Fossil fuels lie at the heart of every challenge we must face in order to live in a better world. Not only the climate crisis, then, but also public health, the fight against social inequality and against racism. These last two issues, in particular, are more closely connected than one might think. This is the finding of a report published by Greenpeace USA.

Racism fuelled by fossil fuels

Every year, gas, oil and coal endanger the health of citizens — in particular those belonging to African American, Latino, Indigenous, Asian and low-income communities, who often find themselves living near sites where fossil fuels are extracted, processed or transported.

The scientific literature on this subject is vast. The many studies gathered by Greenpeace show how fossil fuels are feeding the legacy of systemic racism in the United States — that racism rooted in its institutions and society since the country's very founding.

Extraction on ancestral lands belonging to Indigenous communities, such as the case of the Dakota Access Pipeline; the effects of gas combustion and extraction on Hispanic populations in Texas, where women are more likely to miscarry compared with those living far from oil derricks; or the transport of Bakken oil, which has a disproportionate impact on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota: these are just some of the examples cited by the organisation in its report.

Economic racism affects white people too

In the state of California, those who live near oil and gas wells are, for the most part, members of low-income families, and demographic data show that they are predominantly non-white and Latino. The picture is complete when one considers that the owners of extraction rights are white, wealthy and have fewer health problems — and therefore do not live near extraction areas.

There is no shortage of cases of economic racism that affect white people too. This is demonstrated by the fracking wells in the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania, where the studies gathered by Greenpeace USA reveal enormous income disparities: this region, in particular, records relatively high levels of poverty, despite being the area with the largest volume of extractable gas in the United States. Yet while in 2012 Marcellus Shale became the leading gas-producing area in the United States, the extraction of gas from underground through hydraulic fracturing — fracking — left local populations with a frightening degree of pollution in both surface and groundwater.

Those living within one kilometre of the area risk finding levels of methane dissolved in their tap water up to 17 times higher than in water outside the area. For this and other serious side-effects on the local population, residents of the area have filed hundreds of complaints.

Climate justice and the distribution of CO2

The unequal distribution of pollution across society is an issue that African Americans, Asians, Latinos and Indigenous peoples have long been aware of, and they have often joined forces to fight against corporations, developers and institutions. After all, the Black community's 1982 protest against a plan to build a landfill in Warren County, North Carolina — where soil contaminated with PCBs (highly polluting industrial chemicals harmful to both humans and the environment) was to be buried — is considered the founding moment of the American environmental justice movement.

For the movement, reducing CO2 in the atmosphere is not enough; it is also necessary to ensure that CO2 emissions do not become concentrated in the most deprived areas. According to Greenpeace, the areas where the highest levels of pollution are concentrated are the same areas where the poorest communities are segregated.

"The decade just begun will be crucial for putting our economy on the right track," Greenpeace wrote in its report. "United States President Joe Biden must keep his promise that systemic racism must be tackled alongside the climate crisis and the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels."

The starting point is always the same: the winding down of fossil fuel production and the abandonment of infrastructure projects for their combustion must be managed by giving priority to the needs of workers and of the communities most exposed to the climate crisis.