I don't know Ashley
if you want to share those details with
the listeners. I can drop in the title and author.
It's getting it's getting a lot of attention too
a lot of positive feedback as people are reading it.
And it's great because it's an edited collection set of
short cases and we can fit it into your life, you know.
And I've just read a few of the essays but it's
it's really fantastic work.
And a really diverse group of writers too.
So that's nice.
I was wondering Ashley like one of the things that I think today
brought up was being able to donate to different organizations.
I don't know if you can do this as part of Fondren,
but it'd be great to have a list of a good organizations that
people could go to their website and make a donation if they can.
Click on the sites.
I don't know if that's ok with
Rice or if there's some regulation against that,
but I think it'd be really useful
to have. That can be worth looking into and
we just get another question.
So somebody asked they said they've been
petro engineer for 13 years and it kills my soul
but I don't know how to change careers.
Any suggestions.
You know, many of you have had non-linear paths.
So this might be a good thing to end on and kind of
just give maybe some inspiration
or hope to anybody who is looking at
getting involved in this.
Whether they've been in a career for
a really long time or there may be a student looking to join
a career path that is related to
the environment and then we can close.
I think the future is green jobs.
And I would love to see and I
know there are layoffs happening right
now because of the downturn in the oil and gas.
But I would love to see
the brain power that is in the industry right now
start to transition and do some startups,
get us some green energy jobs.
Let's compete with Austin on being in making
turning that corner and making Houston
the green energy capital of the world.
We have the knowledge and expertise here
and particularly with our medical complex we have
chances for bio engineering solutions and addition to green jobs.
I mean, there is so much opportunity with Rice,
with TSU, with all University of Houston
and our educational institutions that are here.
We can own this and rule this.
We just need to put the people just like you
who are looking to make a change and do something
better and they're trained in the profession for the environment.
We welcome you join to join the fight and tell us
tell us what the next big thing could be and
show us that Houston's capable producing.
I mean, we have so much potential here with what we already have.
We just need to shift gears.
And that's what I mean by saying industry
has to be part of our solution to transition.
But let's be the green energy capital world.
I agree with Amy.
I think that we need people who
understand the petrochemical industry to really
help us design new ways to use clean energy.
I think that you can look for opportunities to work
in sustainability and resilience
kinds of arenas where you can help people
understand maybe how to reduce the carbon footprint.
Zero emission kinds of work.
There are lots of different areas that you could
potentially pivot to because of your engineering training.
And especially if you have some experience working.
I think that there are certainly some opportunities,
so don't be discouraged.
We need you and
I think you just need to look for some ways to take
your training and just look at it in terms of
your skill set and not necessarily your area.
So think about your skill set and how to pivot it into
some areas really focused on
resilience and sustainability maybe.
Yeah. And I'll just add too that as we move
into this transition which we are and we will continue to be,
is that it's really important that we not
reproduce the extractive and exploitative
orientation that.
that the fossil fuel industry has had since its inception.
So that the way that
the fossil fuel industry has worked historically,
we need to move away from that entirely
as we go into new renewable energy forums.
And make sure that as you brought up
a couple times now Iris that communities are
at the table have a decision-making power
over where new renewable energy centers are sited,
for example, what kinds of policies are put into place?
We need to be. I think we have a huge opportunity now with
transition to do energy better than we ever had in the past.
And we need to really embrace
that opportunity and say that we're not going to
we're not going to repeat these exploitative and expropriative
and extractive practices that have been
so central to the fossil fuel industry,
we need to do it better with renewable energy.
And we can we can bring a new political ethos.
We can bring a new set of politics
to these new energy forums, right?
And that's I think that's where you really need
to focus some of our energies too.
Thank you guys. So we are now five minutes past seven.
So to be conscious of everybody's time.
I'm gonna go ahead and close this off.
I know there is still
maybe a couple of questions that people might have
but this recording will be available after.
So thank you guys so much.
And I hope everybody has a nice evening.
Thank you guys for being here and thanks to all of
our attendees for being here as well.
Yeah. Thank you, everyone. Yeah. Thank you,
Ashley, for moderating as well.
Yeah. Thank you. See you out there.
Take care and stay safe.