By Willy Blackmore
“Just like climate change writ large in this country, it’s Black and Brown kids who are bearing the early brunt of the negative effects.”
Genesis B. doesn’t have air conditioning. That used to be the norm in Long Beach, California, where the 17-year-old was born and raised. A beach city in southern Los Angeles County, it’s the kind of place that never gets too hot, thanks to the breeze coming off of the water — or it used to be, at least.
As temperatures increase, air conditioning has become more common there — but it’s too expensive for Genesis’ family.
The heat can take its toll outside, too: This summer, the hottest ever, Genesis (who, as a minor, is only identified by the first initial of her last name) suffered from heat exhaustion.
Along with 17 other California kids between the ages of 8 and 17, Genesis is suing the Environmental Protection Agency, arguing that the federal agency has violated what lawyers representing the kids say is a constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment by permitting excessive amounts of pollution that has led to and continues to exacerbate the climate crisis.
“As extreme heat days become more common in Long Beach, Genesis is unable to cool off in her home during the day,” the suit, which was filed on Sunday, explains. “On many days, Genesis must wait until the evening to do schoolwork when temperatures cool down enough for her to be able to focus.”
As an Afro-Latina with an Indigenous background, Genesis is at a particular disadvantage when it comes to climate change — as are all Black and Brown kids in the U.S. If climate change presents particular health challenges to children, as the suit argues, many of those problems are found at disproportionately higher rates in Black communities.
A number of the plaintiffs (but not Genesis) have asthma, for example; nationally, 5.5% of white children have asthma, compared to 12% of Black children. The higher rates of asthma are largely attributed to where Black Americans tend to live — which, thanks to redlining and the decades of housing discrimination that followed, tend to be neighborhoods that are less desirable for a host of reasons — like being flood-prone, or routinely blanketed with pollution.
Consider Genesis’ hometown: an incredibly diverse city, Long Beach is 12% Black, and the majority of the community lives in North Long Beach, right alongside the 710 freeway — a major trucking route for goods leaving the Port of Long Beach, which sits just west of the city.
What was long known as the east side of Long Beach (which referred to the east side of the Los Angeles River), familiar to anyone who listened to Snoop Dogg in the 1990s, sits near both the freeway and the port. Parts of those neighborhoods have been labeled as so-called Diesel Death Zones.
The plaintiffs in the suit are a diverse group of kids from across California, including rural parts of Northern California and elsewhere in the greater Los Angeles area. As the organization Our Children’s Trust, which filed the suit on their behalf (and is the driving force behind the new legal strategy of having kids sue states and local governments over climate issues), said in a statement, “The climate system that is vital to ordered liberty and has fostered and supported all human life for thousands of years no longer exists because it has been destabilized by pollution from burning fossil fuels.”
And that is very much true for all kids. But just like climate change writ large in this country, it’s Black and Brown kids who are bearing the early brunt of the negative effects.
If the lawsuit is successful, however, and forces real, historic change from the EPA, it will be fitting that the history books will note it by the official name, the name of an Afro-Latina girl from Long Beach: Genesis B. v. EPA.
This article was originally published in Word In Black .
