Category: Blogs

Our own national policy manager, Michael Bueno — like many of our members — lives in South Texas, and is experiencing extremely cold temperatures, rolling blackouts, boil orders, and shortages in the grocery store, as millions of Texans struggle through this climate emergency.

Michael put his thoughts on this community and climate crisis in the form of a Twitter thread. Please read and retweet if you are on Twitter, or share the thread from our blog on Facebook, Instagram or in a text to your friends and family.

It is vital that we push back against disinformation about climate change and that we make sure our communities are at the table as we rethink our energy priorities.

As Michael writes: “Together we can push for better policies that put people first instead of profits, incentivize distributed generation, create more community ownership and investment in power sources, promote building efficiency and weatherization in homes, improve reliability, and relieve the energy burden placed on so many families.”

Finally, if you are looking for ways to help today, check out this list of Texas mutual aid groups.

As a New Yorker, both of birthright and spirit, I have spent my entire life developing my deep love for cities. The work I do centers on examining the tools and infrastructure that support the future of cities, with a focus on equity in transportation.

Transportation that can create more equitable access to places and power.

This work, my deep interest in how people are transported from place to place, began when I was awarded a grant by New York City’s Columbia University to study Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in Colombia, as Bogotá’s famed TransMileno pioneered a new public transit paradigm in Latin America.

Transmilenio revolutionized transit access by creating a system of routes across the city, with dedicated bus lanes separated from other vehicular traffic, prioritizing public transit and making it a faster option than a private car. At the city’s periphery and in hilly neighborhoods, smaller feeder buses navigate the streets and bring riders to the terminus of one of the network’s seven routes. For Bogotanos, who previously relied on a patchwork of privately-owned minibuses that sat in traffic, TransMilenio created a new way to navigate the city.

Caption: With TransMilenio’s infrastructure, the road prioritizes the bus over private cars.

Source: TheCityFix

To add to the magic, Bogotá also has something called a Ciclovía, where some streets close to cars on Sundays and holidays. Over 75 miles of asphalt becomes the domain of bicyclers, roller-skaters, other human-powered wheelers, and pedestrians. There are street parties on the roadway in some neighborhoods, and mechanics hang out on route to help people whose wheels need patching up, too.

Caption: People power (and the occasional bus) rules the streets during Bogotá’s weekly Ciclovía.

Source: Instituto Distrital de Recreación y Deporte, Bogota D.C.

Out of the city’s population of 7.4 million, about 2 million (that’s one in four Bogotanos), show up in the carless streets each week. The Ciclovía concept has become recognized as a “best practice,” and in the United States has been replicated and adapted, albeit at a much smaller scale, in U.S. cities as radically different as Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Trenton.

The experience of walking through Bogota’s joyous, carless streets on Sundays lives vividly in my mind, even a decade later.   

More recently, my work before joining GreenLatinos in the Summer of 2020 focused on developing a way to measure what makes for inclusive, healthy places. A Guide to Inclusion and Health in Public Space: Learning Globally to Transform Locally is a framework for measuring what constitutes inclusive, healthy places. I led research to develop this evaluative tool while consulting with the Gehl Institute, in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

In the field of clean transportation, we have a great deal of work to do. COVID-19 has also thrown into stark reality the vulnerability and fragility of our public transit systems, and who is most dependent on them. Asian American and Black workers commute by public transit at four times the rate of white workers, while Latino/a/x workers use public transit at three times the white rate. These systems not only need to offer clean energy solutions, they also need to be equitable.

Today, transportation is expensive, and can place a burden to cash strapped families. Costs related to transportation are the second largest expense for U.S. households. The average household spends almost 20 percent of its total income on transportation expenses, and for low-income households, it can be as high as 30 percent, forcing individuals and families to make often challenging budget decisions.

Transportation is also making people sick.

Latino/a/x communities are disproportionately affected by air pollution and public health issues like asthma, come from lower air quality. This is no coincidence. Racism manifests geographically and environmentally; historically and today, communities of color face greater harms from environmental factors. Even the EPA agrees that environmental racism is real, and that people of color are much more likely to live near polluters and breathe polluted air.

Caption: Smog from car pollution creates toxic clouds that hang low over the LA skyline.

Source: Los Angeles Times

Indeed, Latinx children are three times more likely than non-hispanic white children to live in counties where air quality is poor. By advocating for cleaner alternatives to gasoline-powered cars, we can support efforts to mitigate the climate crisis and improve air quality. Communities have long sought these changes and the data shows that this need is more urgent than ever.

We are at a pivotal moment for harnessing potential to create meaningful change. That’s why as we prepare to welcome the incoming Biden Administration and the 117th Congress in January 2021,  it is my sincerest hope that our nation will be at a turning point in our relationship to transportation.

By building momentum for equitable policy that addresses and makes reparations for the historic barriers faced by Latino/a/x and other communities of color in their efforts to advance transportation equity and improve accessibility, we can improve people’s lives in both the immediate and long term.

This means, we’ll make it easier, safer, more affordable, and healthier to get around – whether it be by public transit, bike, car, or even on our own two feet.

Andrea Marpillero-Colomina is a Clean Transportation Advocate for GreenLatinos.

This article was originally published in Spanish in La Opinión, Luchar por el agua que nos sustenta es prioritario.

Water is life — from drinking water to our nation’s rivers and the ocean that sustains us all.

The National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA), a non-partisan association of major Hispanic and Latino organizations and leaders, has just released practical water policy recommendations in its latest October report. Among the recommendations is for Congress to support legislation that will prohibit water shutoffs, mandate reconnections, and ensure water affordability protections for our low-income communities during an emergency and beyond.

It is critical that we protect the millions of people who lack access to safe drinking water, and the millions more who are vulnerable to urban flooding caused by intensifying extreme weather, like hurricanes, due to an accelerating climate crisis.

Access to clean water is foundational to public health, the economy, and outdoor recreation. The COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis continue to show us that Congress must take action to protect our fundamental human right to water. It must also recognize the disparities environmental racism has perpetuated in communities of color, contributing to unequal access, inequitable systems and the blatant disregard of our people.

During this public health crisis, Latino, Black and Indigenous communities have disproportionately borne the brunt of its impacts, including many frontline workers. COVID-19 has affected our health, our employment, our education, and our livelihoods. It is overwhelming the Latino community and communities of color, but it is not the only threat we are up against.

Hurricane Laura, which hit the Louisiana coast, was one of the strongest to make landfall in history. It’s acceleration and strength were a direct result of climate change, creating massive flooding and displacing thousands of people. In the West, dozens upon dozens of intensifying wildfires, another consequence of climate change, have left thousands of people without homes—including a community of Latino farmworkers in Oregon and agricultural workers in California’s wine country.

There is also a concern about the disproportionate concentration of Latino communities in areas at risk of urban flooding, a threat compounded by development, hurricanes and sea-level rise. In the most vulnerable areas, even small rainstorms can destroy homes, businesses and community spaces.

Meanwhile, I’ve seen the inequities in water access as a Latina. Many of the Latino communities in my home state of California are struggling to ensure they have enough water for the families who live there, including multiple towns in the San Joaquin Valley. They simply do not have access to clean, affordable water.

In those places, residents have to travel miles from their homes to buy bottled water because their tap water is unsafe to drink, and their small-town stores can’t keep up with the demand. is the reality for too many people, especially people of color here in the San Joaquin Valley — it’s for them that I have dedicated my life as an advocate and steward.

During this global pandemic, public health officials have instructed us to stay home and wash our hands in an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19. But even basic sanitation is a challenge for people experiencing water service shutoffs. Water is becoming too expensive for millions of families, a direct impact of the decline of federal funding for water systems since the 1970s. Today, only 20 states, including California, Kentucky and New York have implemented a statewide moratorium on water-shutoffs.

Of course, a moratorium won’t help those who lack access to safe tap water. A report by Dig Deep and the U.S. Water Alliance finds that Latino households are nearly twice as likely as white households to lack complete plumbing, while Native American and Indigenous households are 19 times as likely to lack complete plumbing.

Environmental injustices and racism have kept us from the basic human right to clean water. Our federal representatives must act now to enact critical policies addressing water equity.

NHLA recommends that Congress address these inequities by creating and supporting federal funding streams for the repair and maintenance of aging wastewater systems, prioritizing communities like Puerto Rico, Las Colonias, rural Black communities, and the Navajo Nation.

Congress must pass legislation to increase water infrastructure investments and drinking water and wastewater systems, prioritizing low-income communities of color— especially Latino, Black, Indigenous and multiracial communities. These investments should include green infrastructure so that when extreme weather-disasters like hurricanes occur, our communities will be safeguarded. These NHLA policy recommendations can bring us closer to water equity and, ultimately, water justice. I call on leaders in Congress to take action to ensure all communities have access to clean, safe water.

Mariana Del Valle Prieto Cervantes is a Clean and Healthy Waters Advocate with GreenLatinos.

Día de Los Muertos — the Day of the Dead — offers Latinos in the United States and Latin America a few days annually to welcome back the souls of their ancestors with offerings of food, drink and celebration.

While the roots of this festivity go back some 3,000 years to the rituals of Azteca, Maya and other Nahua people honoring the dead, for GreenLatinos, this is a time when we acknowledge the care of our ancestors who collectively protected sacred lands, the air and water, alongside our heritage for future generations — including ours.

We must protect our collective heritage, that they so cherished, and pass along our history to future generations, this includes protecting our public lands and waters. Across Colorado, many lands that represent us and our communities have yet to be permanently protected and an alarming number of these sites suffer from vandalism and theft.

Here in my home state, the Colorado Wilderness Act (CWA) would permanently protect more than half a million acres of land in 36 areas across the state. This is a significant step in our efforts to conserve 30% of the Earth’s lands by 2030. It is also a key part of Representative Diana DeGette’s Protecting America’s Wilderness Act (HR 2546).

The CWA includes majestic places like Cross Canyon, right outside of Cortez, which was inhabited by the ancestral Puebloan people between 450 and 1300 AD, and whose presence in the area can still be felt.

According to the Department of the Interior, Cross Canyon has one of the densest collections of cultural artifacts anywhere in the country. Rep. DeGette visited the area just last year and saw firsthand the incredible culture and tradition there, in the forms of ruins, petroglyphs, and artifacts scattered around the landscape.  In some parts, there are over 100 cultural sites per square mile. A complete inventory of these sites, sadly, does not exist and the degradation of these critical sites increases daily.

Another area for permanent protection is Pisgah Mountain in near Carbondale in central Colorado, on the lands of the Ute Tribe. This historic area is another example of where scattered artifacts and cultural sites carry no archaeological survey to date.

That is why we must honor our lands and the history of our ancestors this Dia de Los Muertos by passing the Protecting America’s Wilderness Act once and for all. It is time for Congress to ensure that we can defend and pass on these essential areas to future generations before they disappear before our eyes.

Ean Tafoya is the Colorado Field Advocate for GreenLatinos. GreenLatinos advocates for and develops policies and programs on conservation issues that significantly affect the health and welfare of the Latino community in the United States.

We live in U.S. oil and gas development zones, surrounded by facilities leaking air pollutants like methane. Each of us lives in a remote part of Texas. Neta is in the West Permian Basin region and Virginia in the Eagle Ford Shale region. While we live on two completely different ends of the state, our respective struggles as an Indigenous woman and a woman of color reverberate.

Methane pollution released from oil and gas facilities speeds up global warming and ground-level ozone formation. This type of pollution lingers in our backyards and has been linked to cancer and aggravated respiratory conditions, like asthma. And, there are no air quality monitors in the rural areas where we live.

With weaker methane safeguards finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Trump Administration last month, companies have less incentive to find and fix methane leaks. This will worsen climate change and air pollution, especially for communities of color which are already disproportionately affected because of environmental racism.

Neta, who lives in Toyahvale, Texas, is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation. Twenty-seven years ago, Neta was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer when her son was 11 years old. After she completed treatment, she and her husband made Toyahvale their permanent home, believing this community 194 miles from urban El Paso was safe from air pollution.

That was not the case.

Emissions from nearby oil and gas wells make it difficult for Neta to breathe and even walk outside. Her three asthma-afflicted grandsons suffer similar struggles just two hours away in Midland.

According to the Clean Air Task Force’s 2015 report, Midland County had the fifth-highest fifth highest incidence in the U.S. of asthma attacks in children that are related to air pollution from oil and gas. The Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford Shale are home to Latinx and Indigenous populations above the national average, and have the highest rates of venting and flaring from oil and gas wells in the state.

The growth of the fossil fuel industry in this area is destroying a desert oasis and polluting our air with toxic chemicals – robbing Neta, her community, and her family of their right to breathe clean air.

Virginia, a ninth-generation Tejana, lives on her family’s ranch in Webb County more than 400 miles away from Neta’s home. Continuing Virginia’s family’s legacy on the land is becoming less practical by the day. Virginia has often questioned whether she could safely become pregnant and raise a family in a region heavy with oil and gas production.

A recent peer-reviewed study conducted in the Eagle Ford Shale found that the odds of preterm birth were 50 percent higher for women who were exposed to 10 or more flares over the course of their pregnancy, with the impact of flaring falling entirely on Latinx mothers. For Virginia, knowing that her odds of complications with pregnancy are higher – and that companies and regulators aren’t doing anything to stop the pollution – has her feeling trapped.

Because of the EPA methane rule rollbacks, and without meaningful federal or state safeguards to prevent venting and flaring, Texans like us will continue to be exposed to harmful air pollution from nearby oil and gas facilities, and even more people will suffer because of the harmful emissions they release.

While we work to protect our families and communities, the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) – the state agency that regulates oil and gas – has not proposed any changes that will meaningfully reduce the problem of venting and flaring. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Texas is responsible for the majority of vented and flared gas in the country. In the last seven years, the RRC has not denied one of the 27,000 venting and flaring requests that it has received.

The EPA has already dismissed our communities by gutting methane safeguards when it should be strengthening them. An article by Hiroko Tabuchi in the New York Times reports that industry groups knew that the egregious rates of venting and flaring negate the climate benefits natural gas typically touts as a “cleaner” burning fuel. Moreover, these organizations were concurrently lobbying for methane rule rollbacks.

As people living with the pollution caused by the lack of regulation and enforcement, we demand the EPA put an end to routine flaring. In the absence of federal action, we are calling on the RRC to open Texas’ Statewide Rule 32 to end routine flaring no later than 2025. Future generations of Texans and people around the country depend on it.

Neta Rhyne is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation and a direct descendent of the ‘Trail of Tears.’ Virginia Palacios is the Climate and Clean Air Advocate for GreenLatinos, a network of Latino environmental and conservation leaders.