Like many of my fellow New Yorkers, I feel all too familiar today with the sound of sirens. The eerie ambience of the ambulance has all but replaced the conventional roar of the “city that never sleeps.” With rare exceptions — from 9/11 to the wake of the 2016 presidential election — at 19 years old, I have never known it to be so silent. Even as we have passed the peak of new COVID-19 cases here, it’s hard to imagine that the old sounds of city life will return anytime soon. Certainly, when the city eventually begins to re-open, we will miss the voices of the many dead — friends, family and community members. But perhaps even more strangely, we may also miss many voices of the living.
Just last week, The New York Times released shocking data about the number of New Yorkers who have fled the city as the COVID-19 pandemic struck. According to the data collected, the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods have emptied out the most and emptied out the fastest over the last few months. In the Times’ coverage, professor Andy Horowitz characterized such flight as “an instinctive reaction.” Yet while everyone may feel the instinct to flee, not everyone can afford to do so when disaster hits. As the data makes clear, many of those who can afford to run away from the storm do so without hesitation, while those who cannot are left behind to weather it with no choice in the matter.
The gulf between those who can flee and those who cannot in the midst of the pandemic gives us only a small taste of what “climate apartheid” may look like in the decades to come. As the climate crisis accelerates, inundating coastal areas from Red Hook, Brooklyn to the Rockaways, Queens and beyond, it is the poor and marginalized who will be hit the hardest and hit first. But in one way or another, all of us will ultimately suffer the consequences of a fossil fuel-dependent system not built to withstand the damage to our planet and our homes that it produces. This stark reality is not unique to New York. Instead, it is emblematic of what cities and towns across the country and world may face as soon as 2030.
Climate change is only making public health emergencies like the current pandemic more likely and more severe; it also heightens the spread of infectious diseases and intensifies natural disasters. The polluting industries driving climate change, from fossil fuels to petrochemicals, have already led to elevated levels of respiratory health conditions predominantly in communities of color, potentially making such communities more vulnerable to the coronavirus.
Only last summer, Philip Alston, the U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, released a report warning that climate change could “push more than 120 million more people into poverty” within the next decade alone. As sea levels and surface temperatures rise, and while food supplies grow short, the rich may pay their way to safety and shelter. Yet the poor and the vulnerable will suffer greatly, a phenomenon Alston refers to as “climate apartheid.”
If our nation’s response to the COVID-19 crisis is any indication, with people of color and indigenous communities suffering from the virus’s toll at disproportionate rates and essential workers on the front lines struggling to access basic protections, it is clear that the crises to come will not be any kind of societal equalizers. Rather, they will only exacerbate the striking socioeconomic and racial disparities that have characterized the impact of and response to crisis by U.S. officials over and over again, from Hurricane Katrina to Superstorm Sandy.
And for young people like myself, it is clear that these systemic failures will inevitably impoverish our generation’s quality of life. Only a few weeks ago, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick went on Fox News to defend his previous comments about preferring to die from COVID-19 than see the economy destroyed for younger generations. But if elected officials really want to save this country for their children and grandchildren — for myself and my peers — they need to start putting their money where their mouth is; instead of lobbying for reelection by bailing out big corporations and by rapidly reopening states despite dire warnings of the consequences of doing so too soon, they need to start using stimulus packages to support everyday Americans. They must direct the policy tools at their disposal toward long-term investments in environmentally sustainable and socially responsible infrastructure that can support a rapid and equitable response to emergency moving forward.
Right now, we are at a critical juncture: we can lock ourselves into the fundamentally untenable and unequal system that has brought us to this point, or we can seize the moment to radically transform it. With climate change threatening the very habitability of our planet, there is no question of whether or not we will find ourselves facing a moment of crisis like this one again. The only question for our nation to answer — the question that we as voters, employees, and community members must put to our government leaders and institutions at every opportunity — is how we will face it. And how we do so, whether or not we make a future of “climate apartheid” inevitable, will represent a fundamental test of our nation’s values.
The silence of the “city that never sleeps,” punctuated almost exclusively by sirens, should be a wake-up call. To stave off “climate apartheid,” we have to learn from COVID-19. Recognizing where our response to this crisis is falling short is all too easy; the true challenge remains in building the political will to meaningfully respond to it. We must secure a more just and stable future for our most vulnerable communities, today’s young people and their children, while we still can.
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